So you buy local, organic, and reduce/recycle what you can. But what's beyond? Soon after moving, we installed PV and solar hot water systems. Arjen has been working since on various monitoring and control aspects. Wiring more tech into a house is not hard these days, but that's not the point. Our key objective has been to learn more about our use of resources such electricity and hot water. Feedback modifies behaviour, in quite significant ways. This is our story so far. We can see our production and usage live and in historical context, we know whether we're just using solar power, feeding in a surplus or using some from the grid, track or hot water usage, and control our hot water system based on what we've learnt about our hot water needs and solar power availability. We see what's worthwhile, and other lessons learnt and insights gained. From my (@arjenlentz) talk at the Open Source Developers' Conference (@osdconf) 2015 in Hobart TAS (#osdc15) October 2015. There'll also be a video online from early November 2015.

1. Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Illuminating my Family's
Environmental Footprint
By Arjen Lentz
Open Source Developers' Conference
October 2015, Hobart TAS

2. 2Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Our Objectives
● Provide feedback on resource use to family
– Live data
– Hot water & Electricity
– Gain insight → learn
– Influences & modifies behaviour over time!
● Cheap and non-intrusive
● Local, not central control
– Lack of hot water is not cool

3. 3Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Display
on any phone, tablet or computer

4. 4Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Home Network Cabinet

5. 5Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Hot Water Monitoring/Control
Hot water
flow meter

6. 6Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
GigEthernet in Garage – Because.
Power-over-Ethernet

7. 7Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Arduino solar hot water control
Freetronics Arduino gear
Arduino
EtherTen
802.3af
PoE board
RTC
module
Relay driver
module

8. 8Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Booster Relay Ruleset
if (((h >= 14 && h < 20) && temp < 42) ||
((h >= 4 || h < 7) && temp < 40))
{turn on booster relay}
if (temp > 46)
{turn off booster relay}

9. 9Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
UDP → CSV (SHW_FLOW tag)
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:28",6.32,105
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:29",6.32,105
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:30",6.14,102
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:31",6.14,102
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:32",5.96,99
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:33",5.96,99
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:34",5.79,96
SHW_FLOW,"2014-03-08","12:07:35",5.96,99
L/min
(Calc)
# flow impulses
(since last line)

10. 10Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
UDP → CSV (SHW_TEMP tag)
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:19:53",64.12,49.50
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:19:54",64.12,49.56
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:19:57",64.18,49.56
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:03",64.18,49.62
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:04",64.18,49.56
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:05",64.18,49.62
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:11",64.25,49.62
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:17",64.25,49.68
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:22",64.31,49.68
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:27",64.31,49.75
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:38",64.37,49.75
SHW_TEMP,"2014-03-07","15:20:42",64.37,49.81
Collector sensor temp
Vat sensor temp

11. 11Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Raspberry Pi + RFM12B transceiver

12. 12Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Standard
Fusebox

13. 13Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
OpenEnergyMonitor.org

14. 14Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Import/Export
Are we Winning, Overall?
Imported
Total kWh
Exported
Total kWh
It's spring. We run ahead over summer.

15. 15Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Our PV Data @ pvoutput.org

16. 16Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
pvoutput.org neat live graphs!

17. 17Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Lessons & Future
● Behaviour influenced.
– Horays!
● Split hot water system would have been better
– Rather than rooftop
– We think night time exposure leads to more loss
● Approx 1 degree per hour in 320L storage vat
– Better yet: heatpump hot water system
● Use excess PV during day
● More space for extra PV panels
● We're not quite yet ready to go off-grid.

18. 18Illuminating my Family's Environmental Footprint @ OSDC Hobart © 2015 Arjen Lentz CC-BY-SA
Thank You - Questions?
Arjen Lentz
arjen@openstem.com.au