Monitoring gas consumption
Monitoring Gas usage, that's where my domotica hobby started with, somewhere around
September
2005.
This is my old gas usage chart, created in Excel:
It's not going to be used anymore, since all gas usage data is now stored in a SQL
Server:
The big inspiration to get things going, came from the website of Pieter Knuvers,
www.bwired.nl. He explained how you could use
the digits on the meter dial to detect that the meter is running with an Infrared
device, an opamp and a 1-Wire counter (you can read more about his on
this
page. So this would be my first "project". After a few months, around January 2006,
i could read the gas meter via 1-Wire. After doing reliability tests, writing software,
creating a database, having a very hot summer with little "PC-time", real monitoring started in September 2006.
In january 2007 i started creating chats of all the data i had gathered till then,
cause all those numbers became too much to handle without a graphical presentation.
You can see the charts
here
and
here.
For information on how i monitor my gas usage, look
here
What surprised me most, seeing these charts, was the difference in gas usage for
wintertime compared to summertime. I never realised the contribution in gas usage
for hot water was as small as you can derive from these charts. Nowadays, my wife
and i have a little 'competition' on who uses the smallest amount of gas during
their
daily shower in the morning; most of the time my wife wins, but hey, i also shave
and brush my teeth in the meantime, so i think i'm entitled to use a little bit
more...
Now i'm waiting for the first bill to arrive from the gas-company to see the overall
accuracy of the gas usage monitoring....