New system design with solar
Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 3:36 pm
I just installed a solar PV system, and it has made me much more energy conscious since I have been monitoring it everyday and trying to figure out where all my power consumption is going. That being said, I ran across the Brultech GEM, and it looks like exactly what I want. It seems like I will have to do a lot of hacking to get it to work correctly. It appears that the one cloud service that everyone was using is starting to charge a high fee, and it doesn't make much sense for me to buy this in order to cut back on electricity usage just to pay an outrageous fee to someone for storage. My intent is to use a Raspberry PI to collect the data, and set up a web server on the PI in order to access it.
My house electrical service consists of a 200 amp main service panel on the exterior of the house. The main service panel has two 100 amp breakers that feed two sub panels in the basement utility room. My solar PV system feeds into a 40 amp back fed breaker in one of the sub panels. I have two A/C units that are on 40 amp breakers, A 40 amp range breaker, and a 40 amp dryer breaker. The remaining breakers are mostly 15 amps with some 20 amp breakers. Each panel holds 12 full size breakers, but I have so many circuits that every 20 and 15 amp breaker is a twin breaker. I had to switch to quad breakers on my 220 circuits in order to free up space for my solar pv system. That means that I potentially have 48 separate circuits that could be monitored in two sub panels. Here are my questions.
1. Since I have twin breakers everywhere, and the GEM has 32 channels, Can I double up on some of the wires through a CT as long as they are on the same phase, and more that one wire will fit through the hole in the CT?
2. I would like to be able to monitor both legs of power coming into both sub panels, the solar PV 40 amp breaker in, and as many of the loads from each breaker as possible. I know that I can put a CT on each of those, but will the GEM determine the direction that the power is going so that I can see if I am pushing the power out of drawing power into the sub panel that the solar PV system is connected to?
3. When I look at the package deal for the GEM, it has all of these package options A through K or something like that, I notice that they mostly only have the micro 80 CTs. Why is it that I can't get a package deal with the micro 40 CTs? It makes sense to me that I would want micro 40 CTs instead of micro 80 CTs since all of my circuits including the 220V circuits are 40 amps or less with the exception of the incoming lines feeding the sub panel. Are the micro 80 CTs better or something? I see specs on the micro 80 CTs at 3% which isn't great, but nothing for the micro 40 CTs.
4. I plan to use a Raspberry PI to connect to this. Will btmon.py support the serial connection with an RS232 to USB adapter? Does that mean that I don't have to purchase what I consider to be an expensive ethernet adapter for the GEM? I can then use the Raspberry PI to relay the information over ethernet through a web server without having to pay for the expensive ethernet. I see that they have the dash box as well, but it seems rather high priced, and if I use a Raspberry PI, I can write the software any way I like. I would also like to incorporate ERT data from the smart meter outside and create power usage reports with respect to the solar PV system and calculate things such as how much of the solar power was consumed in the house during the day compared to how much got pushed onto the grid.
I think that is all of the questions that I have for now. Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.
My house electrical service consists of a 200 amp main service panel on the exterior of the house. The main service panel has two 100 amp breakers that feed two sub panels in the basement utility room. My solar PV system feeds into a 40 amp back fed breaker in one of the sub panels. I have two A/C units that are on 40 amp breakers, A 40 amp range breaker, and a 40 amp dryer breaker. The remaining breakers are mostly 15 amps with some 20 amp breakers. Each panel holds 12 full size breakers, but I have so many circuits that every 20 and 15 amp breaker is a twin breaker. I had to switch to quad breakers on my 220 circuits in order to free up space for my solar pv system. That means that I potentially have 48 separate circuits that could be monitored in two sub panels. Here are my questions.
1. Since I have twin breakers everywhere, and the GEM has 32 channels, Can I double up on some of the wires through a CT as long as they are on the same phase, and more that one wire will fit through the hole in the CT?
2. I would like to be able to monitor both legs of power coming into both sub panels, the solar PV 40 amp breaker in, and as many of the loads from each breaker as possible. I know that I can put a CT on each of those, but will the GEM determine the direction that the power is going so that I can see if I am pushing the power out of drawing power into the sub panel that the solar PV system is connected to?
3. When I look at the package deal for the GEM, it has all of these package options A through K or something like that, I notice that they mostly only have the micro 80 CTs. Why is it that I can't get a package deal with the micro 40 CTs? It makes sense to me that I would want micro 40 CTs instead of micro 80 CTs since all of my circuits including the 220V circuits are 40 amps or less with the exception of the incoming lines feeding the sub panel. Are the micro 80 CTs better or something? I see specs on the micro 80 CTs at 3% which isn't great, but nothing for the micro 40 CTs.
4. I plan to use a Raspberry PI to connect to this. Will btmon.py support the serial connection with an RS232 to USB adapter? Does that mean that I don't have to purchase what I consider to be an expensive ethernet adapter for the GEM? I can then use the Raspberry PI to relay the information over ethernet through a web server without having to pay for the expensive ethernet. I see that they have the dash box as well, but it seems rather high priced, and if I use a Raspberry PI, I can write the software any way I like. I would also like to incorporate ERT data from the smart meter outside and create power usage reports with respect to the solar PV system and calculate things such as how much of the solar power was consumed in the house during the day compared to how much got pushed onto the grid.
I think that is all of the questions that I have for now. Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.