Many people have installed solar panels on their roofs, but don't know when is the best time to run power-consuming equipment such as clothes dryers or roast meat in an electric oven.

What they need is a monitoring system with an easy-to-use application that can instantly tell them how much solar energy they are producing, how much electricity their house is using, and how much solar energy is exported or imported from the grid.

I have reviewed Powerpal before, it is the best gadget and application for monitoring and obtaining information about the power usage of the grid, if you don’t have solar energy and want to get excellent graphs and real-time 24/7 super accurate usage Data, which will help you reduce your electricity bill.

The Powersensor is small in size and light in weight, and is powered by a lithium-ion battery that is charged via USB. According to my estimation, you only need to charge the sensor once or twice a year.

Australian technology company DiUS launched Powersensor at the end of 2019 two years ago. They market Powersensor as a compact smart device that uses the owner’s Wi-Fi network to measure and send detailed energy usage data to the cloud.

Families can better understand and optimize their energy usage patterns, thereby saving money, because Powersensor enables people to understand their solar power generation and better manage consumption.

The full release of Powersensor was released after successful trials in 300 households in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales. DiUS said that these experiments show that Powersensor can create the right behavior changes for people, reduce grid energy consumption in a tangible way, thereby saving money and achieving higher self-consumption of solar power generation.

Reduction Revolution, the exclusive distributor of Powersensor, is priced at US$299 and can be installed on your own, which means you don’t need to pay additional installation costs for electricians.

Dius stated that their Powersensor technology is supported by a secure IoT cloud platform hosted on AWS, and carefully guides residents through a simple, fast, and easy-to-follow self-installation process through iOS apps and mobile apps provided in the Google Play store.

I found the simple DIY promise to be correct. Thanks to Ryan of Reduction Revolution, who helped me:

In these 3 boxes, you will find a grid power sensor, a solar power sensor and a plug. These sensors forward their data to the Internet via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

After installing the Powersensor Android app and following the quick start guide and safe installation guide, I connected a sensor to the appropriate cable duct between my solar inverter and power board and another sensor, which is located on my power board Next to the service fuse in the meter box.

Follow my screenshots in the photo gallery below to understand the installation process, including security warnings:

The plug needs to be set within your 2.4ghz W-Fi coverage area and must be within about 5-10 meters of your power distribution panel meter box. As far as I know, you need to run a high power consumption device plugged into it at least once a week to maintain Powersensor Calibration so that the collected and displayed data is accurate.

In order to be able to track your grid electricity cost, you need to enter your electricity price details and let your electricity retailer let you know your daily electricity bill, solar energy bill (FIT) and your electricity bill, such as: flat rate or Time to use.

You must enter all these details in the Powersensor application. If you have seasonally changing usage time rates, you must let the Powersensor application know when your price and rate time change every few months.

For example, I have Ausgrid Time of Use Tariff, so my weekends are off-peak/shoulder throughout the whole year, but in different months, the price will change from Monday to Friday, such as from November 1st to March 31st Today, it’s the peak summer price from 2pm to 8pm.

After the first calibration, you can use Powersensor to view real-time numbers to calculate the amount of solar energy you generate, the amount of electricity used by the house, and the amount of solar energy output or input from the grid.

Once it is up and running, you can also view current and previous days, weeks, months, etc. electricity consumption, solar power and grid electricity cost data, and view how much equipment plugged into the Powersensor is used, such as: vacuum Detergents, kettles, etc.

If you have a solar system, you need a power monitoring technology solution to help you make the most of your own power and reduce the amount of power you use from the grid. There are several possibilities:

If you are in the 1st or 2nd situation, then a DIY installation product like Power Sensor may be your best cost-effective option for calculating solar power generation, house usage power, and solar power generation by exporting or importing from the grid.

If you use the nearest Sungrow or Fronius inverter in the third situation, solar analysis is very easy for your solar electrician to enable, and installation and a 5-year subscription only cost about $200-300. If you have other inverter brands, please buy Powersensor.

If you are in situation 4, congratulations! Solar analysis is currently the best way to monitor new solar systems with consumption/export meters installed, because it provides you with a lot of useful data and information about poor solar performance and solar power by comparing your solar power generation with your other systems. The neighborhood is warned of possible failure conditions. I will review Solar Analytics soon.

Over time, I will monitor the Powersensor product and hope it will develop. It is convenient to have user-configurable thresholds for trigger notifications, for example: solar power is above/below a specific number

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