Homemon
Hello 38.107.179.217 38.107.179.217 from Washington District of Columbia US
Homemon is now in its sixth year, We get many requests for demonstrations of the system. Due to the security aspects we normally arrange a customer visit, or allow a
short term login to a demonstration system. We have decided to make this easier, by allowing access to a live demonstration system. This site concentrates on one of Homemon's many features,
the efficient use of electricity gas and water and a way of showing the users "carbon footprint". Existing users should continue to securely login to our homemon.net servers.
We encourage enquiries from companies or groups interested in how we deliver this technology and we are able to customise systems to groups requirements
The gathered data is encrypted between sites an is then stored in industry standard SQL databases allowing clients to customise their web front ends if they so wish
We regret we currently do not supply systems to individual home users, but you can use the site as a reference to ask your current supplier, (or if reviewing smart metering plans) why such a system is not available for you
The Homemon Homehub is now in its fourth version, the image gallery on the contacts page shows the first (Pic18) and second (Pic24 that added AES data encryption) versions of Homemon
BMSMon the industrial solution is part of the 4th generation hub and supports RS485 Modbus to integrate multiple higher end three phase metering solutions
Homemon | 9 February 2011
Bwired
In December 2010 Homemon started sending XML data to bwired.nl, Pieter Knuvers excellent Domotica site in Holland. View 37 online smart houses on bwired googlemap
Homemon | 10 February 2011
BMSmon.co.uk
bmsmon.co.uk domain has been launched. This site will devolop into the building management systems side of our commercial monitoring solution
Homemon | 19 February 2011
Background electricity
You can save yourself lots of money by reducing your background electricity usage. This is the electricity your house uses when you are not doing anything. For example things you need on like your fridge, freezer and alarm system, and other things you leave on standby and chargers left plugged in. (that you could turn off) Ideally you should reduce this as low as possible, as this value * 24 * 365 can add upto a lot!. To find your background electricity usage, take your meter reading as the last person goes to bed say 11PM, take a reading as soon as you get up i.e. 7AM divide the reading by the number of hours. Homemon does this accurately between 3 and 5 AM and it is usually about 200 watts so thats 4.8Kw a day. My price increased Npower sign online17 electricity costs 10.5 p a killowat so thats 50p a day or £184 a year Watt's yours? (pun!) See this live information on the bottom of the Smart Metering page
Homemon | 26 February 2011
Fridge
Thanks for the comments received via the contact page, I will publish them on the blog once it's enabled. The contact page won't work in IE8 unless in compatibility mode as it has problems with maintaining sessions! Chrome Firefox and Opera work ok. What's the pictue of the fridge in the image gallery on the contacts page you ask? As part of Homemon Indepenent living, it monitors if you are using the fridge, why? The first thing most people do when they get up is to open the fridge for milk or food, It's one of a few good indicatons a person living alone is up and about and ok, PIR movement, tempeatures and door contacts are some of the others.
Homemon | 27 February 2011
Switch Rate?
Owner | Filed under Homemon, Information
Lots of energy suppliers have penalties for early change, and some only give the disconts after a year. I have now had my Npower sign online 17 for a year so it's time to look arround and think of changing again. Should I Sign online 21 saving £8 or move suppliers? comparrison sites say best option is British gas Websaver 11 dualfuel saving £24
Homemon | 6 March 2011
Switch rate? update
Switch energy supplier update. Like many people I didn't realise that the last online tariff ends after a year -
I thought I would stay on it! In my case my Npower online 17 with price update, ended and "the good news is we'll
automatically change your account to our standard online tariff" Go Save "you don't need to do anything" It sounds ok and you get an extra £10 online discount. Implying you are saving more money
- but actually I would be losing £130
a masterpiece of marketing and as Arthur Daily would say "a nice little earner"
I recommend people to enter their gas and electric usage on comparison sites in Kilowatts (more accurate than £ spend)- get your last four quarterly bills and find it out.
you will see from the billing page I use 16,949Kw (*UK av. 18,000) gas and 4543Kw (*UK av. 4800) of electricity, go to Npower's site and enter these figures
SignOnline22 - Monthly DD £100 Dis. £90.51 a month £1,086.16 a year £143.89 Annual Saving
Go Fix 6 - Monthly DD £100 Dis. £94.12 a month £1,129.49 a year £100.57 Ann. Save
Go Save - Monthly DD £110 Dis. £101.61 a month £1,219.29 a year £10.76 Ann. Save
Std - No Monthly Direct Debit £100 Dis. £102.48 a month £1,229.79 a year £0.26 Ann. Save
Quarterly Variable DD £100 Dis. £307.45 a quarter £1,229.79 a year £0.26 Ann. Save
Receipt Of Bill Inc £10 Dis. £331.07 a quarter £1,324.29 a year £-94.24 Ann. LOSS
So "you don't have to do anything" should be re-worded by doing this and not moving you to your newer preferred online tariff
means we are going to get an extra £130 from you!!!
This also shows that if you are not paying by DD you need to move to an online tariff, use someone else's PC or one in a library etc. to
manage your account - get a friend to print off your bill or use the £238.13 a year £19.84 a month saving to pay for your internet
Unfortunately for quite a while sad but true customer loyalty counts for nothing, "new customers only!" the byword.
Take action, know your yearly kilowatts, make comparisons, move tariff or supplier, use online and DD, . Loyalty and inaction costs you money!!!
On 21st May 2011 I moved to Npower Sign Online 22, you can see that on the billing page
* Ref:Carbon Independant
Homemon | 21st May 2011
Summer is here?
In theory summer has arrived although it's overcast, blowing a hooley and raining!! I have a separate central heating boiler that just does the radiators. It's a few years old and has an energy wasteful pilot light. So yesterday evening I shut it down, you can see from the purple line on the graph when I did it. The pilot raises the flow temperature when the boiler is not active to @ 28 deg. My hot water is via a very efficient Vokèra AquaNova gas modulated instantaneous water heater with electronic ignition, that's the orange line
This makes my next project, a free (sensible payback period) tank of solar hot water a day, more difficult to achieve.
For a start I don't have a hot water tank!! You can see from the billing page, once the heating boiler is turned off
my monthly gas consumption for cooking and hot water is @£16. If I use the (price increase factor) figure 22 * 12 = £264.
with a sensible payback of up to 5 years, the install and 5 years maintenance and a NOT* guaranteed tank of hot water every day, would have to be less than £1320, a bit of a challenge, but at least no salesman's commission!!
these are some of the questions you have to ask yourself about Solar Power
According to the Energy SavingTrust
"Costs for a typical solar water heating system is around £4,800 (inc VAT at 5%).
Savings are moderate - a solar water heating system can reduce your water heating bill by between £50 and £85 per year.
It will also save up to 570kg of CO2 emissions."
Although grants may be available, this implies without maintenance or repairs a payback of 4800/264 more than 18 years !!
This doesn't take into account the gas price increases above 5 years. or if we will have any gas left by then! A sensible prediction is that prices won't come down!!
* on overcast days and during winter an alternative method may be needed to top up the water tank temperature.
Homemon | 22nd May 2011
Mobile site launched
Although it's only very basic, we decided to launch a mobile site to support the increasing access by mobile devices, It looks much better! Code has been added to the main page to detect and redirect mobile devices to the mobile portal. Currently meter readings , usage and key temperatures are viewable
Read more • Comments (0) | 28th May 2011
Solar Heating
For the evaluation of solar heating I have added a temperature sensor on the roof in the position where the panel could be positioned.
on Monday 27/6/2011 we had the hottest day this year
The live results can beseen on the daily water graph on the smart meter page.
Homemon | 11th June 2011
Dishwasher
The dishwasher has been changed today from cold fill to hot water fill. It's cheaper to heat water by gas so raising the fill water from cold to 45°C is more efficient and works ok. The dishwasher washes at 65°C, Cold fill uses 1.6Kw hot fill uses 1Kw saving 600 watts of electricity per wash.
Homemon | 23rd June 2011
Water meter
After a year of being on the dishwasher and washing machine, the water meter has been moved to the incoming water feed. So the water meter now reads the total house water usage.
Homemon | 10th July 2011
Heating
Well its that time of the year again. Time to turn on the Central heating.
Homemon | 20th October 2011
Feed in tarrif cut by 50%
The bulk of Solar panel systems installed after today will receive the current 43p/kWh level of feed-in tariff payments until 1 April, before switching to the lower proposed level of 21p/kWh. Community of social housing projects completed after today could see even deeper cuts to incentives under the government's proposals. Thanks a lot!. This is subject to an ongoing court case that failed on 25th January. So the Solar PV. Deadline for higher rate Feed-In Tariff is extended to 3rd March.
Homemon | 25th January 2012
Solar water heating
The solar water heating system is well on the way and should be installed in April, the current status and data is displayed on the solar story tab
Homemon | 25th January 2012
PHP53 update
Finished fixing the website after an update to php 5.3.9 last week. Had to reinstall php-rrdtool from source (as no php53-rrdtool) and php53-gd missing for captcha
Homemon | 25th January 2012