Current Cost Support Forum

Hi, I have a couple of IAM's which are posting data to my.currentcost dashboard. They ae moved around the house so over time I get a total picture. Both are currently monitoring PC's which are turned off (though not at the wall) at night.

I'm seeing short, large spikes from both a couple of times at night, these spikes correspond with peaks in the household energy consumption, which is explainable because, for example a dishwasher or washing machine has come on. is it possible that the IAM is picking up an 'echo' of the household consumption. It does not appear to be anything related to the device it's monitoring. I'm aware that PC's if shutdown but not turned off at the wall draw a few watts, but I would not expect these to generate a couple of 800watt+ spikes during the night .

yes I have an optismart monitoring the Consumer unit, while I have an Envi. I used the old clamp around my PV cable

Thanks, I don't think the Envi supports meter readings, so I just paired once channel

Anyone any suggestions on this, it's quite annoying.

in summary my IAMs report random very large spikes. Sometimes they appear to be coincident with something in the house (but not on an IAM) consuming a lot of power, other times not. For example, I have an IAM on a computer which consumes about 120 watts, but I have a 1500 watt spike during the night. I don't believe this was inrush current.

The main problem is that because the dashboard graphs are scaled from the largest peaks, my graphs are all rather too small to analyse, as they are being artificially re-sized by these wretched random spikes.

I'm using an Envi, two newer style IAMS and a re-flashed bridge. the IAMS are on channel 1 & 3. the main display is from an optismart. Channel 2 is the old clamp which is on my PV cable. Optismart and the clamp appear to be free from these spikes, they just seem to plague the IAMs

Ive got spikes now, but so far, is only on one of the IAMs.

Automan - did you return any of yours?

CurrentCost - any verification that this is a known problem, and/or should we return suspected IAM that spike as faulty?

I think they are still looking in to the issue....

From my tests it seems the EnviR sometimes outputs incorrect data mixing meter reading data from the optismart with the watts of one of the IAM's or the OptiSmart itself.

e.g.

<msg><src>CC128-v1.29</src><dsb>00076</dsb><time>11:03:45</time><tmpr>15.2</tmpr><sensor>0</sensor><id>01653</id><type>2</type><imp>0000827767</imp><ipu>1000</ipu></msg>


<msg><src>CC128-v1.29</src><dsb>00076</dsb><time>20:04:30</time><tmpr>16.6</tmpr><sensor>0</sensor><id>01653</id><type>2</type><imp>0000831400</imp><ipu>1000</ipu></msg>

Sensor 0 data should only have Watts in it and not a meter impulse count.

I have suggested to them (if this is the problem) that perhaps the code on the bridge could filter out the corrupt data output from the EnviR display units (EnviR or OptiSmart bug?).

e.g.
On power up when it sees first sees data on a channel it uses this to decide if the channel is data or real time watts. Also perhaps if the field widths are constant perhaps this could also be used to validate the data.

Of course, I may be wrong and also the bridge hardware may not have any more room for more code or cpu task load.

Lastly,

If you are getting IAM spikes and you do not have an OptiSmart or OptiSmart's there must be another cause of the problem (unless EnviR's are also randomly mixing the sensor watts channel data up).

I found that if I did not setup the DATA channel on the OptiSmart feeding the Bridge I was getting spike free results...

Automan.

I should add that some spikes are possibly legitimate due to the IAM occasionally capturing data about inrush current. So for example when monitoring a fridge you get a saw tooth chart, but sometimes one large spike, where the sampling fell at the same point as the compressor kicking in. I can see that could be correct

However I am seeing large spike on devices I know to be not drawing any power at the time. For example, I am seeing 1 or 2 1500 watt spikes a day from my aged iMac G5, one typically while, it's sleeping and only drawing 20 watts.


I'm not entirely sure what a data channel is. My Envi only has one household (fed from optismart) plus 9 additional channels (2 IAM and one clamp). I guess the data channel enables the optismart to send a meter reading ? I don't think my envi has such ?