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TED 5000 opened
***Update 10/6/09 – Google has announced they are working with the TED 5000 as a device partner for their Google Power Meter software. Follow the link above to learn about it and to update your firmware. This is pretty big news and will no doubt send sales of the TED 5000 through the roof! I spoke with TED customer service and they said that if you already own a TED 5000, the Google Power Meter software update will be on their site on Friday, 10/9/09. If you don’t already own a TED 5000 but buy a new one, the new unit will ship with the Google Power Meter software. I’m looking forward to seeing if the Google Power Meter software will have many advantages over their Footprints software!
Original Post:
In the future, when the smart grid is finally here, every home will have a smart meter. But the future is a long ways off, so there is no sense in waiting. Energy, Inc., the manufacturers of The Energy Detective and the TED 5000 announced on Tuesday, June 30th that the TED 5000 was ready to order. Well, my TED 5000 came by FedEx today and I had it installed and running in around an hour. While I have only had it a few hours, I am very impressed. While I have already covered the TED 5000 once in my post announcing its release date and some off its features, this will be an overview of some of the first things that have caught my attention.
The TED 5000 installs much the same way that the TED 1000 does. I really dont want to cover installation that much because if done wrong, it can be dangerous. While I’m not an electrician, I do have a decent amount of knowledge around electrical equipment, so I felt comfortable installing it. The biggest thing is to ensure the main breaker is turned off so no electricity is in the panel. But please don’t take this blog post as installation instruction. There are good installation instructions, getting started guide, and instruction manual that comes with the unit, but if you aren’t that comfortable around electrical equipment call an electrician. If the electrician is competent he will be done in under 30 minutes as it is not hard at all for someone who knows what they are doing.
Display Unit
I purchased the TED 5000-C, which is the model that comes with the Display Unit. You can purchase the TED 5000-G which does not come with a display unit and you would just access the data through your computer. I think the display unit is very cool, so I paid the extra $40 bucks and got it. The total amount I paid was $239.95 before taxes and shipping. When I opened the TED 5000 there were three smaller packages containing:
- MTU – this comes with the current transformers (CTs) and wires and installs in your breaker panel. It sends data to the…
- Gateway – This is plugged in an electrical outlet by your computer. It receives signals from the MTU over your home’s wiring. It then sends data over an Ethernet cable to your router or directly to a computer. It can also send data wirelessly (ZigBee) to the ….
- Display unit – This is an option but I highly recommend it. It plugs into the wall for power but gets its data from the Gateway over a wireless connection. It looks like a big silver Ipod video.
Aside from separating the Gateway and the Display unit, the biggest change with the TED 5000 is the Footprints Software. They have done an amazing job with this. Unlike the TED 1000, which sold the software as separate and came on a disc, the TED 5000 includes the software in the price, but the software is retrieved directly from the Gateway, meaning there is no installation necessary. You simply have to type “ted5000″ in the internet address bar to access the software after the Gateway is connecting to your network. (see screen shot of software on my computer at the end of the post)
Initial configuration is all done through a set-up wizard. I did notice one error in the “Quick Start Guide” when setting up the software. The guide instructs you to start from the “Setup Menu”, but they must have made a revision, because there is no “Setup Menu”. You have to go to “Edit –> System Wizard Setting”. From there it is very straightforward.
The guide highly recommends plugging the Ethernet cable that comes out of the Gateway into a router, and not directly into a computer. I would also recommend this because it makes things much simpler. The beauty of having the software reside on the Gateway is that as long as the Gateway is connected to your home router, you will be access the data from any computer on your home network! I had to do this because my laptop is wireless and I use a VPN to get on my work network. When I tried to access the TED 5000 software while on the VPN, I had trouble connecting. When I booted up the desktop, which is not wireless, I was able to access the software right away. This is the beauty of having the software reside on the Gateway and connecting the Gateway to the router!
Energy, Inc. has definitely beefed up the footprints software and it is much more intuitive and helpful. There are many, many features. The biggest of which is that you can EXPORT THE DATA! If you recall, this is why I returned my TED 1000 unit. The Gateway unit has internal memory that stores the data (up to 90 days of hourly data, 24 months of daily data, and 10 years of monthly data). The TED 1000 had no internal memory so it had no way to store and export the data unless you used your computer for that function. Since the Gateway has internal memory it can store data when your computer is off. This is great for seeing how your house uses energy while you sleep or when you are on vacation.
Exporting the data is vey simple and the data is exported in a .CSV format so you can easily view it in Excel.
Finally, another great feature is that the Footprints software has a widget that displays your local weather. All you have to do is tell it your zip code. Now, my only suggestion for Energy, Inc. is that they store the average temperatures and export those values with the energy data. This way, you can see how the local weather is affecting your energy consumption and track those changes over the season.
Overall, the TED 5000 has been greatly improved and is one of the best tools I can think of to get control over your electricity consumption. Much more to come in the following weeks!
***Update – 8/18/09 – The TED 5000 iPhone app has been released and is available in the app store. Check out my review here: TED 5000 iPhone app
***Update – 9/13/09 – See what kind of stuff you can do with the TED 5000 data once you have it installed in my latest blog on outside temperature impacts on energy consumption.
***Update – 10/07/09 – Several comments have noted you can’t purchase the TED 5000 from Energy, Inc.’s website, but that has now changed and they do list them for sale and purchase online at the TED 5000 store.
***Update -11/11/09 – So don’t get me wrong. I still love my TED 5000 and the fact I can see my home’s energy consumption on my iPhone with Google PowerMeter but I’m wondering about the quality of the TED 5000. While my monitoring still works, my display unit conked out last week and I have yet to hear back from info@mapawatt about what I need to do to return it. Another Mapawatt team member had an out of box failure with an MTU unit and had some issues getting support as well. Come on TED! I know your swamped right now, but let’s get these problems solved asap!
Footprints Screenshot
Related posts:
Are you in the future? I only see the TED 1000 for sale. Also, on the TED5000 page, it still says coming soon.
I am in the future, how else do you think I’m so smart
Good points though and you’re absolutely right about the website, which I didn’t notice. I had signed up on an email list to be notified when the TED 5000 went on sale. I got the notification on Tuesday and it said to call in to order one, which I did. My guess is they are just doing a limited batch release.
Here is the number to call (it is just their main information number). Just tell them you would like to buy the 5000. Let me know how it goes! 843.766.9800
I can’t seem to find any details on the display unit. Is the battery replaceable? Does it have a backlight? Any tidbits you can provide? Thanks.
Jared, Good questions. It does have a backlight and the backlight is default on when the unit is in the cradle. I’m not sure about replacing the batteries though. I’m pretty sure the device is meant to stay in the cradle and get power from the outlet, and only temporarily be taken out to move around the house.
thanks for the info Chris. How far were you able to get that display unit go? I have 2 story and would like to walk around with it turning everything on and off to find my power consumption per electrical device and am hoping it will reach if the base is plugged in downstairs.
Another question, when you export the data is it smart enough to append the data to an existing excel spreadsheet or does it create new ones?
It will pretty much go through the house and you should be fine with 2 stories.
I dont think the data is appended to excel and that it just creates a new sheet each time.
I so want one of these, but I’m not sure if I’d want the screen or just pipe the results straight to my mini server. The cool thing is it’s yet another device using Zigbee, and this is something I only recently heard about through researching the tweet-a-watt project. Very cool technology. Like wifi but for appliances. The chipset is something like 6 bucks, and you can attach a kit right to usb.
I just got mine and installation was smooth except the gateway couldn’t get a reading from the MTU on the outlet next to my router (this was the only circuit that had such a problem). I tried different wiring configurations on the main panel, but nothing worked. However, moving the router was easy (and made my wife happy since it is no longer visible) and everything then went according to the manual.
You can set the signal strength of the MTU and the gateway to help getting a good reading on the display in all parts of home (it has a signal strength bar-meter on the screen). My MTU is installed on the top floor; no trouble getting a reading on the main floor; but a much weaker signal in the basement. No big deal though because I can use my home network to easily get readings on my laptop in the basement. In the alternative, you can plug the gateway in a circuit in the basement and easily get readings with the display. Very versatile, and I have used the display to wander the house and see the energy impact of various appliances and electrical equipment. Very enlightening.
You can control the back light settings through the software and also how often the display is updated (default is every 5 seconds). There are screws on the back of the display, and it would appear possible to replace the rechargeable battery. I leave the back light off always (the display is easy to read) and leave the display in the charging cradle.
Great comment Kevin. I forgot you can adjust the back-light display through the software. I’m going to do that right now. TED has done a really great job with this device.
I called Ted’s phone number (843.766.9800) and they will let me purchase one. They said that there is a limited quantity and that they only have the -G and -C models, so they haven’t released them for sale on the website.
A firmware update for the MTU and the Footprints software has posted for the TED 5000. I wish they would disclose what improvements were made.
The TED is very helpful in getting a clear picture of your energy usage and simple changes that can make a difference. Some appliances use less energy than I thought (like my fridge at about 200w) and some use more (florescent lights in kitchen). Be prepared for a shock if your air conditioner is running, something is cooking in the electric oven, and the wife turns on the vacuum. Thank goodness the later is short term. Also very helpful in finding “energy leaks” such as AC to DC converters that don’t need to be on all the time.
Another interesting side effect. The wife and daughter see the display in the kitchen and without me saying a word, I’ve noticed a better effort on their part to turn off the lights.
As the saying goes: to manage it, you have to measure it.
I ordered the TED5000 over the phone about a week ago, and wanted to give some of my experiences and impressions for others who are interested, and/or have been considering getting TED.
I was able to install the TED 5000 pretty quickly, but ran into problems with my first try.
Initially, I was having issues with getting data on both the wireless display and in Footprints, and I also was having adverse interactions with my X10 lighting. All the lights that are X10 controlled would come on by themselves randomly. Very annoying if it happens when you’re asleep, I might add.
So far I have resolved these problems, though, and presently I am receiving data on both the display and in Footprints, and I haven’t had any lights come on by themselves randomly in over 48 hours since making the following changes:
1) The instructions that come with the unit say to type http://Gateway-G/ into your browser to access the Footprints console. It turns out you actually are supposed to type http://TED5000 into your browser. I found this out by reading this blog.
2) I changed the sample rating in Footprints from default (5 seconds I think) to every 10 seconds. A representative from Energy, Inc. told me that cutting back on the sample rate might help with the X10 problem, and the lights seem to have stopped coming on by themselves so far, so maybe this did the trick. I have also applied the firmware updates, so who knows? Maybe this helped as well.
3) I moved the Gateway to another outlet. The LED on the side of the Gateway that indicates it’s receiving data from the MTU was not flashing when the gateway was plugged into the same outlet as my router, as was mentioned earlier in this comment string by Kevin. I had to test several outlets in my house before I was able to find one that worked. I wonder if the circuit that ended up working is one of the few in my house that doesn’t have an X10 product on it? Just a theory.
4) I switched the MTU to another breaker in the breaker panel. I don’t know if this helped anything, but I figured I’d try it anyway. The bad news is, I did it at the same time that I did the other things in this list, so I don’t honestly know if this action was helpful or not, but at least if someone else has the problems I did, they have several things they can try to fix it. I was fortunate enough to have a Ethernet socket next to the outlet that ended up working.
Now that everything seems to be working right, I’m thrilled with the TED5000. I found out that my AC unit uses about 5.5 kW of power, and it seems to use more late in the afternoon after it’s been running all day. I live in Texas, and it’s wicked hot this year.
I also found out that my refrigerator uses less power than I thought. I think it’s somewhere around 250 Watts. Other users in the house pale in comparison to my air conditioner. I’d probably only consume about 4 dollars worth of power each day if it weren’t for the AC.
I hope my comments are helpful/edifying.
I too had trouble with my X10 devices going on randomly. They had always been a little flaky, so I took them out.
I was having some intermittent trouble with Gateway receiving data from the MTU. I played around with the “System Layout” settings in the “System Setup Wizard” and was able to fix it. Specifically, I turned off the transmit gain and the noise blanker for both the Gateway and MTU. Data packets have been solid ever since.
My AC is presently sucking 5kw or about $.40 an hour. Not too bad considering its 16 years old (I bought the most energy efficient at the time). Probably time for a new AC.
When everyone is in bed, my usage drops to around 300kw or $.02 per hour with 120 of that being porch lights. I’ve pretty much eliminated all other energy leaks.
The TED is sensitive. It can detect when I unplug a 12v wall wart pulling 1-3 watts.
I have been fiddleing with my 5000 for a couple of days and can’t get any usage data to appear on the handheld or the footprints screen. I have plugged the gateway into different outlets on different branches but no luck. This is quite humbling since I am usually good at setting up this kind of stuff. Any ideas?
Do you have a green light on the Gateway? I originally had problems because the wires coming out of the MTU were plugged into a breaker that tripped every time I turned on the power. As soon as I switched the wires to another breaker, it worked fine. Make sure the Gateway is receiving the data first. Once you see the green light on the side come on, we can try and troubleshoot from there.
Walt: Is the green LED on the MTU blinking showing it is transmitting data? If not, there is a problem with the install in the power panel.
Is the green LED on the right side of the Gateway blinking showing it is receiving data? It will blink green and orange 4-5 times when first plugged in and then then it should blink green every few seconds showing it is receiving data from the MTU. If the Gateway is not blinking then it has no information to send to the hand-held display or the Footprints software.
Check out this YouTube video on how to install the MTU. It is for the TED 1000, but it gives a great explanation of the A and B phase of your power panel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgcvvJPX46M
For the TED 5000, the black wire of the MTU goes to one phase of the panel and the red wire goes to the other phase so that there is one wire on the A phase and one on the B phase. I assume this is to give greater reliability so matter which circuit you use for the Gateway.
Finally, try adjusting some transmit settings in the system setup.
I had to experiment for the first few days, but now it is rock solid
The green light on the MTU is blinking about every 2 seconds. The amp clamps are connected over both 120 phases and the red dots are facing away from the source. The red / black are connected to a 220 breaker so I am sure I am on both phases, and the white is to neutral. The light on the side of the gateway blinks green/orange when first powered for about 5 seconds then no more blinking. The ethernet plug on the gateway sometimes has a green light. lightly tapping on the gateway will sometimes cause the ethernet light to come on and sometimes the side light will flicker. On a few occasions I have gotten the footprint software to display watts being used but I know it isn’t accurate to what is being consumed, reading 1152 ~ watts. I have tried changing all combinations of the transmit settings, even reset the gateway to default with the button on the side.
See if this makes any sense. I think there is a problem with the gateway but i was able to lay it down in such a way that the ethernet light stayed on and the side light is flashing every few seconds. I now get a reading on the handheld. Here is the wierd part. I plug a 1500 watt load (heatgun), into an outlet that is on phase (a) and the watts reading increases by 1500 watts, but when I plug it into an outlet on phase (b) the watt reading decreases by 1500 watts. I rechecked the clamps and they are facing (red dot) the correct direction.
Walt,
I would just call the people at TED. The one thing I would say is check the breakers your red/black wires are wired into. You do not need to be in a 220 V breaker. You just have to make sure that one breaker is on 1 phase, and the other breaker is on the other. Try just wiring to a 120 V breaker and see if that helps.
Chris,
To obtain a 220 circuit you must have one leg of 110 on phase (a) and one leg of 110 on phase (b). This is why I noted that I was into a 220 breaker. Actually internally a 220 breaker is comprised of 2 individual 110 breakers. I will be calling TED this morning and post when I figure it out.
I talked with TED. Their conclusion is the probes are defective, possibly one has the components internally reversed and the gateway is also bad indicated by the intermittent lights. New parts are on their way and I will update when they arrive.
Any of you guys going through an Apple MAC?? I have hooked up the MTU – it’s flashing green. Hooked up the gateway to my wireless router (AT&T supplied 2Wire). Tried the http://TED5000, but it just gives me the “server not available” message. I don’t know what I’m doing…. Called AT&T and they said the router should be fine. Called TED and they said some kind of jibberish about a “MAC” address (not to be confused w/ the Apple MAC) where I am supposed to find an IP address and use that.
I have no clue. Any help????
David, you might call Roman at TED regarding finding your IP address. I just spoke with him and he guided me through it very quickly. However, your situation will be a bit different because of the fact that I have Windows on my Mac which allowed me to find the IP address very easily using the Run command and typing in “cmd” and then “ping ted5000″ which gave me the IP. I was then able to simply type in an address that looks like http://192.xxx.x.xx/Footprints.html and everything works just great.
From there I just bookmarked the address and gave it my own name.
Loren
From terminal ping your broadcast IP address. If your router has an address of 10.0.1.1, then Ping 10.0.1.255.
Control-C to exit, this will ping all the devices on your network, displaying their IP addresses. Try each of those in your browser, once you see the Footprints page load, you’ve found the correct IP.
If you haven’t already tried it reboot the router, (unplug power for 30 seconds +), also reboot computer. Sometimes it is required for everything to be recognized. Then try http://TED5000.
MUST the 5000’s MTU be connected to 2 phases ?? I have 1ph. 1-neutral.
However, I have EITHER a 220v. 1ph+1neutral panel OR, 120v. 1ph+1neutral panel…. Just not 2 Hot lines that total 220v.
No, not in the USA but the Caribbean. 60hz. Our local supply is 220v. 1ph. My whole house is fed by step-down transformer to 120v. ….. A/C, Dryer and fridge are 220v. 1ph + 1neut.
Thanks for your time !
kenny
Has anyone heard if the TED 5000 for net metering is available yet? I just had my solar PV system installed and would like the net metering TED 5000 s I have no inverter monitoring. I had a TED 1000 and really liked it but it doesn’t work well with the solar.
Jeffrey, I know the guys at TED have a solar monitoring module for the 5000. Try emailing info@theenergydetective.com. I think they have a special module for solar that would allow you to monitor your modules, but I dont think your Utility would accept that data to reimburse you for the power you’re producing. I might be wrong though.
I am having a problem getting TED5000/Footprints.html to respond when trying to access it on my MAC in either Safari or Firefox. It’s not really that big of a problem because I can access it in Windows XP in the Parallels virtual machine, but I would rather use the MAC side of the computer for security reasons.
I have connected the Gateway to my router which in turn is hard wire connected to both of my computers and to the network printer (I do not use wireless).
I may have to contact the company to get a resolution to this, but if anyone has already done it and can guide me through the process, it would be great.
Loren
Hi Loren,
I too have a Mac setup, and just now got my 5000 system (Gateway, Footprints, Display) working completely after about a week. I had some very helpful support from a test engineer at Energy, Inc., but they don’t have any Macs in-house, so it’s not an area of expertise for them. I might be able to help you based on what I learned from them and some investigating on my own. First of all, I needed to use the Network Utility to find the explicit IP address of my Gateway in order to communicate with it in Safari and/or Firefox (my Gateway is connected into an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station LAN port). In the Network Utility, click on the Netstat tab, and then with the “Display routing table information” choice selected, click on the “Netstat” button on the far right. After the info comes back, look in the second column for a device with a MAC ID that starts with “0:25:2f…” That’s the Gateway. Write down the IP address (from the first column) associated with that device, and then try typing that IP address into Safari, e.g. http://192.168.0.8/. Let’s see if that is a start. Might also need to get your firmware version numbers from the Help -> About menu within Footprints (that you say you can run on XP in the Parallels virtual machine). But I’m jumping ahead . . .
Called TED and got it all sorted.
Loren
anybody else having problems with daily kwh or projected kwh on the ted 5000? (being way too high) Energy says there is a software problem causing bogas calculations, possibly electrical noise not being filtered by the noise blanker in the gateway. They would not give me any more information.
I’ve noticed that whatever calculation they’re using for “projected bill” has a flaw in it. However, my projected KWh seems pretty accurate (could be about 15% on the high side). I’ve written them about the projected bill issue and it’s been passed along to the Footprints software folks. Now, I’m having a repeat issue though where my 5000 Display says “Bootloader in progress, 0 percent” Restarted TED through the Footprints software, but it’s just happened again.
I too am having problems with the daily total not always adding up properly. Sometimes it’s 6-8x what it should be and other times 1/5th what it should be. If you export the hourly numbers and add them up manually you can confirm that it is a bug with daily calculations. I have the latest firmare for gateway and footprints (214 and 103). My emails to them have gone unanswered, but hopefully Energy is working on it.
-Scott
I have the TED 5000 and have a couple of questions and comments. (BTW, I love the product, but think there are a few bugs that have to be worked out yet.)
1. This is more curiosity than anything else, but why does voltage being metered vary so much. I just looked at the last 12 hours (hourly graphing) and notice that the voltage varied from a low of 121.4 at around midnight to a high of 127.1 at 5:00 this morning, and is now working its way down.
2. When exporting an Hourly .csv file the voltage shown is double the voltage shown in any of the graphs. I think that should be fixed.
3. When exporting a Second or Minute file (same question as number 2 above) plus I just have to wonder why they have cost in there. All it really does is state that if run at the wattage shown, this would be your hourly cost. Kind of redundant data.
4. Anyone having problems with profiling an A/C Unit. My readings are as follows (I will use an actual example). I must use the 3 stage setup.
8:02:25 – .791 kW
8:02:26 – 4.554 kW
8:02:27 – 2.201
Fan then ramps up to speed which takes 26 seconds
8:02:53 – 2.905
Remains constant at this level during the AC on time then dropped to 1.32 with the fan staying on for 1 minute, at which time it then ramps down to .788 kW
From the above you can see that the Heat Pump and Fan total consumption is 2.144 (for some reason this can vary a bit so I have come up with an average of 2.2 kWh.
The only way that I have been able to profile this is to manually set a 3 stage start up, but if I put it up to a 1900w start with a 30% error factor and 2 steps of 150w to get to 2.2 kWh it will only catch it some of the time. I have had to fiddle with the numbers a bit but still haven’t been able to get it to record every time (sometimes it will start recording and not stop when it should.) hmmm!
Also, I had to put in a dummy profile which has to be called every time before I call for the Heat Pump profile or it just simply states “No Data Found”.
BTW, I have a 15 SEER Heat Pump and a High Efficiency furnace (all just installed) Furnace has a DC fan which is supposed to have less energy requirements than an AC fan. All of this is heating and cooling a 2400 sq. ft. house, and does quite well. We just had a major heat wave for this part of the country at 3 days of 104 degree temps and my maximum daily usage was 62 kWh. Now that the temps are back to normal at 87 degrees I am consuming less than 30 per day.
Loren
Anyone else getting random, huge, erroneous energy use spikes (as in thousands of KWh) with their 5000 system? After a few days of stable operation, I’m now getting several of these each day. I’ve reset the system and changed where the gateway is plugged in, but they keep on coming. Haven’t heard back from Energy, Inc. yet. Obviously, they corrupt the data set pretty badly.
Brian, I had the same problem. There is a gateway firmware upgrade, 1.0.199 (available at the TED website) that is supposed to fix that problem. The new firmware also includes a MTU upgrade (1.0.51) that is distributed by the gateway after an hour or so of the firmware being uploaded to the gateway. It should be much more stable after this update.
Thanks for the info, Fred. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Unfortunately, I had several more of these erroneous spikes since downloading and installing that 1.0.199 firmware upgrade, so I’m still concerned. I reset my totals to zero and cleared my history again earlier this afternoon, so we’ll see . . .
I too saw these spikes (one had me spending $35 an hour for electricity!), but they’ve gone away since the new firmware upgrade. I’ll look at it again this weekend when we’ve got a house-full of guests. That will be a good test.
Does the TED 5000 require two breaker slots? Thanks for a response as I can’t find installation instructions anywhere.
The panel is full. I guess I’d have to invest in more tandem breakers, but I hate the thought of doing so.
Patrick,
I have one of the TED wires in a breaker that already has another wire in it. I just chose a breaker that didnt have a big load on it (i.e. a bathroom, not my office). I’m pretty sure the instructions said this is fine. You may just have to try a few breakers, because when I did this the first time the breaker kept tripping, so I had to move it around.
The important thing is that the TED wires are hooked into breakers on different phases.
I thought I had my erroneous readings for kwh and $ calculations solved with the gateway 1.0.199 firmware update, but both of the problems are back. I am starting to become pretty fustrated with the 5000. It is great product when it works, but almost useless when it does not work right. I have already expended a lot of time and energy on this and seem to be back at square one again. I guess it is another call to Roman @ energy (with a email copy of logs)to see what they can come up with.
Sorry to hear that, Fred. Ironically. my system has been stable since I last posted (which I’m surprised by since I still was getting erroneous spikes just after the 1.0.199 upgrade). Would appreciate hearing anything you hear from Energy, Inc. Good luck.
I have upgraded to the 1.0.199 firmware as well but I too am still getting really erratic data which seems to be only happening around midnight or in the early AM hours. Usually one or two hours a day have some huge readings.
Installed my TED 5000 on the 31st of last month. It worked great up until a couple days ago. It’s no longer recording any minute, hour or day history. Second history is working okay though. It does display watts correctly, but month-to-date KWH is no longer growing.
I had my router not working at all, and then after I set the time to my time zone, and leaving it alone after a firmware upgrade to the 1.0.199 that I think finally took. It’s working. I have a new router coming soon. I’ve read all these comments, I’ve spent a lot of time researching and playing with my TED 5000. It’s not perfect, neither the hardware nor the software. I cannot get my AC profiling to work. I too am seeing the lack of history when I connected an MTU solely to my AC breaker. It was working fine with the one MTU connected to my main. I have solar coming in, which is hard to “shall we say” deal with when doing the calculations. The solar/wind package is not out yet. It is a great product when it works.
Wow, at least 8 hours later, maybe more, my graphing is working completely, my history is up to date. I really believe that it takes numerous hours to get my MTU updated to talk to the gateway after the firmware update is sent to the gateway. The graphing is working perfectly on the MTU connected to my AC. I haven’t tried the load profile wizard again to see if it will work properly with an MTU connected to the only device it’s profiling. If the profiling doesn’t work here, it won’t work at all. We’ll see.
After a $660 electric bill in July, I gladly dropped the cash on the TED 5000 to take the reins of our energy usage. I installed it earlier this week, and have been overall happy with the results. However, I’m seeing energy spikes several times a day. I upgraded to the newest firmware and still have the issue. The most likely culprit that could be causing the erroneous data is a wireless ceiling fan controller. I’m going to shoot an email off to the folks at Energy, Inc and see if they have any insight.
Now I’ve got to turn off this computer so I don’t go over my kWh ration…
Matt,
$660!!! Are you growing marijuana in your basement? I’d love to hear what the high energy consumers you find are and if the TED was able to find them out. How much do you pay per kWh?
I’m not, but may need to consider it to offset my energy costs
The high cost of the bill is at least partly my fault for not shopping around in the Texas deregulated electricity market. I was paying 14 cents/kWh when the going rate was about 10 or 11 (I’m getting 9.1 now). Still, the actual usage for the month was a whopping 4300+ kWh. We did have a house full of guests for a couple weeks, which would lead to an increase, and it was the hottest month of the year so far. My biggest energy consumers are most likely my pool pump and my air conditioners. Right now we’re experimenting with leaving the thermostat set a couple of degrees higher to see the impact.
Just installed the 5000, seems to be working quite nicely although I am unsure what to expect with regards to kWh fluctuations. My gateway is plugged into an outlet in my office, which is shared with a power strip (gateway is NOT plugged into power strip). My readings fluctuate +/- 0.05 kWh (approximately) every minute. Is this normal? My voltage fluctuates about +/- 0.3 per minute. If this is abnormal and could possibly be due to noise from the office outlet can this be remedied by a filter as recommended by the instructions? If so, what kind of filter? My settings are “High” for the transmit amp, and transmit gain and noise blanker are on for both the gateway and MTU (I have one MTU). My main concern is will these fluctuations reduce my ability to identify specific energy consumers (especially low to middle energy consumers that don’t spike kWh like an air conditioner does)?
BTW, great posts. TONS of useful info. Thanks in advance for any insight!
Our TED5000 was installed on Friday by the electrician. Thus far, I’ve been very impressed — I’ve been able to figure out that our pool pump, for instance, uses about 1 kw, and our heat pump for the pool uses about 6 kw (!!!). We had a $620 electric bill last month, which granted was a very hot one in Phoenix (average temperature at any given time: 97 degrees; lows in the mid 80’s, and highs around 115), but I was running the heat pump to cool the pool water way too much. I’m guessing that $100 or so of the bill was from the heat pump running 4-5-6 hours a day trying to cool the water to 90 degrees.
I’m looking forward to getting around a year worth of data, so I can determine how much our electric bill would go down if we installed various sizes of solar panels, and also whether it would pay to go to a time-of-use plan that our electric company offers.
I’ve seen a couple of spikes, but they last for only a few seconds at a time, so really do not affect the data. Today we jumped up to 36 kw of power usage for about 2 minutes, which was weird, and didn’t have any basis in fact. But when I look at the hourly data, everything looks pretty kosher, so I’m not worried about it.
What’s been interesting to me is that we have two 20 SEER 3.5 ton a/c units which are variable speed, and they increase and decrease in speed/power consumption constantly.
I’m also happy that the zigbee wireless doesn’t affect our wifi signals. I was hoping that there would be a way to turn this off, since we don’t have the display, but no dice. I’m also hoping that they’ll release some sort of iphone app for the unit — the internal web site requires a lot of processing power apparently, as it takes a long time to render on my iphone, and eats up battery life like crazy.
My last suggestion would be to have some sort of password protection to access the internal web server. I’ve set my unit to a very non-standard port, and poked a hole in my firewall so I can access the server from the Internet, but would still be more comfortable if there was a simple password, especially since there’s no easy way to determine how many people are currently logged onto the server at any point in time.
Mike,
Great comment. I think pool pumps/heaters are going to surprise a lot of people! I asked the engineers at TED awhile back about the iPhone app. and they said they know of one in development, but I havent heard anything back. I’ll check again. Thanks for the summary.
Hey Mike,
I lived in Tempe for 11 years before moving to NC. You might benefit from going on SRP’s Time of Use electric plan. We saved a chunk of change on that plan, but you will have to modify your habits somewhat. Such as running your pool’s heat pump only in the night (which is more efficient anyway…) etc.
In NC, we have a kW Demand based Time of Use Plan where we have to monitor our peak usage for the month to figure out the “ding factor” on our bill. It’s an awesome plan for someone in a big home. I had to get the TED5000 to keep on eye on real time kW usage. I waiting for the the firmware upgrade that will have an alarm to let me know when I’m using too much power as well as the footprints firmware that will have the Demand based energy plan. Otherwise, the TED5000 is working awesome!
Bob
The funny thing about pool heat pumps in particular is that even with the vast amount of electrical power they use, they’re still vastly more energy efficient than gas-powered heaters. When we first moved to Phoenix, I ran ours 24/7 in the winter (we had this great idea of swimming in the wintertime). They used a ton of power, but our electrical bill was “only” $400 (in part because electricity rates in the desert are incredibly incredibly cheap in the winter when no one is using their A/C). I asked my pool guy how much it would cost to run a gas heater instead, and he said on the order of $1,000-$2,000 a month. Gas is strangely incredibly expensive down here. Our gas bill is higher here than it was in either Minnesota or Seattle, and yet the furnace runs only a few hours a day in the winter. That said, it’s really cheap in the summer, when the only thing you’re using it for is cooking and the hot water heater. Our gas bills in the summer are $15 a month. I’m amazed that there’s a big push to install very expensive energy efficient gas water heaters in Phoenix (our plumber was keen on this), because there’s just not that much payback. IN the summertime, the “cold” water is routinely 80+ degrees, and the garage, where the gas water heater is located, is typically hovering around 100 degrees all the time — so the water heater just doesn’t have to work that hard.
Also, re iPhone app. I’m toying with the idea of getting a Mac just to develop iPhone apps. My first one would be a really simply TED5000 app, that shows the current power being used, sort of like the dial in the upper-middle of the screen on the FootPrints web server. Seems really trivial to do, since I’m presuming the iPhone SDK has the necessary UI elements, and the TED5000 provides this data via an XML page. Would anybody have any interest in that? I would price it at $.99. Then if I ever got around to adding more functionality, there would be a “pro” version at around $4.99 . . . .
Mike,
A few things:
In regards to heating your pool, have you thought about Solar Thermal? That would probably provide even a better payback between electricity OR gas! If you would like I have a little experience analyzing these systems, so I would be willing to help you out in this for an experiment. Solar Thermal for pool heating is incredibly simple.
Also, I just found out (this AM) that the iPhone app for the TED 5000 is released! Just go to the App store and search for TED 5000. I installed mine and it is working. I’m writing a blog on it this evening.
As always, thanks for the discussion.
AWESOME NEWS regarding the iPhone app! I’m very excited, and will be checking it out shortly!
I looked into solar thermal. But, I’d rather dedicate the (relative scarce south-facing) space on the roof to true solar panels to generate electricity, instead of simply to heat the pool. That said, a neighbor down the street has installed an “attic system,” in which the pool water is moved through a series of pipes within the attic. The attics in Phoenix get quite hot, easily exceeding 130 degrees at times. He said that it provides a notable difference.
However, my concern about that is if a leak develops, then the water will cause inside-house water damage . . . .
Hey guys, I have yet to order my TED5000 as I have been told they are not available yet. It could be just the TED5000-SC’s not available yet. I was curious on a couple of things if one of you have any answers:
1) Can you access your Footprints online? For example if I was at work and cared to see what my house is using in power in real time.
2) Is it easy to display your Footprints on a website? I would like to have it display real time like the demo off the Energy, Inc. website.
3) Can you retrieve your information via a mobile device such as a Blackberry?
4) Is there a Mac Widget for this software yet?
5) Is anyone on this blog from Canada as I am curious if the weather widget utilizes Postal Codes as well as Zip Codes?
That should be the bulk of my answers. It is exciting to see all the great comments and excitement around this device.
All these questions
Hi Trevor:
(1) Yes. However, you have to “open a hole” in your firewall so that access from outside your network goes to your TED5000 gateway. If you do not have a static IP address from your ISP, you also will have to use some sort of dynamic DNS service so that you know the IP address to connect to. In either case, I recommend that you set the port of the TED5000 to use a “non standard” port (not the normal web port of 80). Because the FootPrints software does not have any sort of password protection, someone just pinging your IP address from outside would be easily able to detect that you’re running a web server, and access your data (and potentially mess with your settings). I’m hoping password protection is offered in the future! In any case, I access my TED5000 from the Internet without any problems.
For example, to access my TED5000, I can enter http://192.168.x.x:port when inside my home network, and enter http://www.myname.com:port when on the Internet, where “myname” is a domain name I’ve bought. Alternatively, I have a static IP address, so I could also do http://a.b.c.d:port if I wanted, where a.b.c.d is my static IP.
(2) Actually, with the TED5000, the FootPrints software *is* a web site. There’s nothing to load. FootPrints is accessible my accessing the internal web server of the TED5000. It works exactly like the demo. I’ve tried it in IE7, IE8, Firefox, and Opera on a WinXP box, as well as with Safari on the iPhone, and it works flawlessly in all these browsers — although the FootPrints app is relatively processor intensive, so it takes a long time to load up on the iPhone.
(3) If your BB has a decent browser, it should be able to access the web server no problems. An iPhone app was just released by a third party for TED5000, FWIW.
(4) No Mac Widget that I’m aware of, though it in theory would be trivial to add, since the TED5000 exposes a very easily accessed XML API to grab data.
(5) I don’t think you can do Canadian postal codes, since you’re supposed to add a five-digit US ZIP code. However, you can just put 00000 to not use this feature.
Overall, I use the phrases FootPrints, software, web server, etc., interchangeably. Think of accessing FootPrints on the gateway no different than you access GMail, Yahoo Mail, FaceBook, etc. — FootPrints is an incredibly rich web app (the richest I’ve seen actually!), and does not require any loading of code onto your computer (apart from within the browser of course). The demo on the TED web site is exactly what you’ll see with yours, although (of course) with your own data.
Finally, the TED5000 is available in limited quantities, but you actually have to call them to order it. I called them and they sent it out the same day, and I got it four days later. Not all the options are available yet — just the main unit (gateway that plugs into the wall, and the parts that go into the panel), and the display. I didn’t order the display . . . Total cost I think was $200 plus shipping, if memory serves.
Thanks for all the information Mike. Looks like you have answered all my questions. I will call them tomorrow and see if I am able to order the TED5000-SC. I am hoping to have the Footprints live viewable from my website. I will keep you informed on whether I can get the TED5000-SC or not. I am installing a GT photovoltaic system in a years time and am hoping to get a years worth of power use data before connecting. Hence why I am holding out for the TED5000-SC version.
I contacted Energy, Inc. today to order my TED5000-SC. Unfortunately these are not yet available. i was told that they are still finishing off the programing for the solar/wind side of things and should be available to us in 2-3 weeks. I will just have to keep trying back.
I got two new firmware updates from TED support (not on the website yet) and they fixed my no-history problem that I reported above on Aug 11. So far everything is working good again.
The TED 5000 and iphone app seem amazing to me. One element that seems to be missing is the ability to control the thermostat with your iphone. Has anyone tried Ecobee’s web connected thermostat and iphone app? If both products could be combined, or communicate with each other, now that would be something!
Somehow I managed to miss this thread entirely and dove into installing and setting up my new TED 5000 on my own. Doh! It didn’t turn out to be that hard, and it’s working great.
I think most of the issues are covered here, but I did a pretty thorough write-up of my TED 5000 installation successes and issues on my blog. I ran into and addressed a couple of the items people have noted here, in particular:
– The documentation is confusing about the sources of line noise that can disrupt communications. I struggled with this for a while until I realized what they meant: anything on the circuit that the gateway is plugged into that has a switch-mode transformer can mess up the gateway … in my case, my router did. More details on my post.
– I ran into an issue with figuring out how to get at the gateway when the name http://TED5000 didn’t work on my Mac. Details on how to sort that out on the post, too.
– A few other observations about the display unit.
Very cool product!
Tom
My TED-5000 was delivered yesterday, and I installed it immediately. After some troubleshooting, I figured that one of my CTUs was also mis marked: I flipped it and now it’s measuring the correct amount of current (based on previous KWH measurements from my meter). I’m not having any MTU/Gateway communication issues, the Gateway light flashes amber occasionally, maybe once out of seven times. Data collection seems accurate and I’ve already learned some interesting things (fridges not as bad as I thought.) Though, the measurements vary a fair bit (maybe 10%) when nothing in the house is changing, I guess this is to be expected based on the specs of the device.
I have several X10 devices and sensors, and this has been a substantial problem for me. I’m narrowing on some solutions: For lights/devices coming on spontaneously, it’s only been house code A: moving my A devices to house code D works – though it’s a hassle. I had tried turning down the power (to low) on the MTU and the gateway, but that didn’t make any significant difference.
I’m also having trouble with devices not coming on when automatically signaled,
maybe changing the data rate from 5s to 10s will help – we’ll see tonight.
Any other folks with X10 devices that are seeing an impact from TED5000? Thanks.
I found when I turned on CFL lights that my gateway would quit receving. Actually had to go back to incadescent bulbs in some rooms for the TED 5000 to work properly.
Have any of you compared the voltage TED5000 gives you against a Multimeter reading… My ted 5000 says my voltage is 115.5 V but when I use my Multimeter and take a reading out of the socket it reads 132.1 V. Any Ideas?
Mine is pretty close. TED reads 1.2% lower than my multimeter. 132.1 is pretty high. What does the other leg read? Where are you located?
132.1vac is higher than normal and is therefore suspect. I suggest trying a different meter.
I wanted to find out if Loren got his AC profiling sorted out. I have the old TED and will order the 5000 but wanted to make sure I ordered correctly to track AC use either through the profiling capability, or by using a separate MTU for the compressor circuit.
One thing I have learned with the old TED is that once you’re done with the easy stuff in energy savings you have to focus down on climate control to get any sizeable efficiencies. For us in Texas, that’s Air Conditioning. I want to install a geothermal system but I don’t have really good AC data to do an ROI calculation.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Mark, you’re absolutely right that the AC has the biggest chance to make an impact at energy savings. I actually havent tried to isolate loads, but I think I’ll work on that this weekend. I’ll let you know what I find out.
Hi Mark
I installed my second MTU because profiling doesn’t work that well with a DC furnace fan, as well as the simple nature of a Heat Pump. Due to the progressive increase in demand as the fan speeds up, the profile won’t always catch the start-up. Another difficulty in profiling is that I live in the Pacific Northwest where the Heat Pump is used for both heating and cooling, with cooling requiring substantially less demand than heating. Cooling normally runs at about 1.6kWh, whereas heating on a 55 degree day may start out at 2.2kWh and progressively increase in demand based on the duration of run-time (eg. 35 minute run started at 2.2kWh and ended at 2.5kWh). The figures quoted above are for the Heat Pump isolated (does not include the furnace fan which is shown separately in my primary load “MTU1″ – normally ramps up to about .5kWh).
Now that I have the HP isolated I have set up a profile for the HP for MTU2 by setting the error factor at 50% and setting the load at 2.0kWh. This will profile the device from 1kWh to 3kWh. The only data that I receive from this is daily run-time, and not daily consumption. Consumption for the day is simply obtained by looking at the day graph.
I also use a device similar to a Kill-A-Watt, but it is either faulty or won’t work with a DC motor. On low speed the device indicates a total load of 72 to 77W less the thermostat of 12W, however, TED says that the low speed demand is 110W for the fan motor only. This would indicate a 33% error in the metering. When reading the meter at high speed, the indicated demand is 300W whereas TED says it should be just short of 500W (similar error factor). I am going to purchase a real Kill-A-Watt to verify this inaccuracy, unless someone suggests that these meters just simply don’t work well with DC motors.
Hope that makes sense.
Loren
I just installed mine – I initially had communications problems between the gateway and MTU, but I moved the gateway around and eventually it all came to life. For no other reason, that’s a reason that having the display unit is handy – I tried plugging in the gateway in places where an ethernet port wasn’t handy, and the display suddenly came to life with real data.
I wish there were something in there where the gateway could help you diagnose communications problems to the MTU.
I piggybacked the MTU onto other breakers in the box, but I am not 100% comfortable with how that worked out as the breakers weren’t really designed to have more than one wire shoved into them (esp wires of different sizes). I bought a dual-15A breaker this afternoon, and I will re-wire that part in a bit. In some ways installing the thing on a new breaker is probably easier – you attach the wires to the new breaker before you push the breaker into the box. In my case, attaching the CTs wasn’t a big deal at all – the feed comes in from the bottom of the box, so they naturally slide away from the (still hot) terminals.
I just received TED 5000 Equipment however I have some questions that needs little more explanation. First, I don’t have any spare breakers all are in use. However, I found one is slot empty. The MTU has three wires: Red,Black and White (I know the white will go to neutral terminal block). Since I don’t have any reserve breaker, What should I do with the Red and Black? I have one empty slot, should I buy a breaker there and use either red or black or can I use one of the occupied breakers? Please let me know your answers.
Moe,
I just installed my TED 5000 this afternoon, and I had the same situation. Use two occupied breakers. The manual explains that you can simply use existing breakers and connect the MTU wires along with whatever wire already is connected there. You actually need two breakers, one for each phase, and the red wire can go on one and the black on another. It does not appear to matter which color wire connects to which breaker (white on neutral, however, as you noted).
There are photo instructions included on the little CD-ROM that show how to connect it.
I received my TED 5000-SC, and I ran into an installation challenge. It seems my breaker panel, which is a 200A 2-phase panel, has 4 wires coming from the meter side to feed 4 service disconnect breakers. So, what do I do? I can’t clamp the CT over the two wires for each phases, because they alternate and aren’t next to each other. If I put the CTs on only one pair of wires, then I’ll only be measuring half of the current, right? I’m told that this panel is a fairly common one – they used four wires to use smaller gauge wire, and the space is very cramped – the wires come around behind all the breakers and make a tight U-turn, so there isn’t really any way to move anything around. Plus, I have a solar generation system, so I need to use one of the MTUs for that, leaving only one MTU for the mains. Do I need to get another MTU? Do I need to exchange this for the 5002 which can support 3 or 4 MTUs, because I only see an option for 1 or 2 MTUs in the gateway setup wizard. I’ll call them after the weekend, but wondering if anyone here knows. Thanks in advance!
Mike, how far back are the wires split into smaller bundles? Can you get access to them further back, before they enter the panel and before they are Y’d into two pairs?