Main Content

I was walking through the hardware store the other day and I walked past an energy meter which clips onto your home’s electricity mains and then provides you with information on your power consumption and cost estimates for the month. I thought it looked really cool until I saw the price, it was almost five times what I thought it would be! So I decided to try and build my own and Arduino was the perfect platform for it. I had a look around online at what others had done but they all seemed to be a bit over complicated for a simple home application. Sure, for perfectly accurate measurements you need to monitor both the supply voltage and current but for simple household monitoring which gives estimates cost to the closest few cents, why not keep things simple. So this meter measures the supply current to your home through a CT (current transformer) and then does a couple of calculations to give you your current, power, maximum power and kilowatt hours consumed. Its also really easy to add your local tariff and display the cost of electricity used to date. This project assumes you know the basics of Arduino programming, otherwise read our article on getting started with Arduino, and that you know how to connect an LCD screen to an Arduino.”

Link to article