Configuration for shared electricity supply

General questions and discussions focused around the EKM Metering System. Discuss your meters, installations, and meter communications here.
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skykatprop
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:36 am

Configuration for shared electricity supply

Post by skykatprop »

I'm looking into this system to allow me to better configure a rental property where I have a single 200a electrical supply. I have a renter in a single family home on the property and a separate shop. Main power into the house has separate breakers supplying power to a distribution panel in the house and one in my shop. From looking through your information here and YouTube, with some reading between the lines, I think I can do the following:

- V3 or V4 meter
- Two CTs for the two 120v lines into the house distribution panel
- Push device plus some way of getting on internet to send data to cloud

I should be able to set all of this up in a weathertight, locking enclosure adjacent to the main utility metered supply into the house, including some type of cellular internet routing situation. I may or may not need to add in a gas meter (since it's supplied by the same utility and I may not be able to split accounts) and water meter (if I want to run water to my shop).

It looks like your software supports some form of billing service allowing me to recover costs from tenants, but it's not very clear what that entails or what payment services it may support if that's included. Some information on this would be very helpful. I use a rental management company for marketing, rent collection, and some maintenance and would like to give them the capability to access data/reporting and include whatever utilities I meter with this setup within their service. Otherwise, I can make that a separate billable; I just need to know how it works.

If someone could weigh in on whether I have this figured correctly, I would greatly appreciate it.
Jameson
Posts: 860
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:42 pm
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Contact:

Re: Configuration for shared electricity supply

Post by Jameson »

Your proposed system looks good. If you are at all considering water or gas metering in the future I would go with the Omnimeter Pulse v.4 rater than the v.3.
I should be able to set all of this up in a weathertight, locking enclosure adjacent to the main utility metered supply into the house, including some type of cellular internet routing situation.
Yes, you can either use your own enclosure or we have enclosures available here: https://www.ekmmetering.com/collections/enclosure
We also have a cellular modem available here (comes with cellular data): https://www.ekmmetering.com/collections ... ika-rut240
It looks like your software supports some form of billing service allowing me to recover costs from tenants, but it's not very clear what that entails or what payment services it may support if that's included.
Yes, you will want to check out www.encompass.io which is our cloud data presentation and rudimentary billing platform. Here is some information about encompass billing: https://help.ekmmetering.com/support/so ... ting-bills
I use a rental management company for marketing, rent collection, and some maintenance and would like to give them the capability to access data/reporting and include whatever utilities I meter with this setup within their service.
When you buy 1 or more Omnimeters and an EKM Push gateway, we send you your own unique EKM Push key. If you were to share that key with your billing company, they would have full access to the meter data and could then create their own bills or use encompass to create bills.

But from everything you have said, it sounds like you are on the right path!
Jameson
EKM METERING
http://www.ekmmetering.com
831.425.7371
skykatprop
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:36 am

Re: Configuration for shared electricity supply

Post by skykatprop »

Thank you, @Jameson. I also saw mention of an API to your cloud-stored data. I assume that's all part of encompass.io. I just tried your demo over there, and it threw an error. Do you have API documentation somewhere you can share, or better yet, a sandbox of some kind for developers? I'd love to take a look to understand how that works and what the options are. I could see building an interface of some kind to handle the data exactly the way I need.
Jameson
Posts: 860
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 7:42 pm
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Contact:

Re: Configuration for shared electricity supply

Post by Jameson »

Thank you for your report of an error with the encompass demo account. Do you know how to recreate the error? Do you have a small computer screen? That will show an error if you do.

We are very open to how you choose to utilize the EKM Metering data. We provide both the v.3 and v.4 Omnimeter serial protocols and code examples (to communicate with the meters directly over RS-485). We also show how you can access your EKM Push data over the internet (by interfacing your application to our cloud data). We have both Real-Time and Summary (historical) API data from the EKM Push cloud-based system. For more information, please visit our Developer Portal that includes an explanation of our Open APIs: https://documents.ekmmetering.com/api-d ... altime-api

All of our software options (including www.encompass.io) use these APIs, I would take a look at the Real-Time API and the Summary API for starters.

The Omnimeter serial protocol info is further down the webpage, using the above link, under "RS-485 Communications.”

Another good place to look for information is our forum. If you still have questions feel free to ask us or ask them here or in the Developer's Sandbox on our forum: viewforum.php?f=3

An additional resource for you to use is our EKM Dash software. We have included a section called "Hex Inspector" under Help that lets you "see" how our software reads your meters over RS485 or interfaces with the EKM Push system API data.

We encourage our customers or other data presentation companies to interface their systems with EKM Meter data, and will do what we can to help you integrate our data (including electricity, water and gas meter data) into your system. What data format are you looking for? We provide json, xml, csv, and html data via our API. Here is a sample link that calls for 100 reads from an electric meter in json format:
https://api.ekmpush.com/readMeter?key=M ... 0350000900
And html format:
https://api.ekmpush.com/readMeter?key=M ... 0350000900

Here is the API builder for the meter above (this is an electric-only meter): https://api.ekmpush.com/account/urlbuil ... os_Angeles

Here is a link to the data from all Omnimeters in that account: https://api.ekmpush.com/account.html?key=MTAxMDoyMDIw
Jameson
EKM METERING
http://www.ekmmetering.com
831.425.7371
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