OpenEnergyMonitor

Open-source tools to help us live within ecological limits

Trystan Lea – Nov 15

emonTx- 4x AC circuits- AC Voltage (real power)- DS18B20 temperature- Pulse counting- ATMega328 - RFM12/69 433Mhz transceiver

emonTHTemperature & humidity node- DS18B20, DHT22- ATMega328 - RFM12/69 433Mhz transceiver

emonGLCDWireless living room display- ST7565 LCD + backlight- Red/green ambient LED's- DS18B20 temperature + LDR- ATMega328 - RFM12/69 433Mhz transceiver

OpenEnergyMonitor Open Hardware

emonTx Shield- 4x AC circuits- AC Voltage (real power)- DS18B20 temperature- Pulse counting- RFM12/69 433Mhz transceiver- Arduino shield footprint

emonBaseRaspberryPI based basestationWith ATMega328 (Arduino) + RFM12/69 433Mhz transcieverRFM12/69Pi adapter board

emonPiCombines the emonTx with the emonBase into one self contained unit.

Is my electricity coming from renewable energy now?

When is a good time to charge my car today or do my washing?

How much energy do I use? Can I reduce my energy use?

How does my energy use compare to other people?

How much solar, wind turbines do I need to supply my demand? Do I invest more in solar and wind turbines or use less energy?

How much energy storage do I need? If I optimise by use to the variable supply or not?

I read about zero carbon energy system scenarios, but what does that mean for me in my life, with the way I use energy?

Open source energy monitoring and associated energy planning tools are tools to help us understand, plan, test and manage our new zero carbon energy system in an open way that empowers people to get involved with where their energy comes from and how it is used.

OpenEnergyMonitor is a project to develop open-source energy monitoring tools to help us relate to our use of energy, our energy systems and the challenge of sustainable energy.

- Started in early 2009, initial concept based onAn adaptation of CliffJao and Xi Guo's PowerBox. Started the website and blogged about hardware and software development sharing all hardware design and code.

- 2010 to 2011 we ran a community energy monitoring project, 20 households in North Wales. 3 new open hardware units: emonTx, emonTH, nanodeRF. First version of emoncms.

- 2012 Opened the OpenEnergyMonitor open hardware shop and our open hardware business Megni.

- 2013 saw the start of our collaboration with Carbon Coop in Manchester with another community energy monitoring project and the development of an open source building energy modelling software tool. First versions of SMT hardware.

-2014 again more open hardware revisions. Development of custom high performance timeseries data engines. A SD card optimised version of emoncms for long life.

- 2015 emonPi Kickstarter launch success, new RF module. Open-source zero carbon energy system model with CAT. Community smart grid project with Carbon Coop.

All through this time the community around OpenEnergyMonitor has been growing: the forums are very active and we have shipped over 10,000 orders worldwide

OpenEnergyMonitor

The enabling Open-source Hardware and Software infrastructure

OpenEnergyMonitor project

OpenEnergyMonitor is an open source software and hardware project.

We are an active online community, built up slowly over 6 years interested in open source energy monitoring.

A lot of people with considerable expertise in electronic engineering, software design and energy.

We share all of our software and hardware designs under open source licence on github

https://github.com/openenergymonitor/https://github.com/emoncms

As well as providing documentation on how the system works, from circuit design to the physics of AC power measurement.

Open Hardware Business (Megni)

The open source project OpenEnergyMonitor is supported by the open hardware business selling open hardware products.

3 full time employees, 2 part time employees

Over 10,000 orders to over 70 different countries . (70% of sales outside of the UK)

PCB's manufacture in UK and SMT assembly in North Wales.

Open hardware business is an effective modelfor making and distributing technology and providing employment while supporting open source development.

Blurs the traditional lines between “business”, academic research, education.

Manufacturing

40 kWh is around 4 days of a typical households electricity use.

Energy payback around 8x every year. 80x over 10 years. If 10% savings are made.

How to:

1) create list of components

2) measure component weights and area's

3) multiply by embodied energy factors (free EU database)

4) calculate totals

Shipping

Boat: 0.05 kWh/t-kmRail: 0.06 kWh/t-kmRoad: 0.7-1.0 kWh/t-kmAir: 1.6-1.9 kWh/t-km

Shipping 5% of the orders (Australia) uses as much energy as 75% of the orders (EU).

Sending goods by air uses 19x the energy use to ship by boat. Looking at all the journeys, sparks questions around shipping methods and distribution models, and more so if end of life circular recycling is considered

Energy summary (emonPi)

Manufacturing: 40 kWhUse phase: 26 kWh/year

Shipping EU: 2 kWhShipping USA: 10 kWhShipping Australia: 32 kWh

OpenEnergyMonitor is a project to develop open-source energy monitoring tools to help us relate to our use of energy, our energy systems and the challenge of sustainable energy.

We are in the middle of this large energy transition. In the last 6 years global wind power increased 2.5x 121GW to 318GW, global solar capacity increased from 16GW to 185GW.

More and more people now have an element of renewable energy generation as part of their lives whether its household solar or a community wind turbine, electric transport and supporting technologies such as more efficient housing and heating systems are all becoming more common place.

Energy Monitoring can help tell the story of this new zero carbon energy system with real-time information on renewable supply and energy demand.