I’m looking for an energy monitoring system to do a load study on my 100A residential panel in the US. I was sent here from r/evcharging
Before purchasing, I’d like to confirm that the iotawatt system is still compatible with gathering the data for a Connected Load Study. Where can I read up on the workflow for extracting and transforming the data from IotaWatt for this purpose? Is the data calculated and saved in the appropriate format? [I believe I need ampacity data in 15 min buckets]
What is the recommended configuration? Should I just get 2x 200A CTs for the main service entry (I may upgrade to 125A-200A in the future). Are there situation where it is helpful to monitor individual circuits when applying for permit applications (EG, maybe I should do that so I can subtract loads sitting behind a load management box)?
You can read the IoTaWatt Online Documentation.
You can extract data using the query API or interactively using Graph+ for visual data and/or CSV files.
It’s up to you. 200A will work fine but cost more than 100A.
Have no idea what data is required for local permits. IoTaWatt can measure individual loads should that be useful.
Appreciate the quick response.
I took a look at the documentation, and it looks like there’s up to 10 year retention of 1 min granularity data, including amps, so that should satisfy the 15min for 30 days requirement.
Is that peak current consumption over every 15min period or 15min average that you need. I am guessing that it is the latter. They are probably concerned about heating in the wires. For that, the average is what matters most.
IotaWatt can gather the data, but you will probably need to post process it to get it into the format you need. There are many different ways to do this.
I have data going to Influx DB and then use Grafana to visualize it. It is quite powerful and can provide great insights. I used it to see just how oversized my standby generator is. (My house only came close to needing 80% of the power available once or twice for no more than a min twice in the last year. Most of the time, it is loafing at 10% or so.)
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Iotawatt is really the wrong tool for this, having done this myself many times, unless you want permanent monitoring. You would be better off renting a power meter that does it.
Iotawatt is great for energy audits where you want to track multiple loads at once for process improvements. For that, I would mount it inside a Pelican box with a self-sealing grommet pass-through.