50 cubic metres out — and still counting correctly
My gas meter has two data sources: an accurate one days behind, and a current one with a wrong starting value. Only together are they worth anything.
Topic
Energy and cost
Meters, standby load, forecasts. What is on the bill before it arrives.
10 articles
The UPS shuts nothing down — and that is deliberate
Every guide says: shut down cleanly on power failure. Mine keeps the Pi running. The reason lies in a property no UPS puts in its datasheet.
My flat tells me the electricity bill in advance
At 23:50 on the last day of the month a notification arrives with consumption, cost components and the expected bill. What the forecast can do and where it ends.
Three cities, three data sources, one question: when do I leave?
Departure boards in Merano, Kapfenberg and Vienna. The same idea built three times — and three times I got it wrong in a different place.
The switch says requested, not running
The pellet stove has no network. The relay only reports that heat was asked for — whether it is burning is revealed solely by the ignition spike in the power draw.
The model with more physics was the worse one
Four years of gas use reconstructed from 71 meter readings. My temperature model was physically sound — and off by 110 cubic metres.
The power nets out, the energy does not
The house meter measures three phases. It nets the power against itself but adds the energy up — which makes its counters useless for the dashboard.
Measure fast, set slow
The solar battery offers nothing locally. The trigger arrives instantly from the house, the action travels halfway round the internet — that decides the design.
I checked 25 invoice lines — and my own device was wrong
Two years of gas bills recalculated line by line: largest deviation 0.016%. The number that was wrong came from my own meter reader.
The current clamp sat differently from the plan
One meter in the distribution box, two clamps — and the assignment was swapped. A lamp proved it, its own reading only 1.2 watts away.