Initially we intended to put large hall effects on each of those three major branches but then realized we only really needed two of them (solar & batt) and we can extrapolate the value of the third (Load). Most importantly, we would like to measure the balance of current in the three major branches of an off grid system: the Solar (always positive), the Load (always negative), and the Battery (+/- depending on the other two). However, we still need to measure the current of some additional DC loads that do not go through the inverter and we also need to measure the voltage levels of our battery bank. We are also using a stock EmonTX to measure the AC output of our Outback VFX3648 Inverter. We are using the standard EmonPi to monitor all incoming grid power though our main breaker box. We run a woodshop on solar power, but some parts of the shop (lighting, mini fridge, office computer) are still on the grid. So far we’ve spent the majority of our effort working on the voltage monitoring portion. The battery bank voltage needs to be stepped down for input into the Arduino.Current must be measured by either shunt resistors (invasive) or hall effect sensors. ![]() ![]() ![]() The major differences between this and the standard Emon setup: We’re selling off the extras for anyone that’s interested. Ultimately, we ended up designing a custom PCB for the voltage monitor and sent the files off to OSH Park to have them printed. There’s been several posts about this topic and we’ve used that knowledge to help point us in the right direction. Since most of the OpenEnergyMonitor ecosystem is geared towards grid-tied AC systems, we’ve spent the past few weeks working on new functionality that will allow us to monitor and log the power and energy readings from our off-grid setup.
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