Linking TED-5000 to plotwatt.com

Since the demise of Google PowerMeter on September 16, 2011 I haven't done much with the data from my TED 5000 power meter .

I recently upgraded the TED firmware, and see there is support for several other 3rd party utilities, so I've started pushing data to plotwatt.   They offer commercial services, as well as free analysis for residential users.   Their secret sauce is "advanced machine learning algorithms" to figure out what appliances are drawing power, similar to the Load Profile feature in the TED-5000.  So far, mine is still learning, they warn you that it can take as much as 30 days to learn.

The plotwatt service supports not just The Energy Detective (TED-5000), but also supports WattVision, Blue Line Innovations PowerCost Monitor (with WiFi bridge), Current Cost,and eGauge. as well as an API for rolling your own data source.

I've tried activating and deactivating the 3rd party posting in TED, but it always seems to want to send just one sample every 5 minutes, which is well outside the maximum interval of 100 seconds recommended by plotwatt to get the benefits of their advanced machine learning algorithms...

Pushing TED 5000 data as snapshot graphs with Chart::Clicker

I wanted to make my TED 5000-C power monitoring accessible both for internal clients that didn't have the horsepower to run Footprints, and also publish the data externally for remote clients.

 I put together a simple Perl script which uses the 1-minute-resolution historical data from the TED-5000 to build a simple graph using Chart::Clicker, like this:

TED-5000 by The Energy Detective

Installed my TED-5000 from The Energy Detective.


The little handheld wireless display is sort of flimsy, but is handy to figure out the load from a light or other appliance -- flip the switch, wait a few seconds, compare the reported KW/h consumption. TED was the first consumer-installable measurement tool that integrates with Google powermeter, a driving reason behind choosing it over the competitors.

The only real problem I have with the system is that it is incompatible with old-style X10 signals;  when you connect TED, it causes some X10 devices to go crazy, specifically, they turn on by themselves.   Pretty bad problem for something that is supposed to help *reduce* how much power you use.