We’re looking to do a fine grain energy audit of a chain café- which we expect would involve monitoring all the electrical equipment over a week, or longer.
Log the data, present it in a short report.
Then visit site again to take the monitoring kit away.
Approximately 25no meters.
Anyone on here do this as a service?
We tend to be individual domestic users here, so I think it’s unlikely you’ll have any takers.
Do you mean 25 individual installations or 25 points to be monitored per installation?
Hi Robert
OK thank you.
Its 1 site;
A CT on the main incoming power and a few individual circuits; then there are probably 20 appliances which would need metering.
For the cost of getting someone to come and do an energy audit I could probably just buy the kit and install it myself. I’d need a bit of support, this forum looks very helpful for that.
I don t have this experience:
- Linux - modifying scripts, installing software, updating your OS etc.
- The Raspberry Pi hardware and software environment - e.g. flashing emonSD to an SD card.
- The Arduino hardware and the Arduino programming environment i.e. modifying/uploading sketches.
- The Python programming language - configuring/troubleshooting emonHub issues.
- JavaScript Object Notation - JSON is used throughout emonCMS as well as NodeRed.
- How to run/use a bash script to backup/restore data, correct data errors, etc.
- Applicable terminology. e.g. script, sketch, CT, VT, the difference between kW and kWh, etc
- Basic Radio Frequency theory - calculate antenna length, maximum range, RF obstacles, etc.
- Serial communication - e.g. interfacing an emonTx to a Raspberry Pi serial port.
- Networking and/or WiFi - e.g. using an ESP8266 instead of an RFM12/RFM69 UHF radio.
The point about listing those skills in the FAQ is that with those, things will be very easy - probably almost to the point where you don’t need the forum. If you’re willing to learn, and do some general reading, the depth of knowledge required isn’t, in most cases, all that great. For example, I’m not an expert on r.f., but calculating the length of a ¼-wave antenna only requires you to know (or look up) the speed of light and the formula (both of which I happen to know, but a few moments in Wikipedia will answer the question if you don’t). Equally, I don’t know enough Python to write in it, but I’ve seen enough programming languages to be able to follow what’s going on. Flashing emonSD to an SD card is a case of downloading and installing the software, run it and follow the on-screen instructions.
I’d say if you can afford the time to learn the basics to that sort of level, then there are enough people here with the knowledge to steer you through. Whether you (or your firm) can afford the time sounds like a commercial decision only you can make.
Where is the nearest restaurant in the chain to Oxford ? I expect that with no equipment purchase at all, I’d spot some obvious waste in a walk-through, and if logging is potentially helpful then it could be feasible.
I recommend looking up on a popular online marketplace “plug in energy monitor”. Those show kW and integrate elapsed kWh going through one three pin plug to one appliance or extension-splitter cable. For example, you could buy one of those and a few extension leads, look at it once after six to eight days, and discover the kWh per week which went through a group of cash registers. To do 20 or so 3-pin plug appliances smaller than 3kW you could go around the whole restaurant looking at one item per week for 20 weeks, or you could do spot checks in one visit, writing down kW in your notebook. You specificly said that you don’t do kW and kWh, so ask around locally for paid work for anyone who got an A in GCSE Physics who wants a Saturday job.
You are very clever, congratulations.