Hi everyone,
I would like to use arduino to measure the electrical power that comes inside my house from my energy supplier. Like volts, amps and Hz and register them all in real time throught wifi and SQL web platform.
Can I use it to measure single phase and three phase power? Is it possible?
Which equipment would you recommend me to use?
Can anyone help me with information (hardware, software, coding), please? I am newbie.
Thank you all.
Daniel
Wow, you don't ask for much do ya? Have you tried Google yet?
Check out open energy monitor? There are probably a lot of people who've done this with an Arduino -
you need current transformers (and voltage transformer or zero-crossing detector (opto-coupler))
The analog pins have enough bandwidth to sample at upto 10kSPS rate, which is enough to sample
the whole mains waveform reasonably well and compute rms current, voltage and true power, power factor.
For three-phase you might want to set the ADC clock faster, to take more readings, this sacrifices a
small amount of accuracy though, but the sensors are probably the limiting factor anyway.
I am newbie.
In that case, you'll want to keep it simple. If you live in a modern country, you can usually assume that frequency and voltage are constant and "correct". That means you only need to measure current. In fact, the frequency is likely more accurate than the Arduino's clock, so you're likely to get more error if you measure frequency than if you simply assume it's 50 or 60 Hz.
3-phase power is rare in homes (it's usually 2-phase) and you can generally assume an overall power-factor of 1.0. (If you are measuring the power consumed by a motor rather than whole-house power, you'll need to measure phase and calculate the power factor.)
In the US 2-phase is common, in the UK (and I think the majority of territories) you get 1 phase, and
3-phase for industrial.
DVDdoug:
If you live in a modern country, you can usually assume that frequency and voltage are constant and "correct".
Wouldn't bet on that by any means. Frequency is compensated in order to run clocks, but may vary a little.
Voltage can easily vary over a ten percent range. And over a resistive load such as a heater, that means 20% variation in power.
Hi everyone.
First of all I would like to thank you all very much for the quick reply and help.
I thought this would be an easy project to start with but I might be wrong.
I have made some research through google but find it quite hard... most of it its releated to power consumption meter.
I am only looking to be able to know how stable its my power current at home and work.
I found this link about current transformer quite interesting. Would you recommend using any of those products? Would it work?
At home I use 1 phase at work 3 phase and I live in Portugal.
I also find this link quite interesting: Yun based Electricity Monitor with Cloud Support / Temboo and Google Drive
link: http://www.instructables.com/id/Yun-based-Electricity-Monitor-with-Cloud-Support-T/
Once again... thank you all very much! I am trully sorry if I am disturbing any of you. I am looking for guidance and knowledge.