Electricity metering

alexjb1989 · Jan 22, 2015

Hi there,

Please go easy on me....

I have been tasked with Measuring energy consumption across all of the business I work for.

The business is across 5 locations and each location has many different buildings.

I can calculate how how much electricity we are using at each location due to the electricity bill we get for that particular location- however this isn't really accurate enough!

For example, say Location 1 has 5 different buildings - Would it be possible to calculate the energy usage of a particular building? I was thinking something along the lines of a point of entry meter for that building? Do these things exist? If so how much do they cost - im guessing a electrician would need to install if this was the case.

I know there are instruments that you can plug into the mains between the individual device you are trying to measure like a computer - however we would need hundreds of them, and it wouldn't help with measuring Air heaters, lighting etc.

Anyone got any ideas? I see the word sub metering floating around a lot....

Many thanks in advance! Much appreciated.

ImpededLoop · Jan 22, 2015

Hi,

Sub metering is what you'd need. Basically the same as any other electricity meter, but available to buy privately. They also come as din rail mounted units.

You also need to consider data collection - are you going to read the meters or do you want to automatically collect consumption on a half hourly basis over the internet? If so you'll need modbus or pulsed outputs on the meters to connect to data loggers.

ImpededLoop · Jan 22, 2015

There are companies that specialise in providing metering for energy management if you search on the net.

alexjb1989 · Jan 23, 2015

Thanks for the information. Very much appreciated.

We do have a electrician as part of the team - lovely guy but he's not very experienced so he wasnt confident at giving advice.

We are looking to identify what happens throughout the day, so I'm guessing we will need ones that record the data on a half hourly basis. I dont fancy standing there for 24 hours watching it!

As we have lots and lots of areas that need measuring, and we are really only trying to take a snapshot of energy consumption, they only need to be there for a week really. Is it possible/easy to move the meters around? Just to save buying many. Or is this just not really realistic- once they are there are they there to stay?!

Once again, I cant thank you enough.

Leesparkykent · Jan 23, 2015

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