Dumb question:
What do you do with this information? I can see it being useful for detecting anomalies, but for every day usage... I am not going to stop using my refrigerator to save power.
What do you do with this information? I can see it being useful for detecting anomalies, but for every day usage... I am not going to stop using my refrigerator to save power.
We use it to keep an eye on how much energy we use for grow lights in the greenhouse.
As a bonus, the electricity usage of the well pump is a proxy for water level in the well.
If you have it connected to a major electricity consuming appliance, like a refrigerator, an electric dryer, or a furnace (whose fans use a ton of electricity), then in theory you can see any degradation in efficiency over time which may indicate that they need repairs. I doubt most people will do that.
For example, I'm pretty nerdy about energy use, and it took me 2 years to notice that the output of my house PV system had reduced 30% because of some trees that had grown taller.
Also, in the future, this sort of monitoring will likely be built into the appliances themselves.
There are also easier ways to achieve something like this, for example kill-a-watt meters.
analysis/optimize energy consumption, e.g.:
* we moved the freezer from the kitchen to the basement instead of buying a more energy efficient new one
* the pump in our (20yrs old) heating system constantly uses 60W -> the whole furnace is now due for replacement
* determine your electricity base load in order to make an informed decision about the capacity of a battery system that buffers energy demand during the times the PV system does not supply energy
I'd say the real value is in looking into long term patterns (no ML needed).
But there is big potential for this in industrial settings. Imagine being able to monitor machine uptime around the clock by sensing amperage usage.
Tracking cycle time by counting cyclic spikes in current and putting it on a live dashboard.
Detecting motor degradation by sensing increases in amperage required over time.
Calculating energy consumption per pound of commodity part produced.