Hi all,
Apologies in advance if this is a simple question ad has been covered before (I’m quite green when it comes to this stuff).
I want to monitor the lighting, oven and air conditioner (3 phase) circuits in my house. I don’t really need to monitor power as most power points are covered by tapo devices which feed into a dashboard in HA. My house consumption is also covered as I recently had a SolarEdge modbus meter installed. My HA interface calculates things that aren’t monitored as “Other” which I want to reduce to almost zero (by monitoring the circuits using IoTaWatt).
My question is, would i only need 6 CT’s for this - three for the air conditioner and the remainder for the 2 x lighting circuits and oven circuit?
I have 3 phase air conditoner, 2 x power, 1 x lights, cooktop, oven and off peak HWS (9 in all). I monitor each one plus each of the 3 phases coming into the meter box. That way I can do an energy balance (but it’s been a long time since I actually looked at that).
Is it all needed? No. Most of it is just for passing interest to me, but I like to know the whole system should be in balance. If all you want to monitor is the AC, lights and oven, then that is all you need.
Thanks @dabbler68 for your reply, I’ve become slightly obsessed with monitoring - more a hobby for me now and want to monitor things i cannot monitor using alternative methods (Tapo devices or the Energy Monitor in some of the Deta Grid Connect power points).
IoTaWatt is definitely the way to go then, I assume the clamps would just go on the Active and for the Aircon on each phase?
Correct. One CT per positive. You could use the negative instead for any individual one if that is more convenient physically. The IoTaWatt allows multiple inputs to be added (e.g. the 3 air cond phases) and reported as one value (still need 1 CT per phase).
But that combined value will not be imported into HA unless you use a custom integration.But you can do it all in HA anyway.
Thanks @dabbler68, your reply is much appreciated.
