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So here is My DIY "Kill-A-Watt" meter

SCClockDr

SCClockDr

Solar Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 1, 2019
Messages
627
Location
Union, SC, USA
I was not keen on the reviews for the P3 "Kill-A-Watt" meter based on the Amazon reviews. So I bought these:
  1. AC Digital Meter, DROK Current Voltage Amperage Power Energy Frequency Factor Multimeter
  2. Leviton 5361-I 20 Amp, 125 Volt, Industrial Heavy Duty Grade, Single Receptacle
  3. Ogrmar Plastic Dustproof IP65 Junction Box DIY Case Enclosure (6.9"x 4.9"x 3")
  4. [3PACK] 90 Degree USA Canada Male Plug Nema 5-15P 3 Pole Angle DIY Plug
  5. 4' of 12AWG industrial extension cord from the local Ace store.
  6. Bits & pieces from my ready spares/consumables supply.
Put my Sherline milling machine & drill press to work & fabricated my version of the "Kill-A-Watt" meter.

KAW01-a.jpg
KAW02-a.jpg
KAW03-a.jpg
 
Rider said:
Excellent! I assume it's ability to capture microsecond peak amps is better than the killowatt?
Click to expand...
Nah, it just is way less likely to melt.
I built it to do some load measuring in my quest to outfit our 5th wheel. I'm not dealing with much in the way of inrush current ATM.
 
?looks good! I know the kilowatt meters are only good for 15amps or less I’ve distorted a couple of those trying them on a big shop swamp cooler with a 1/2 horse motor.
 
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SCClockDr said:
I was not keen on the reviews for the P3 "Kill-A-Watt" meter based on the Amazon reviews. So I bought these:
  1. AC Digital Meter, DROK Current Voltage Amperage Power Energy Frequency Factor Multimeter
  2. Leviton 5361-I 20 Amp, 125 Volt, Industrial Heavy Duty Grade, Single Receptacle
  3. Ogrmar Plastic Dustproof IP65 Junction Box DIY Case Enclosure (6.9"x 4.9"x 3")
  4. [3PACK] 90 Degree USA Canada Male Plug Nema 5-15P 3 Pole Angle DIY Plug
  5. 4' of 12AWG industrial extension cord from the local Ace store.
  6. Bits & pieces from my ready spares/consumables supply.
Put my Sherline milling machine & drill press to work & fabricated my version of the "Kill-A-Watt" meter.

View attachment 2398
View attachment 2399
View attachment 2400
Click to expand...

I got one of the cheaper ones and it has worked great. I love it. Been measuring my loads. In fact, this was my first concrete action in my solar plan... to measure the loads of critical circuits, and break down by breaker. Each breaker will have its own transfer switch. And now, cuz of my watt meter, I'll know ahead of time what kind of load I'll be transferring.

I had some videos where I used it, but just took down due to privacy issues (which Google's PM acknowledges, but no pledge to fix.)

I haven't put mine in a nice box, yet. But was thinking of using a camping soap box lol.
 
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Storm said:
Brilliant, you should post a wiring diagram.
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Drok puts it on the back of the unit:

1574517701790.png

I created this page for the one I got, which includes this picture that I found to be more clear:

1574517782806.png

There are two ways to wire it. Note in this picture there are TWO power sources, one for the load and one for the unit. This is the right way. If you do it this way, you can plug one power source into the other to see the effect of the WRONG way. It still basically works. But the Power Factor (PF) will be incorrect as you'll be combining the power you are giving the unit with the power of your load in addition to adding about 0.05 amps.

You really want to separate these powers. And, in the event you only have one primary outlet to plug it all into, and are willing to live with the incorrect PF reading for a particular situation, you can always plug the unit into a load receptacle if you have multiple receptacles. But, you do not want to wire it in a way that prevents you from getting a correct PF reading going forward.

I learned this by watching a guy on youtube do what the OP did, putting it into a metal junction box, only to discover his PF reading was wrong, and have to take it apart and rewire it. So, I made sure I got that right, but was able to test it by plugging the unit plug into one of the load outlets. I used an extension cord with 3 receptacles for the load.

In a single receptacle junction box, I believe you just have to make sure that load for the unit is not pulling from the load of the receptacle in the same circuit running through the current transformer (the donut). The guy on youtube did get his single receptacle junction box working correctly once he rewired it.
 
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If you are looking for more of an energy monitoring system, check out Open Energy Monitor.

Home | OpenEnergyMonitor

openenergymonitor.org openenergymonitor.org

I built something like this a few years ago for my well control system. My system used some of the basics from the OEMon project but it does a lot more than just energy monitoring. It provides overload and underload (dry well) protection for the pump and manages the pumping cycles to avoid excessive draw down.

Mars
 
I was just looking for Arduino-based Kill-A-Watt clones, assuming I'd need something like that to do better logging, but then I remembered this thread. @SCClockDr : It looks like that DROK will store values even when powered off? If so, I'm just going to build one of these like you spec'd!
 
erik.calco said:
Can you pull it with Arduino or PI? Is there any way to interface DROK with those?

I'm also looking into PLC now thanks to this great thread:

https://diysolarforum.com/threads/why-a-shed-shipping-container-my-off-grid-adventure-migrated.211/

And I'll be looking into connecting Android to PLC. I like Android for UI. Can even host a web server on one for remote.
Click to expand...
I'm afraid it is not Arduino friendly. There may be a version in my future that is though.
I'll be starting a project next year to monitor PV performance with Arduino.
 
SCClockDr said:
I was not keen on the reviews for the P3 "Kill-A-Watt" meter based on the Amazon reviews. So I bought these:
  1. AC Digital Meter, DROK Current Voltage Amperage Power Energy Frequency Factor Multimeter
  2. Leviton 5361-I 20 Amp, 125 Volt, Industrial Heavy Duty Grade, Single Receptacle
  3. Ogrmar Plastic Dustproof IP65 Junction Box DIY Case Enclosure (6.9"x 4.9"x 3")
  4. [3PACK] 90 Degree USA Canada Male Plug Nema 5-15P 3 Pole Angle DIY Plug
  5. 4' of 12AWG industrial extension cord from the local Ace store.
  6. Bits & pieces from my ready spares/consumables supply.
Put my Sherline milling machine & drill press to work & fabricated my version of the "Kill-A-Watt" meter.
Click to expand...

I have two of those with the split induction coils. I put them side by side for a week on my 250 foot AC run out to my grid-tied array to make sure they reported about the same KwHrs. Then I moved one of them out to my array and reset both. After a few days I could see what my losses where for my AC run. Pretty handy.
 
Mars said:
If you are looking for more of an energy monitoring system, check out Open Energy Monitor.

Home | OpenEnergyMonitor

openenergymonitor.org openenergymonitor.org

I built something like this a few years ago for my well control system. My system used some of the basics from the OEMon project but it does a lot more than just energy monitoring. It provides overload and underload (dry well) protection for the pump and manages the pumping cycles to avoid excessive draw down.

Mars
Click to expand...
Mine was lightening struck :(
 
Nice! Here's my DIY kill-a-watt measuring 0.9 amps to my desktop: (The short yellow extension cord with "breakout" hot wire, ignore the rest of the mess)

Breakout Cable.jpg
 
SolarRat said:
Nice! Here's my DIY kill-a-watt measuring 0.9 amps to my desktop: (The short yellow extension cord with "breakout" hot wire, ignore the rest of the mess)

View attachment 3807
Click to expand...

I’ve got that same clamp meter. Good stuff. For measuring my AC lines I bought an AC line splitter. Make things so easy. ?
BBF4F2AC-5E5F-40CA-8F51-BBE14D1C5D0C.png
 
I bought a DIN mount watt meter off ebay to monitor mains AC appliance power use and sensed the S0 output with... what it ever happens to be. I had a RPi logging the time of each impulse at one stage. The resolution was 0.5 watt hours. I wrote a simple web page to divvy the raw data into X minute interval buckets to produce graphs etc.
 
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