The new 2-wire Energy Display provides live insight into your energy consumption.
The display communicates wirelessly over the Internet (MQTT license required) with the LoWi3 web server, reading real-time data from the P1 port of your digital meter. The display shows instant and clear readings such as peak power, electricity import and export, and gas and water consumption.
This“energy assistant” is always active and can serve as a tabletop device or be mounted on the wall. You have a constant view of your current consumption, dynamic tariff, weather information and time, and that both at home and on the move, and even mobile with power from a USB power pack
Users can set their own limits for peak power, daily consumption and yield. If (peak) consumption is exceeded, a warning automatically appears on the screen.
Through monthly graphs you can access the historical consumption and yield of electricity, gas and water, both from the current and previous year. This data is read directly from the linked web server.
On the settings page you can easily configure your preferences, such as wifi data, channels, limits, graph scale, dark or light layout, location for weather forecasts, firmware update,… Linking with the other 2-WIRE web servers ELAN and ReMI is possible, and in this case, yields from multiple solar panels and home batteries can also be displayed live.
fig. This 7inch desktop display shows not only total consumption from the P1 port, but also dynamic energy prices, the weather forecast, and notifies if you exceed set limits.
Viewing on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/qvKdpv72FzI
Experiment: Rotating Solar Panels
The sun not only moves from east to west, but also changes in elevation during the day and throughout the seasons. By constantly orienting solar panels perpendicular to the sun’s rays, the amount of incident sunlight can be significantly increased. Especially in the morning, late afternoon and during the winter months, the difference with fixed panels is the greatest. This prompted us to set up an experiment: can we position solar panels in such a way that they optimally follow the sun and thus maximize efficiency?
Based on an in-house 3D design, we installed six solar panels with a three-phase micro-inverter on a rotating frame. This construction allows the panels to rotate fully with the sun – both horizontally (360°) and vertically (up to 90° tilt).
For the control we used a “dual-axis sun tracking system”. The mechanical design and assembly were realized with the help of Emiel and Robin.
To accurately monitor yield as well as grid injection, we connected a ReMI web server to the P1 port and to an EMM.630 energy meter.
Although the test period is still short and a direct comparison with a fixed setup was not possible, the first results are promising: we see an estimated efficiency increase of more than 35%.
Conclusion: solar tracking systems are more expensive to install and maintain, and require more space and mechanical components. For residential applications, they are generally not cost-effective. But in large-scale solar farms, they can be well worth the investment.
What this experiment reaffirms: energy monitoring provides crucial insight into the proper operation and consumption of any building, which invariably leads to better conclusions and correct decisions.
Viewing on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/thf1QgZSGzA