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Monitoring electricity consumption of a device?
Go to www.sensors.com and ask the same question.
You will almost certainly have to use a data collection system sampling at a fairly high rate. I don't believe there exists any simple meter that will integrate the usage, so you need the digital equivalent of a continuous chart that will do the integration for you. Of course, the power company's meter does that, if you want to spend the money and record the readings by hand. -- Mike Firth No more levees Bury old Orleans Raise New Orleans up if it is worth saving -- wrote in message oups.com... I'm building what I believe will be a super high efficiency electric furnace utilizing engineering technology overlooked by studio glass makers. But I need a method to prove my energy usage so I can present my findings. Besides thorough documentation of my charge and idle cycles, I need a meter that will work with a phase-angle SCR. I'm not familiar with any device that can monitor my usage through an SCR. With an inductive ammeter, one would need a constant graph since current draw flucuates wildly from moment to moment. Any usenet folks out there have any ideas? |
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So, does this overlooked technology make Ohm's law obsolete? Why can't you
calculate the energy usage? You know the resistance of the heating elements and the amount of time you need to achieve the temperature rise in the furnace and the line-in voltage. What else do you need? wrote in message oups.com... I'm building what I believe will be a super high efficiency electric furnace utilizing engineering technology overlooked by studio glass makers. But I need a method to prove my energy usage so I can present my findings. Besides thorough documentation of my charge and idle cycles, I need a meter that will work with a phase-angle SCR. I'm not familiar with any device that can monitor my usage through an SCR. With an inductive ammeter, one would need a constant graph since current draw flucuates wildly from moment to moment. Any usenet folks out there have any ideas? |
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Moonraker wrote:
So, does this overlooked technology make Ohm's law obsolete? Why can't you calculate the energy usage? You know the resistance of the heating elements and the amount of time you need to achieve the temperature rise in the furnace and the line-in voltage. What else do you need? Ohm's law works fine but he's only firing at a fraction of the time once he's up to temp. This varies by the surrounding conditions. A KWH meter will tell the real story. My kiln draws 56A when it's on full bore, but seldom is it doing that. On most controllers we can see what percentage of full power is being applied. He could see what percentage each furnace uses to maintain a given temp (2100F?) at like ambient conditions. -- Jack Plonked by Native American bobo1148atxmissiondotcom http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/xmissionbobo/ |
#6
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A couple things: My controller is always set at 100% output signal;
it's the P.A. scr that varies the output. If you put an ammeter on it, even while the furnace is at equilibrium and totally thermally stable and idleing, the current jumps all over the place, and that's normal. I do think a regular watt hour meter is what's required but like Mike Firth says I'm not sure if I can get one that will work only on the furnace circuit and also be compatible with the SCR. Yes of course the power company meters the usage, and I'm certainly not trying to cheat them. But it is noteworthy that at my other studio in Hawaii the meter always had trouble and they never really figured it out. Jack my house in Hawaii and coldwork shop is off the grid (solar and bio-diesel) but my former hotshop over there never was. Here in Oregon I have grid power. Also The technology I'm using has to do with insulation, not the energy input. The reason I need to monitor the power is that I don't believe surface area and heat loss equations are going to provide a good real world analysis. Plus, I suck at math. I have a way to vary these insulation qualities while keeping the other parameters (mostly) the same. So if I can accurately measure usage... |
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Kilowatt Hour meter, yup, believe it or not, I have one. But I don't know
if it will work for your application. I was in a building that we shared the electric bill, thought I was getting screwed over, so I put a sub meter on the pieces of equipment that was running so I could tell what was "my share". No longer need it, still have the meter, you would have to get your own hook ups for it, but I know it was pricey, we can negotiate if you need it, anyone. "nJb" wrote in message ... wrote: I'm building what I believe will be a super high efficiency electric furnace utilizing engineering technology overlooked by studio glass makers. But I need a method to prove my energy usage so I can present my findings. Besides thorough documentation of my charge and idle cycles, I need a meter that will work with a phase-angle SCR. I'm not familiar with any device that can monitor my usage through an SCR. With an inductive ammeter, one would need a constant graph since current draw flucuates wildly from moment to moment. Any usenet folks out there have any ideas? Unless I'm missing something, Kilowatt Hours over a given time will give you the bottom line. Buy a KWH meter. If you're correct, it will pay for itself. IIRC, you are off the grid? If your place was ever on the grid, "borrow" their meter for a while. -- Jack Plonked by Native American bobo1148atxmissiondotcom http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/xmissionbobo/ |
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Moonraker
Only part of each cycle is being used in a phase shift SCR controller. http://users.ticnet.com/mikefirth/control.htm#PHASE If he were using zero crossing trigger SCR or SSR, and they were fired not very often, then simply adding a small analog clock to the circuit would let your method work- the number of minutes the clock was on gives a good idea of the actual power used (% of day) [or a digital timer with electronic on-off. I have analog, I don't own a digital timer.] Jfuse If you are interested in the details, you are going to need to do data collection on a millisecond by millisecond basis, which is considered slow in the Sensors world. And you are going to want to feed it into a file so it can be loaded into Excel for averaging, totalling and graphing. However, I do not follow what you say about your controller being at 100% output. Something has to be controlling the Phase Angle SCR and that is usually called a controller. -- Mike Firth No more levees Bury old Orleans Raise New Orleans up if it is worth saving -- "Moonraker" wrote in message ... So, does this overlooked technology make Ohm's law obsolete? Why can't you calculate the energy usage? You know the resistance of the heating elements and the amount of time you need to achieve the temperature rise in the furnace and the line-in voltage. What else do you need? wrote in message oups.com... I'm building what I believe will be a super high efficiency electric furnace utilizing engineering technology overlooked by studio glass makers. But I need a method to prove my energy usage so I can present my findings. Besides thorough documentation of my charge and idle cycles, I need a meter that will work with a phase-angle SCR. I'm not familiar with any device that can monitor my usage through an SCR. With an inductive ammeter, one would need a constant graph since current draw flucuates wildly from moment to moment. Any usenet folks out there have any ideas? |
#9
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Sure, how much did it cost? I'll try and find out if it will work with
the scr, or what modifications might be needed. What can you tell me about brand, specs, etc. |
#10
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I have had it, un-hooked and on the shelf, for 15 years, looks new and
worked fine when it was attached. You have to bear with me a bit here, because a friend that is an electrical engineer hooked it up for me. I had a 440 air conditioning unit, the other tenant also had one, they were connected to the same meter, we wanted to know if the bill was being split according to use or just split 50/50. Enough of that, there were 3 coil like donuts that encircled the hot wires and produced a reading. I will attempt to get a model number and details for you, if this address is your email, I'll send a note. wrote in message oups.com... Sure, how much did it cost? I'll try and find out if it will work with the scr, or what modifications might be needed. What can you tell me about brand, specs, etc. |
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