OpenEnergyMonitor as a energy monitor and analysis system for academic buildings

Hi there,
i’m an italian mechanical engineering student and i’m working on my thesis about energy efficiency and energy management. I’ve some budget to buy a system of hardware to build up an energy monitoring system, but i need some informations and advices from you.

Our university is divided in some departments, located all over the city of Viterbo. I want to track 6 departments. Now we check the electrical consumptions with 6 different PODs that send informations to the distributor and we can download from the distributor’s website all the datas in .csv (hourly consumptions in kWh + reactive power).

Every department is composed of 3 or more buildings and has 1 electrical panel. I need a way to track all the electrical consumptions divided in these 6 departments; in addition to that i want to divide only 1 sample departments in “buildings”.
So i have for example:
5 areas located in different points of the city + 3 areas located in the same point and with the same electrical panel but differents electric cables (i can split up the building in 3 areas - buildings - and sum it later in the software)

Every department has a free wifi and we have a internal network. Can I send informations and datas through this network?
We have both 380 V (3-phase) and 230 V (1-phase) AC current - 50Hz.

The question is: how can i this system? Which hardware i have to buy for each “area” (5 areas in different points + 3 in the same point) and which hardware i need to collect all the datas and send them to the CMS?
Do I need only 6 emon-Pi + 8 current sensors maybe?

Thank you!
Paolo

I can answer the measurement questions, but I cannot answer about sending the data. I believe with the ESP module - in development - added to an emonTx, that it will not be difficult, and I think Paul (@pb66) has done many installations similar to yours.

As you have a 3-phase supply to each area, then the emonPi alone will not be sufficient to measure all 3 phases, because it has only 2 CT inputs. You need an emonTx.
Using one emonTx on a 3-phase supply with the 3-phase sketch loaded will give you a good approximation to real power, but it only measures the voltage on one phase. Therefore if the phase voltages are not equal, there will be errors.
You need a CT for each phase, therefore at each monitoring point you need an emonTx with power supply (I assume the ESP module will draw too much current for the internal power supply from the a.c. adapter - I have no details), an a.c. adapter and 3 CTs. So without more details, I think you need 8 emonTx’s. The 5 in their own buildings must have all those other items, for the 3 emonTx’s at the same place, you might need only one a.c. adapter and one 5 V power supply for all 3.