Here in the Netherlands most houses are equiped with a so called ‘Smart-meter’. This device makes it possible to register the in- and outtake of the power used. While this is mostly confinient for the powercompanies for sending you the powerbill, it can also be read with the right equipment and monitor your energy consumption for yourself.
I myself do this with a ‘Smart-meter cable’ that connects to my Raspberry Pi running Domoticz.
All you need is a ‘Smart-meter’ cable and a Pi running the latest version of Raspbian and install Domoticz. Any Pi will do for this particular use, but if you want Domoticz to do more than just registering your Power consumption a Pi 3B is adviced. The footprint of Domoticz isn’t that big, so a 8 GB SD card should be enough (I used a 16 GB card).
You can follow my guides to install Raspbian if this is your first time.
From the command prompt (or from a terminal) you give the following commands.
sudo curl -L install.domoticz.com | bash
After the installation is finished be sure to reboot your pi.
sudo reboot now
Now your Domoticz server is running on your network you can connect to it by using a webbrowser to the ip address of your Pi. If you do not know the IP address use the following command to get it.
ip addr
Your <IP address> should look something like 192.168.2.123 in my case for instance it’s 192.168.2.23
In a webbrowser type the follwing and be sure to replace my IP address with your address.
http://192.168.2.23:8080
Your browser will show the Domoticz admin page where you can add all sorts of domotica devices like Nest, Netatmo, Hue, etc. But also your smart-meter cable.
To do this go to the top right menu item named Setup and choose Hardware
Than add a new device called P1 smart meter USB and configure like it is shown in the image below.
Now go back to the Setup menu and select the Devices option.
Now look for the green dot with the white arrow in it an click on it. A pop-up will appear where you can give the device a name. Leave it default or type something you would like to name the device in Domoticz and click Add (the example is when I was adding my Rain meter from Netatmo, just so you know).
When you have added the device, Domoticz will start registering the power intake and report it back to you in various graphs. Starting with the 24 Hour graph a Weekly graph, Monthly and even a Year view. So this time next Year all graphs will be filled 😉
If you are using solar panels in combination with a smart meter Domoticz will also show how much energy you have produced in regards to your power consumption.
As a nerd these figures and graphs are not only usefull, but fun to watch if you ask me.