I’ve had my eye on the TED device for quite some time. It allows you to monitor your power consumption at the whole house level. I’ve used in the past a Kill-A-Watt which is handy to monitor energy usage by a single device.
The TED 1000 had a closed software package, but showed promise. The TED 5000 provides a web based API to both view your data – and provides a manner to export it. The TED 5000 is one of the few devices supported by Google Powermeter, while I don’t plan to make use of the Google service I do hope they figure out how to collaborate with the community better.
Ontario has a Smart Meter plan on the way, but the roll out is taking a while and I really don’t trust them to get the web tools right in the near term. The TED 5000 is available now, and the data is easy to get to if I want to re-graph it in some way.
I ordered the basic package (TED 5000-G) – there are two basic parts that come with it. The MTU (Measuring Transmitting Unit) and the Gateway, each packaged in their own little box. The first (and scary part) is installing the MTU as it it attached to your electrical panel. The MTU communicates over the power lines to the Gateway (no need to run wires from one to the other). The Gateway needs to be plugged into your router/network and will aquire an IP address via DHCP. You interact with the Gateway with a web browser to view/configure the data.
The rest of this posting is about the install procedure, read on for gory details.