[Akiba] Man, after seeing the pictures, I kinda want one, too...[/Akiba]

In the future, when the smart grid is finally here, every home will have a smart meter.  But the future is a long ways off, so there is no sense in waiting. Energy, Inc., the manufacturers of The Energy Detective and the TED 5000 announced on Tuesday, June 30th that the TED 5000 was ready to order. Well, my TED 5000 came by FedEx today and I had it installed and running in around an hour. While I have only had it a few hours, I am very impressed. While I have already covered the TED 5000 once in my post announcing its release date and some off its features, this will be an overview of some of the first things that have caught my attention.

The TED 5000 installs much the same way that the TED 1000 does.  I really dont want to cover installation that much because if done wrong, it can be dangerous.  While I’m not an electrician, I do have a decent amount of knowledge around electrical equipment, so I felt comfortable installing it.  The biggest thing is to ensure the main breaker is turned off so no electricity is in the panel.  But please don’t take this blog post as installation instruction.  There are good installation instructions, getting started guide, and instruction manual that comes with the unit, but if you aren’t that comfortable around electrical equipment call an electrician.  If the electrician is competent he will be done in under 30 minutes as it is not hard at all for someone who knows what they are doing.

I purchased the TED 5000-C, which is the model that comes with the Display Unit.  You can purchase the TED 5000-G which does not come with a display unit and you would just access the data through your computer.  I think the display unit is very cool, so I paid the extra $40 bucks and got it.  The total amount I paid was $239.95 before taxes and shipping. 

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written by HTPCGuy, July 29, 2009

Where did you purchase it from? It does not seem to be on sale anywhere and the TED web site shows it as not availble and TED store does not sell it.

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written by Akiba, July 29, 2009

You have to go to the Energy Detective website and clikc on their "store" button. You might have gone to the TED website which is completely different.

http://www.theenergydetective.com/store

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written by Paul Sandler, September 30, 2009

I am impressed that the TED5000G installs easily. I'm not impressed that they didn't make the CTs show bidirectly current flow. With my solar system installed, if the TED could show negative flow at the meter, I could see when I'm selling electricity back to the grid. Even the 5000SG doesn't net the difference. Poor thinking by the TED design team or poor management decision to forget negative flows. Now I have to figure it out using the logs. Negative numbers in MTD

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written by Akiba, September 30, 2009

Negative current flow detection depends on how you're digitizing the data. It would show up as a negative voltage so you'd have to take it into account on your ADC. I suspect that they prob didn't want to do that since it would cut the resolution in half or require an ADC with higher precision. As for CTs, does the TED use them or shunt resistors? Shunt resistors are cheaper and cheaper = consumer. Haven't checked the specs to know for sure though. Also, shouldn't you be able to calculate the amount you're selling back via your meter? You should have a bidirectional meter if you're an energy provider as well as consumer.

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