I’ve been playing around with the Energy Management Feature of ADC
I installed 5 Aeon Labs Smart Energy Switch and 2 Aeon Labs Energy Monitors
The Energy Switches are installed on a few power hungry devices and I installed one monitor on the Electric Panel source and the other on the output of the Solar Panels.
I have a few issues with this setup and I appreciate any recommendations/assistance:
My total consumption should be the addition of both the utility and the solar panels. I don’t see anything on the interface that can aggregate the consumption of 2 meters
I can define a parent meter for the switches, but only one…the electrical company or the panels.
My understanding that solar panels are supported…but I cannot find how.
The usage graphic is not showing any bars for the monitor, it shows bars for the switches though. I can get readings when I go to Power Use Now….but still the bars are not showing after 5 hours.
I uploaded the Green Button Information also … will that confuse the system? I want to be able to compare meter with utility.
I do not believe an automatic aggregate is available for multiple meters (I will verify today) but that is no doubt a useful feature and would likely be adopted (or is already being added). Selecting a parent meter would assume the total reading for that device is included in the parent meter, so that’s not what you would want.
I see measurement readings are available so it looks like the devices are functioning fine. If I recall it does take a little time for graphs and comparisons to populate based on accrued data.
Presumably as long as you do not include the Green Data as a parent device for the Solar panels it shouldn’t be an issue.
about number 2) I still don’t see any bars…not even the hourly bars show information. The switch meters start showing information soon after they are plugged in (less than 1 hour if I recall correctly)
Looking into it a bit more and talking with ADC, it looks like readings are a bit sporadic.
Are these definitely G1 power meters? (2GIG is not fully compatible with G2)
If they are, it may also be difficulty with Zwave communication. Did you run a network rediscovery after installing? Did you learn in the devices with the panel close by?
Well…I have them inside the electric panel, I was hoping that even inside the Faraday cage that the electric panel is, some signal would be received…I guess not.
The electric panel is about 12 feet from the 2GIG controller btw.
Does it require continuous connection to graph the consumption/production?
I did learn the devices next to the 2GIG panel and they are G1
Interesting…I moved them out, they are actually next to each other now and the Solar Panel started to graph (it even showed information for the past 4 hours)…the electric utility meter is still flat…but shows spot usage.
I guess I will wait some more time.
Were you able to contact ADC about aggregating the the values of 2 meters in one parent meter?
With two whole home energy meters where the metered usage is from separate sources without a parent device, I’ve been told there is no way to automatically sum them at this time, so you would need to manually, but it is being looked at.
Ok, I’ve been buying some meters and doing more testing and I have more information on the existing problems and a new set of issues.
Existing Issue #1: Energy meters not displaying history usage.
All but one meter (Utility Meter) display history, actually the utility meter displays history but is very sporadic. They are all outside the meter cage. I bought an extra meter and replaced the utility meter and still the history is spotty.
I wonder if this is due to the fact that we have solar panels and the meter is “confused” when the flow changes direction. Another theory I have is that the CT clamps are not around the wire but around solid metal that comes after the breaker (the wire is not visible on the panel side)…could this be the reason? Ideas?
New Issues #1: Occasionally the Smart Energy Switches will report values completely outside of normal range and they distort the graphics. It happened twice and with 2 different switches. The dates are 8/05 and 8/15…I wonder how can I adjust those numbers.
#2: Some of the smart switch have phantom values in their history before the date they were connected for the first time. How do I delete those values? where do they come from?
#3: I uploaded the Green Button information and something is very wrong with the number…I think the decimal point is in the wrong place. it says that my average daily consumption is 55,000 kWh or 1.5 terawatt hour for the month of July
#4: Because I have solar panels sometimes the flow of electricity is in the opposite direction, The utility meter “Power Use Now” value does not seem to indicate the direction of flow…is it possible to change this?
#5: The Alarm.com ios app only shows 3 meters when I click legend…and only kWh no $
Of course not all of these issues would be impacted by poor signalling, but I think perhaps the existing issue and the first two new issues may be affected - and the signalling on the account has been very inconsistent recently. Do you have a Go!Bridge with your system?
Can you check to make sure your cell module antenna is fully connected to the module port, and check that the antenna itself is not touching metal or near line voltage cables if in-wall?
I am forwarding the concerns to ADC but I think the first three need to have signalling addressed first.
No, I don’t have a GoBridge…I thought about getting one, but now I am inclined to wait for the GC3.
I do notice issues with the signal occasionally, one of the problems with the antenna is that there are electric lines behind the main panel. I’ve been able to “push” the power lines to the side though. And I get the same reception with the antenna inside the wall and outside of it (about 16/31).
I have good news about my original issue #1 though…I read all the reviews in Amazon and a few of them mention problems when the Energy Monitor is on Batteries. I connected the utility one to the power and now I get consistent history measures. I don’t those devices should be used with batteries…I have about a 20% discrepancy between the solar generation reported by the solar company and the monitor and now I wonder if it may be due to using batteries.
Now I have to find a way to permanently power the meters and and not have issues with rain.
About New Issues #1 and #2 shouldn’t the check sum in the communication protocol take care of any changes in values during communication?
I see, alright, signalling has improved over the past couple weeks and looks a lot more steady than before, so I assume the power cable move occurred near the end of last month.
#1: I see the instance you are referring to on 8/15 (labeled Dining Charging?) Which device showed a spike on 8/5?
#2: How many devices have this occurring? Were they installed on the system previously? Have you deleted and re-added any of the switches?
It was a few weeks ago…end of last month seems right.
#1: It was the Espresso Machine
#2: I noticed it with it with 2 or 3 devices, I don’t remember which devices though, I need to look for them but now I realize that I have no way of telling if it was consumption or ghost value… I noticed that removing/adding deleted the values (did it with one of them). the values were small though…my first impression was that the init routine did not properly clean the memory on the device.
I am thinking it is less memory on the device and more Alarm.com memory. It would depend on how quickly the process of removing/re-adding these devices occurred and whether your panel would have assigned the same node ID to a new device as one that had been deleted.
If the device deletion was not received by ADC it may just be showing old device values. That’s speculation though.
Does the 2GIG Panel Energy menu show the same ghost info?
Alright, on #1: It looks like a bit of miscommunication is occurring in the Zwave network, and a lot of devices were installed after the last network rediscovery. Can you run a network rediscovery and see if this resolves?
#4: Your Solar Panel devices have been designated as a Generator device. Let me know if this solves the issue.
#5: Do you have the latest App version on your mobile device? ADC cannot replicate the issue of only seeing 3 meters. Can you log out and log back into the app and check? Do you have the latest iOS? And the cost figure is not currently available, will likely be added with a future update.
Seems that ADC selected the wrong utility meter (that was the one I was testing before) … I renamed that one to “SCE -unused”. The correct is now named SCE
The solar panels meter lost all the usage history (except some random values on 8/6)…now is dark, waiting for sunlight tomorrow and see if usage values are filled in.