What are the benefits of an Electrical Panel Monitor?

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Tirnanah
Posts: 60
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2011 1:48 am

Re: What are the benefits of an Electrical Panel Monitor?

Post by Tirnanah » Tue Jan 08, 2013 6:25 pm

I have a GEM (instead of going the ECM route), and I buggered back and forth for well over a year deciding whether or not I want to get one. I live in Fairbanks Alaska where our energy is about .25 cents a KW. My family was already pretty frugle about our energy, but I have definitely found some savings from it. For example, I looked Monday morning and found out my well pump hadn't shut off yet (after several hours of running). Was able to run home and turn off it (pipe is broken at the well head, separate issue and really sucks), and while I still got quite a bit of water on my driveway, it could have been a lot worse. I've managed to turn off almost all of my phantom power suckers that are sucking energy while we aren't even home, and know that I need to replace the power supply in my server with a smaller one because it's the biggest energy eater in my house. With the GEM, I can monitor temperatures in and around the house, so if the temperature inside goes below 55 or so, I know something is wrong and I can go home and fix whatever it is.

I use smartenergy groups website (where the pictures below came from), and will be figuring out some way to internally add alerts for me to know that something isn't right (lights are on too long, something's sucking power longer then it should be, etc) and it can't email/text me that something is right.

And I'm a data geek that also likes charts and graphs to see things :D


To me, it was worth every penny. And Brultech/Smartenergy groups have been beyond helpful in keeping things working/improving on what they have provided.
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comet48
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Nov 12, 2010 10:32 am

Re: What are the benefits of an Electrical Panel Monitor?

Post by comet48 » Wed Feb 05, 2014 12:06 pm

I cut my power usage from approximately 2,000 kWh to 1,100 kWh after installing 3 ecm-1240's. Measuring usage is critical to reducing it.
ncherry
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu May 31, 2012 1:16 pm

Re: What are the benefits of an Electrical Panel Monitor?

Post by ncherry » Sun Jul 13, 2014 10:40 am

A little late to the party but I've found an additional use. Recently I've had problems with power, a bad service drop. The short story is that one side of the drop burned up but wasn't visible to the untrained eye (or those of us with bad eyes :D ). The departing comment of the utility FE was that it appeared that I was using too much power. So I'm now monitoring both phases (split phase) to see the usage load. This is an older home and the way it's wired up may no longer be considered balanced.
sub3marathonman
Posts: 95
Joined: Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:32 am

Re: What are the benefits of an Electrical Panel Monitor?

Post by sub3marathonman » Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:28 pm

comet48 wrote:I cut my power usage from approximately 2,000 kWh to 1,100 kWh after installing 3 ecm-1240's. Measuring usage is critical to reducing it.
Well, I've got to get my GEM installed, because the local power company has sprung a little surprise for everyone with PV solar installed.

I had been on Time Of Use (TOU) where I had peak and off-peak. I had everything set up for this, such as the GE Hybrid Water Heater which is on a switch (I had installed when the house was built) plus it can be set to "Vacation Mode," the A/C set up to come on only during off-peak, finishing using the stove during off-peak, LED lights, etc.

A bit of tangential information, I am a very vocal public critic of the local regime in Lakeland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeland,_Florida , taking note of the "Law Enforcement Misconduct" section and remembering nationwide headlines about it, I found much information about disgraced police chief Lisa Womack and her unwavering supporter city manager Doug Thomas who hired her without a proper investigation, and I am relentless in my criticism of Lakeland city commissioners, especially Phillip Walker who supposedly lived in one of his several houses using only 500 kw in a month so he could officially reside in a district he could get elected in, and thus the tie-in with the GEM. :D

They are upset that my electric bills are incredibly low because I load shift with the big batteries I have, recharging them during the day with the PV and offsetting peak usage at night. So the electric company is eliminating TOU and forcing people with PV to be on a Demand rate, where you're charged as a business is charged depending on your peak demand. Which I'm not upset about that component, but just that it isn't enforced equally on everybody. They're not even having a Peak Demand and Off-Peak Demand, which is ridiculous since capacity is not a problem for electric companies during off-peak times. As somebody concerned about environmental issues, this electric company is doing exactly opposite and punishing people who install PV, and ignoring people who use massive amounts of electricity during peak periods.

So, given these new circumstances, I'll be needing the GEM to monitor the real-time usage, and I'm hoping to keep the demand down low enough to keep the officials in Lakeland upset.
Mustang65
Posts: 70
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2015 11:17 am
Location: Central Florida

Re: What are the benefits of an Electrical Panel Monitor?

Post by Mustang65 » Mon Jan 08, 2018 9:23 pm

sub3marathonman wrote: I was hoping to find out if there is a practical benefit, such as finding out something is using much more electricity than thought and reducing consumption, is there a value-added when selling a home with one of them installed, or is the ability to monitor the usage and see neat graphs alone worth it?
I am a new user of the GEM/DashBox and love it. You asked if the GEM is a good diagnostic tool, well my answer to that is a big "YES". The other day, we here in Central Florida encountered our first COLD spell (30F) since last January. When I got out of bed on Saturday morning (1/6/18), everything was fine. As I walked passed the ecobee SI thermostat, it showed 68F degrees, which I thought was not normal as it usually kicks the heat on at 70F, but made my coffee and sat down in my office. I usually start the day looking at the previous day's energy consumption (GEM) and noticed that the TOTAL consumption was way to HIGH and the HVAC chart was really abnormal. Got up and checked the thermostat and it was down to 67F degrees. I did a few things and then I put a call into the HVAC service company to come out and take a look at the HVAC unit. The tech over the phone said it was my main circuit board (about $300 with labor) which he did not have on the truck (Saturday/office closed). I said I will do a work around and he said the office will call on Monday for an appointment time. Being that I spent my life troubleshooting electronics, I did not go along with the circuit board diagnostic performed without even doing a test. To me that was a setup for... it is going to cost you some money...

So, I dumped the ecobee thermostat 5 minute data (for the last 3 days) and every time the outside temp hit below 35 degrees the HVAC went into Aux heat mode, even though the Heat Pump was still very capable of producing heat (112F supply duct temp, while 37F outside temp). Yes I have temperature sensors in the Supply and Return heating ducts. So the GEM, showed that there was a constant load (fan) while the Aux output was not producing a lot of heat, but occasionally the Heat Pump was kicking on. Sounded like this could be a thermostat issue.

Went over to the ecobee thermostat and started looking at all the threshold settings. That is where my problem was. I was correct, 2 thresholds were set to factory defaults. Compressor min outside temp was set at 34F and the Aux heat temp was set to 68F. I set the Compressor... temp to 25F degrees and the Aux heat temp to 40. How these got reset to factory specs, is beyond me. I have not touched the settings since I installed the ecobee back in 2012.

As you can see by looking at the GEM's output for Saturday night, the usage pattern went back to normal. This morning I called the HVAC service office and told them that they did not need to send out a Tech, as I fixed the problem myself. The HVAC is back to normal as I write this.

I would venture to say that had the Tech performed a service call, he would have automatically replaced the circuit board and the Defrost cycle thermostat on the outside coils ($commission$). Parts and labor between $300 and $400USD, and possibly more.

So will the GEM pay for itself... My bet is "YES" but it may take a few more encounters such as this one to get the ROI. My wife is still scratching her head trying to figure out how I figured it out. Hey with the proper tools, it makes troubleshooting a lot easier.

If you ask me, was this a worthwhile investment, that is a YES IT IS!!! I believe that the PERFECT System (for me anyway) is a combination of the GEM, the ecobee SI thermostat and the Universal Devices ISY994 (Home Automation). With those 3 technology items, there is not much you can not do. I find this so much easier than maintaining my Arduino/Raspberry Pi home energy monitor that I built. A lot less aggravation and programming.

I know this is an old post, but I thought I would update it with some additional information.

You can read about my GEM/DashBox installation at http://www.how-to-doit.com

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Don

Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.
Benjamin Franklin
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