Bwired Energy Usage and Home Automation
Bwired Energy Usage And Home Automation
Find out more about tracking energy usage and home automation
websites | general | education | energy efficiencyOne of the best ways to start reducing your
energy usage is to
track exactly how much electricity you use using a plug-in
power meter or wireless
energy monitor. When you can see exactly where electricity is being used, it is much easier to understand how you can reduce your consumption.
Unfortunately
domestic energy monitors which can be connected to a computer (and the internet) so that data collected can be plotted on graphs, processed, and analysed are few and far between - the
Wattson Energy Meter being a notable (but expensive) exception. Therefore, if you would like to track in great detail your
energy consumption you will need to use your ingenuity and DIY skills!
Bwired Home Automation Showcase
There is no better
resource on the internet for anyone interested in advanced
home energy tracking than
Bwired - a
home automation showcase. On this
inspirational website vast amounts of information is provided on monitoring, analysing, and presenting
electricity,
gas, and
water usage data.
In this
automated home located in The Netherlands, the electricity meter, gas meter, and water meter are all monitored using small
sensors connected to an
RFXMeter - a device which counts and stores incoming pulses from the sensors. It then transmits the collected data at frequent intervals to an
RFX receiver (wirelessly). This receiver is connected to a computer where the data is added to a
database for analysis and presentation.
Individual electrical
appliances such as the fridge, dishwasher, television etc are all plugged into
Plugwise system sockets. These sockets
track energy consumption much like a standard plug-in energy monitor, but they can also be controlled remotely (and automatically) and transmit electricity consumption readings in
real time. This enables
phantom loads (devices left on
standby etc) to be identified quickly and turned off, and usage patterns to be analysed.
Click here to visit the Plugwise website.
For those interested in
reducing the amount of water used when they
flush their
toilets, wireless sensors have even been fitted to the
dual flush toilet so that its usage can be tracked. The collected data is shown graphed above.
See our articles
Save Water When Flushing Toilet and
Flush Toilet with Rainwater for more information.
Visit the Bwired Website
The
Bwired website is found here, and the
Bwired Forum is here. Both come highly recommended.
Article Last Modified: 09:35, 2nd Sep 2008Comment on this Article
If you have any comments on this article, please email them to
neil@reuk.co.uk.
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