Behind the switchboard

But first

A Kiwi is hoping to emigrate to Australia and arrives at Kingsford Smith airport, Sydney on a sunny Wednesday morning full of optimism for the future.

Still, things do not go quite as planned . . .

"What is your business in Australia?" the immigration officer asks him politely.

"I wish to emigrate," the Kiwi replies.

"Do you have a criminal record?" the officer inquires.

Stunned, the crestfallen Kiwi replies, "Geez, bro, I didn’t think you still needed one."

Mr Boo, the Australia Post contract courier knocked on the front door at 7.30am.  In his hands he had the second clamp and transmitter I’d ordered from Efergy.  All excited at the prospect of fitting it, I quickly washed and brushed my teeth before racing out to the electrical switchboard with my trusty screwdriver.

Five minutes later I had the front panel off the switchboard and the second clamp fitted around the wire from the solar inverter to the circuit breaker.  If you ever decide to have something fitted behind the switchboard I recommend you use a qualified electrician as you can obviously kill yourself if you do something wrong.

It only took a couple of minutes to refit both clamps and reassemble the switchboard.

 

Red arrows point at the clamps

I do hate messy switchboard wiring and this one looks like a bird’s nest.  One day I might do something about it!

The other end of the clamp cable fits into a battery powered transmitter which wirelessly sends the data to a ‘hub’ beside my router.  This means the ‘hub’ is connected to our home network.

The last step was to reconfigure the software so that the hub is receiving and recording data from the solar system and the consumers in the house.  I can now measure house consumption vs production.

Once I have a calendar month of data I’ll modify my existing Excel spreadsheet to get an accurate picture of our ongoing electrical costs.