For guys my age, solar power systems are the equivalent of a model train set. We know we’re too old for this shit, but we can kind of get away with it, because it helps the household save money and it’s also in the interests of the environment. Here’s why ammeters are a critical piece of the puzzle.
Fun with Ammeters
Before anyone gives serious thought to going solar, it’s important to get a realistic reading of your actual home energy consumption. Ammeters can help you on this journey by giving you an accurate appliance-by-appliance reading of your usage.
When I first got my ammeter, I went slightly mad with it. I went about testing each available appliance to get a read of its actual energy consumption. I even recorded the results on a spreadsheet – like a total dork!
Nevertheless, capturing this data helped me to build a case for solar very quickly. Moreover, even once the solar installation was up and running, it helped me to brainstorm ideas about how to optimise my power use while the solar panels were running.
At an approximate cost of $20, these devices can give you a very accurate reading, down to the wattage or watt-hour, of each individual appliance in your home.
Helps you isolate the key offenders
By isolating power use, you can quickly get a glimpse of which appliances consume the most power. This can help you ration your energy more effectively and plan your solar mix better.
Some devices consume far more than others, and once again, the Pareto Principle applies. You want to use ammeters to identify the 20% of appliances that use 80% of power.
Ammeters give you the planning advantage
If you can isolate your power consumption down to specific devices, then this can help you to plan the usage pattern of your devices across the day to ensure that you manage to get the most out of your solar mix. Keep in mind that solar power systems generate energy like an arc across the day, reaching a peak during the mid day and gradually tailing off in the evening.
What appliances will you have on during daylight hours? And how much energy will they consume? And when will you use them? Planning this idea out can help you forecast your consumption, and stop you from overrunning on your power consumption or buying too much solar for your household needs.
Another level of analysis
For many people, going out to their smart meter and taking hourly readings of their energy consumption may simply be too much work. Using an ammeter to reconstruct your consumption can be a simpler and dare I say lazier alternative. While I don’t recommend it for the purposes of making a major energy investment in solar, because it will never give you a complete or comprehensive reading of your actual usage, it can give you a quick indication of whether your household uses enough actual energy during daytime to warrant a solar installation. Essentially, you can use an ammeter to qualify whether or not you may be a good case for solar power, without committing to further research.
It only needs to be plugged in for a few seconds for ammeters to be able to get an accurate read of the power consumption stats of any device.
Ammeters are an important step in going solar because they can help you to qualify whether your home will benefit from a solar installation. While they won’t do all the work for you, they can give you an indication, and this indication can save you thousands of dollars and hours of time in making a good decision, as well as helping you to optimise your usage down the line.
So yeah. Lots of reasons why it will be a good idea!
