Midgo

Very happy with them in terms of performance and comfort
But 5 years ago (?) when we put them in the pellets were around 3.50 a bag, now they are 11.

But the costs of changing the whole system now are prohibitive and its probably jumping out of the pan into the fire, if not now then you cant be sure of in the future

macliam

I guessed this would happen when everyone was pushing pellet heaters. Like anything else, it's cheap when waste wood is being used.... but now they are cutting down trees to make pellets. Not exactly green and not exactly cheap either.

The same will happen in the UK with woodburners...... 150% increase in sales in the last few months, but where do they find properly conditioned firewood? Just watch the prices rise and rise.....

coleio

You can get a clamp on meter with USB interface, doesn't touch any wires so no safety implications, which will give you instant power usage reading and readings over time. This type of thing compoany is nothing to do with me and probably don't ship to PT but you get the idea.

https://www.tester.co.uk/electrical-...c-clamp-meters

Midgo

Thanks!

I have used Farnell for work and they have them


https://pt.farnell.com/w/c/test-meas...e&sort=P_PRICE

Just need one to integrate amps over time to give the Ah and hence kWh (I wonder what the voltage in to the leccy meter from the road cables is?

EDIT:
This looks good
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aideepen-80...0&sr=8-22&th=1

liveaboard

The link goes to test type clamp meters (I have one); but for the subject under discussion what you want is a device that will record the reading over a long time in a format that allows you to analyze the data.
I'm sure such a device exists, but a quick search I made didn't find one.

What we want to know is; how many kwh were used during daylight, and how many at night. Ideally, we'd like to know how many were used during hours of direct sunlight below a certain threshold (for instance, if you use a large current for a few minutes that would overwhelm your PV capacity and the excess would be drawn from the grid even in full sun).

In reality, it's a lot easier to just ask people with similar usage how it's gong for them. Which is what this thread is about, right?

As I have separate night rate, I already have a reasonable basis for my calculations from my EDP bills over the year. So I've been showing the numbers to installation people who shake their head, because even though we use quite a bit of electricity it's not very exciting for them.

So; even though I abhor the self-serving deal offered by EDP, it's probably a good choice for most people. They do the calculations, set the price, lower your bill, share the profit, and even though you have to pay money it won't cost you much of your time (and you will get the money back too).

If you have, or intend to have, large users like heating systems, it's worth taking a bit more time to figure out if a custom solution is better for you.

And even though there are great batteries that will power your whole house, they're still way too expensive, especially if you don't disconnect from the grid completely to save the standing charge.
More on that subject if anyone cares.

Midgo

Yup, thats what I meant by this:

Trouble is, everyone's houses are different.
I mainly would like to know roughly what usage I have, during morning and night
I just had a brainwave LOL
read the meter at a given time every evening and morning over a week or so and make a spreadsheet
Or, perhaps, at wakeup time and sunset would be more apt.
I love spreadsheets LOL

Actaully, although I have a simple tarif (same all day), do the readings from the meter already have day and night values?
Vazio, ponta and cheias - what do they refer to?

Aha!
https://lojaluz.com/faq/tarifas/cicl...os/horas-vazio

Midgo

And so, presumably since we were already in this house when they put the new (smart) meter in, the three cheias, vazio and ponta readings as of now are the kWh used in total in each of those 3 'periods' since we had the meter put in?

If so we have:
Vazio = 32%
Non-Vazio = 68%
Ponta = 22 %
Cheias = 46%

So, I guess that the simple rate is best since we dont use a lot at night?

And, although there are lots of other, perhaps more important factors, we use most during day which favours Solar PV (but doesnt mean its worthwhile)?

coleio

There's bluetooth enabled clamp on meters with and free app for smartphone which allows the data to be recorded and shared ie can be up loaded onto some laptop. Probably available on inter-web auction sites. You'll find the grid supply mains voltage does vary but not enough to bugger up your consumption analysis. Good idea to log your consumption over time, if a large portion of your electricity use is hot water then there's also stuff like "thermal store" not using a water tank which can store energy from solar PV then supply heat for hot water or radiators.
https://sunamp.com/en-gb/wp-content/...glish-V2.3.pdf
There's also a move to using panels with micro inverters which can then be added or removed to a system simply and allow configuration changes like have some panels facing in a different direction which would otherwise compromise the power being produced.

1Steve

I have an online account with E-Redes and I have access to lots of data including power injected and consumed every 15 minutes. I can download this to an excel file if I wish. I am pretty sure everybody will have an account available so you just need to register. I am not sure what level of data is available if you do not have solar but check it out.
https://balcaodigital.e-redes.pt/home

Also along with the solar storage heaters I purchased the control system which measures instantaneous consumption and production and stores this data along with lots of other useful data in the companies cloud. They are clamp on meters and communicate via wifi to all the heaters and I have all kinds of data to drool over as I am a bit of a nerd. They are highly accurate wrt the consumption and production levels as they tie in perfectly with the data I downloaded from E-Redes. The control system wasn't cheap, 220 euros, but it is an excellent system and would give it 9 out of 10. I did not give it a 10 because they need to improve their user documentation. I do not even connect the Inverter to the internet because I have all the info I would ever want from the control system.

You can also make you own system pretty cheaply if you know a little about Android. The clamp on meters only cost about 8 euros but you will need to build a circuit to interface between the android controller and the clamp. I built my own system, approx 30 euros, to control my under the sink water heater using an ESP8266 and a Sonoff wifi switch and it works perfectly.

liveaboard

It's complicated to figure out, but now you do have all the numbers you need to do it. Figure out how much you could save if 60% of your day use was self generated.
I bet it is worthwhile, if you can get it installed for a reasonable price.

When you do go shopping, it's great to have your numbers ready. Cuts the BS from even starting.

And of course let's not forget all the great "Green cred" you generate along with the electricity.
The impact of future energy price hikes is softened a lot too.

The only worry is that fusion power (or similar) could be invented suddenly, and electricity prices would fall.
Not too much chance of that, is there?