Power Cost Meter for 115V?

Can anyone recommend a simple power meter for a 115V 20A outlet that not only measures amperage, but also has some ability to do power cost calculations, based on a tariff rate you enter into it?

La Crosse Technology had a device named the Cost Control that did this, but apparently they no longer make it.

Reply to
Will
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Kill-A-Watt or Seasonic PowerAngel will measure power and energy usage (PF, voltage, current, frequency, and anything else they could think of ;). The Kill-A-Watt says it'll calculate and forecast "cost". Either will do any measurements you need. You can get the cost from there with a little arithmetic.

I paid $30 for the PowerAngel at NewEgg but I see Kill-A-Watts for less than $25 on Amazon.

Reply to
krw

Don't those devices make spot measurements? The nice thing about the La Crosse was that it not only calculated the spot cost of energy, but accumulated data over time and took average readings. So you could set it to the cost per month, and periodically walk by and see the cost was $23 / month, for example.

I need to install about 20 of these, and I wouldn't really look forward to walking around and doing lots of spot measurements and then making my own calculations. If you have multiple computers attached to one monitor, and each of those has idle and loaded energy utilizations, it becomes nearly impossible to correctly calculate the cost of energy consumption as more than a possible range, since you don't know what percentage of time the computer is in idle versus loaded states.

Reply to
Will

The PowerAngel measures kWh and Hours and I think the Kill-A-Watt is the same (never used one). You'd have to divide to get the average load.

Since they do measure kWh (and h), it doesn't sound too hard to figure out the real power usage. Peaks would be pretty simple to measure also, to get a maximum (all computers going full tilt). Keepitn track of twenty devices sounds like a lot of work anyway. A spread sheet would make quick work of any calculations you need.

Reply to
krw

The Kill A Watt collects and accumulates data as well as tracks time for as long as the unit is plugged in. Just make sure you get the KW used and the elapsed time before unplugging it, there is no memory retention. Works very well for something that only costs $25.00.

Reply to
Eric9822

I would be willing to spend up to $100 per meter if there are any options.

Reply to
Will

A quick web search turns up all sorts of power meters. Here is one that records and has a USB interface (sounds like you could use it) for $150:

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Reply to
krw

I had inquired about something like this a while back.. I have sub-let some rooms and would like to know the actual power usage of each unit to charge accordingly. It was suggested that I buy some second-hand refurbished meters but I thought they were a bit too bulky. Would the total home energy monitor kit do this effectively? tia req

Reply to
reqluq

The refurbished meters are going to be reliable and reasonably accurate. Plus they don't lose their readings during power fails..

Reply to
Palindrome

Yes but I was hoping with all the advances in tech. that there would be a better solution. It should not take more than a small onboard batt to keep figures in memory if power goes. req

Reply to
reqluq

The problem with the power meter market is that it is really focused on commercial multi-tenant billing solutions, and the meters are just expensive, typically $400 to $900 each if you want something that you can link to a computer by RS-485 or ethernet. Typically such installations are done one meter per circuit, so if your tenants are each on different circuits, now you are looking at multiple meters. It's hard to get a payback on the investment.

The best commercial solution I found was from Satec, and they have an ingenious product lets you put multiple current readers around specific circuits, and feed the measurements all to a single device that reads up to about nine circuits. This collector is then uplinked by RS-485 to ethernet, and to software on your PC. It's under $1K, and at least it's flexible to reorganize the groups of circuits you bill for, and consolidates data collection to one place. The software doesn't look beautiful to be sure, but I don't find many competitors either.

The open part of the market is the consumer who wants to measure and manage energy utilization on 10 circuits in order to cut a $500 monthly bill to $400. It's hard to justify spending $400 * 10 in dedicated monitors on your fuse panel. It's barely acceptable to spend $1K for the Satec solution. What would make a lot more sense to me would be some kind of meter like the Kill-a-watt that has a wireless uplink to a central computer. But price point for that thing would need to be around $100 / meter, otherwise you don't pay back the investment fast enough to make it worth doing out of pocket. I wasn't able to find this product. Everything I could find was $400+ per meter.

Reply to
Will

Thank you very much, you have been clear and concise. req

Reply to
reqluq

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