Off grid energy monitor

[eabadger]

First, happy new year.

Over the last few days of the Christmas break I have been thinking of future projects for the months to come, we as a family are totally off grid and have been monitoring our energy consumption endlessly, we have a solar and diesel and soon to be wind power input, with new wood heating in our temporary place of dwelling whilst we build the new house.

So over the last few days I have been looking at energy monitoring and researched lots of old posts on this and other sites, I was looking at the CurrentCost device and the like, but none of the units I have looked at do everything I want it to, so I would need bits or bobs to create sort of what I want to monitor and record.
By training I am an electronics engineer, and have contact with far east manufactures and an ability to program or get programmed what would be required to do all I desire.

This I have read is being done by others on the site with one wire detectors ect, I personally wish to do the following basic things;

See how much power I am using (currently done by an ampy meter in the solar power station) how much I have used, again currently walk 150mtrs to look at meter, how much power I am achieving from solar, remember this is off grid so I wish to see the DC watts, currently I do this with the web interface on my Tristar MPPT60, which I think is ok, but not all data is in one place, I wish to monitor actual power used from the batteries, which will include the overhead of the inverter, I hope by doing this I will be able to more carefully look after my battery bank.
Also monitoring the oil usage on my generators, compared to power output would be ideal and in essence not that hard to achieve, say a flow sensor for fuel used, and again compare this against actual power outputted from generators, we have two main gensets, a 6kw 220v unit and the 2.8kw 30v DC unit, this since being installed before Christmas has been the mainstay, it appears to be using 1ltr per hour on dyno diesel (red) so about .33 ltr per Kwh.

Anyway, if I play with my idea of a one stop solution can anyone think of other things that would be nice to have or have the option of, mainly my thoughts are off grid but ongridd ideas welcome, maybe someone knows of a device that will do all I need already? Or come up with a reason why this is a crackpot idea?

It may never get off the “nice to do” stage, but who knows, maybe others are after the ultimate energy monitoring software and hardware?

steve

[Countrypaul]

Are your gensets used just for electrickery or for CHP - in which case you might want to monitor the amount of (useable?) heat generated.

Paul

[biff]

hi steve,
       1 ltr per hour is quite expensive. some of the cheap generators on ebay now perform good @1ltr every 2 hours,(rpm,3,000). there is one particular geni which is rated at 3.2 kw,is sold under various names but is recoganisable with the X and E models, X is pull start and the E is key start.
 the engine is a yanmar copy and the alt is good enough for 4 or 5 years @ 4 hours a day.
    they are a bit noisy and hammer away quite happily driving the washing machine and charging batts,however if the pull start is removed from the front and the pully used to drive a pmg,you could lower the revs,use a fan to assist in cooling and work on the smell of diesel..
                                                                                                             biff

[eabadger]

good point i had missed, would love to use chp from gensets, but they are 150mtrs from hosue, thoughts on how far heat could be sent if well lagged? already have a couple of 100mm ducts laid about a metre down.

steve

[eabadger]

Hi Biff,
Thanks for reply about gensets, have tried them all, Chinese ones are not my favourite, had the Kipor ones with Yanmar engine, used loads more diesel than stated in book.
The 1Ltr per hour was with a small leak will check as Lister site says .6Ltr at full chat, fixed leak and on new can of red.
2.8kw is at 28 volts (old army battery charger set) and is proving more efficient than mains through the combi charger, or main through the fork lift charger which is a power eating nightmare, 27amps input at mains for 100a at 28v!!! talk about losses.

But back to topic would love so see actual power to ltr to electricity produced used, hence my thought of a one stop shop program and sensors.

Could have user definable fields for wood consumed in boiler, but liquids and gas’s should be auto monitored.

[Justme]

You might need two fuel flow sensors as most set ups now use a return pipe as well.

[eabadger]

another very good point, "spill" diesel will need monitoring, or go for a fuel level gauge like a car, less accurate but maybe simpler, good idea’s keep coming in, will save all the plan B’s……………F’s.

steve

[SimonHobson]

This monitor may be of interest to you.
http://www.delorie.com/electronics/powermeter/

Each of the 16 channels (I guess you don't need to actually populate all of them) uses a dedicated energy monitoring chip that calculates true power - ie it takes account of both voltage and power factor. The board as designed uses the same voltage reference, though I doubt it would take much effort to change that.
Since I assume all your supplies are commoned at some point, I would think you could use one channel for each power source or load channel.

As for heat recovery, I'd have thought a pair of lagged pipes up to the house and back would work sooner or later. With the ducts laid a metre down, you might heat the ground a bit, but sooner or later you'll reach equilibrium. I've no experience in this, but I'd guess a setup like this ought to work :
Run the engine water outlet up one pipe to the house, use a diverter valve to take it straight back again when not up to temperature. Thus to start with, the engine will be warming up the whole contents of the pipes. When things get hot enough, the diverter valve can put it through a coil in your thermal store (or whatever).
Either run with no thermostat in the engine itself, or for a safety feature, leave it in place but select the stat and diverter valve temps so that the engine stat will only divert water though an alternative heat dump if the primary loop fails to take enough heat out.