I’ve had problems with both - what’s your experience? Should I be looking at a better brand? I’d like to include consumption in my graphs - what is the best source for that information?
If you can afford the time and money - it’s almost “out of the box” - then the emonPi from openenergymonitor.org gives you much more flexibility and a web interface.
#pgalbavy,
I have a Raspberry Pi and I am using emoncms for my axpert and am in process of adding two SunnyBoy inverters. .
Are you saying I will be able to interface that Raspberry Pi with Owls and 2x SunnyBoy inverters and combine readings to fead into PVOUTPUT?
If I can manage to do that I will really be happy
That is much like my goal also. All I want is a two lines graph telling me - How much solar is coming in vs. How much power is being used? I would like to live on solar power alone and I think that may be possible in summer but I can’t do it now unless we make significant changes (reductions) to our current energy-wasting lifestyle.
I’m still in the investigation stage (I was hoping someone here had already been down this road) but I’ll post again if I get some results.
that emonPi system looks great and I was especially impressed with the sensors for the individual; circuits - but I’d need about 20 of them to do a full job and I haven’t found any products like that yet.
The Owl is a parallel system to the emonPi - you can attach both but I am not aware of any connection / integration between them. You would put CTs on the solar and grid feeds (I suspect that your two inverters merge into a single feed to your consumer unit / fuse box?) - otherwise you need more CTs and the emonPi only has two in the base unit. You can add more with emonTX remotes.
You can put 3 CTs on an emonTX (4 really, but the 4th is a high sensitivity input) and you can feed them all into a single emonPi. 20 circuits might be messy, but it is feasible.
If any are 3 phase then you need to make changes and also, depending on your country, know where to read voltage/phase from to get the right measurements. See their forums for more!
Probably too late to be helpful but there’s now a device with more than 4 inputs is now available from the open energy monitor shop. Haven’t tried it so can’t comment on how well it works.