First of all, I'd like to publicly thank Ben, Teken, and Sam at SEG for all their help in getting me through setting this up. As noted below, I work on computers for a living, but this power stuff has been beyond me and I'm still learning more and more about it (which is a good thing!). So thank you for your continued help and patience with sometimes obvious questions. I thought I would do a post with pictures of what my install turned out looking like. Hopefully this can help someone that (like me) doesn't really understand what he was doing, but has learned a lot in this process, or maybe give someone ideas that helps them with their install.
Background (skip if you want, it's kind of a rant): I live in Fairbanks, Alaska. Electricity is currently 25 cents a KW and we are expected another 2.5 cent increase from our co-operative (note that I use that term loosely). Our energy is generated with expensive fuel oil instead of natural gas like the lower half of the state. Chances of our rates going down anytime in the next 10 years is nil, and as oil continues to rise, so will our rates (right now the fuel to generate the power I use is about $30 more then the cost of the power I use).
About me: I'm a desktop/server/SQL programming guy by trade. I'm also a saxophonist in a couple small groups around town. I am not an electrician, so take anything that I've done with a grain of salt, and double check yourself on everything! I have basically rebuilt everything in my house except for the outer walls (which is coming, thank you 2" foam and house wrap), and some of the sheetrock on the inside. If you can do it to an existing house, I've either contemplated it or done it.
Goals: At least know where the electricity is going, then do every thing possible to reduce our usage. I will be adding a couple of pulse counters for water and fuel oil, mostly just to know what's going through the pipe (we are on a well, don't "pay" for water). I also want to setup a local database to pull down info and send me alerts when circuits go out of the normal range, or when they have been on for too long (remind us to turn things off!).
Luck that I had: I could completely kill power to the house (verified several times with 3 different multimeters), so the CT install was relatively painless. I also have a crawl space under my entire house, so it's wired for CAT5 and it was easy to run 25 pair for extending the CT leads. I had access to lots of supplies such as CAT5, 25 pair, and all the tools for testing and crimping cables.
Things I'm still not happy with: I managed to kill my EtherPort somehow (through no fault of brultechs), so I'm still working with Ben to resolve that. I'd also like to find a better method for the temperature block in the rack. Some kind of punch down block or something. I will also be moving from my full size rack to two smaller racks, which will let me re-route and fix the cables down a little better. Things are still pretty strewn around in there.
Anyway, to the install. Since many people have posted pictures of the GEM before install, I'm not going to. I shrunk the pictures. If you'd like the full size image for something, just PM me with your email and I'll send them to you.
Thanks,
Doug
- Brultech Mounted on the rack shelf. Another to fix is find shorter bolts, I just used some I had laying around. The power strip at the back is now down below.
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- GEM powered up and the temperature blocks fixed. It took me about 5 tries to not over tighten the screws on the blocks and break the thin cable. The blocks I found at Home Depot. I'd still like to change them out for some kind of punch down block, or at least something cleaner looking.
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- Garage Power box before CTs. This box is fed from my main box in the house. I could have put the CTs for total here OR in the main box, I choose to put them here. They exit down under the house, where I spliced them into 25 Pair that runs in the left size of the next GEM picture.
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