Thanks very much for setting me right!

Tom

“If they have two phases from a 3 phase system, the math is not going to be right across the two phases. They can connect power to one phase, cap the red wire and set up the system as 2 wire to give them a value, but it will not be accurate.” :-(

OTOH, I see some mention in the TED forum of providing a ‘manual calibration’ capability via firmware update in the near future. Hopefully that will allow users in this situation to work around it. Or maybe wait for the multi-phase version projected for this summer?

Anyway, I hope it works out for you and the many apartment dwellers who’d like to use one.

From Tom’s wikipedia link, 3rd paragraph under ‘Single Phase Loads’…

“In multiple-unit residential buildings in North America, three-phase power is supplied to the building but individual units have only single-phase power formed from two of the three supply phases.”

I don’t think this is a correct explanation. In some apartment buildings, it is true that a given apartment was served by only one phase of a split phase system, in which case the service would have only one hot and a neutral.

I believe I recall correctly that building codes require services provide between no less than 106v; most appliances for North America are designed to handle 110v to 120v. See a fuller description (especially the section on single-phase loads) at WikiPedia’s article on 3-phase power. I may be wrong on this, but I think it’s correct.

There’s some good new stuff, including a link to a TED 5000 troubleshooting guide at Energy Circle’s site that might help isolate the problem.

Tom

Since you live in an apartment building, your electrical service is probably taken from 2 phases of a 3-phase system. This means that while each ‘leg’ will measure 120V (say, at a receptacle), the voltage measured across both phases will equal 208V, that is 120V x 3(sqrt).

The issue is the TED5000 is made for 120/240V ’split-phase’ residential service, so it is just halving your 208V and reporting ~104V per leg. I don’t think that this would necessarily result in incorrect power reporting, since W = V x A and presumably the TED is using your 208V in that equation.

A friend of mine has asked the manf directly about this, I will reply again with the definitive answer if he gets it.

Nice write up. In your installation instructions, you should probably mention the little red dots on the current transducers need to point in the same direction when putting the clamps around the wires.

As for the ssl connection. I too am having trouble with the performance of it (even on the local network). I suspect the cryptography needed to support SSL is overwhelming the embedded processor. This is on low end of my priority list for things to do with the TED5000, so I may get to it. There is a setting on one of the advanced pages (I’m not on my local network at the moment) that you can configure it so that unless you authenticate you cannot change the settings. I think you may be able to set it so that someone cannot see your data without authenticating. This is where the https would come in handy. (I’ve applied the latest firmwares for Gateway and MTU as of a week ago – so that is probably why I see this option)

I have also found the display disappointing in construction, battery life and range. I much prefer accessing it on my iPhone as well.

Here are my initial reflections of my TED5000 :-)
http://www.greenlifestyleconsulting.com/2010/02/first-days-with-our-ted-5000-home.html

Thanks!
Jon

It is my sincere hope that the TED people deal with some of these issues — there’s really no reason that a single ZigBee signal shouldn’t reach the far corners of even the largest house … especially if you have a noise-free circuit that is near the center of the house.

But alas, we wait…

TED 5000 is talking to Google PowerMeter (if you use a “whois” tool, you’ll see both IP addresses are Google’s). I assume you have this (incredibly useful) feature of TED 5000 enabled. If you do not, I would be very interested to know.

Tom