Effectiveness of monitoring energy consumption in domestic dwellings

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Session 10 Paper 3, University College London, 16-17 April 2015

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At the CIBSE conference in Liverpool in 2013, we presented a paper on “Monitoring of unusual and innovative building  construction”. In that paper we concluded that useful information can be gained to determine the building performance, but at a cost that puts it out of the reach of most home owners. We also forecast that this would be overcome by using low cost hardware such as the Raspberry Pi. This low cost hardware and software are now a reality and it is possible to monitor energy flows in a home at a cost of a few hundred pounds.

The system we describe is capable of sensing, transmitting and logging real power data at 10 second intervals. It is non intrusive and can be fitted by a home owner. Data can be accessed easily over the internet or intranet by browsing the web-server in the Raspberry Pi. For this project we have constructed five prototype systems for use in different dwellings. We report on preliminary results for two of these: a traditional Edwardian semi-detached four bedroom house and a 1950s semi-detached house that has been retro-fitted as an eco-home.