The MS6115 Power Meter from Electus Distribution
You might by now have seen the power meter for sale at Jaycar Electronics, also available directly from Electus Distribution, who seem to be the wholesaler, via RS Electronics, their retailer.
They are the cheapest units on the Australian market, and selling well. They have the Australian N287 Standard tick, so I am satisfied they are at least somewhat safe and reasonably accurate.
Certainly I have tested in on a 60W incandescent bulb and it showed 60W. I tested it on a 18W CFL bulb, and it showed 18W. No smoke came out of the back of the unit, so it’s good enough for me for $40. Alternatives used to cost over $200 so there’s no excuse not to get one.
The unit will show volts, amps, watts, and kWh without any setup, so that is easy. If you want it to record the dollar amount of the power used, you will have to work through the instructions, which are in Engrish. It could conceivably be used to do basic electricity billing. Say you had a caravan park, or a boarding house.
Hopefully the explanation below will add enough clarity to the crappy instructions, to be of use to someone:
Menus
Pressing the FUNC button repeatedly will cycle through the following menus:
Volt AC -> Amp -> Watt-> Max Watt -> kWh -> Total Price -> Total Price 1 -> Total Price 2
Volt AC simply shows the Voltage currently being supplied. The unit can handle from 200V to 276V. We assume it is measuring RMS voltage, not peak to peak. Otherwise we’d not be able to multiply volts by amps to get the power.
Amp show the current being drawn at that instant. It can handle up to 10A of current.
Watts shows the power being drawn by device you have plugged in at any given moment.
Watts max is a register which shows the maximum power drawn at any instant since you last reset that register. Press and hold the FUNC key while in the Watts max function, to reset the register to zero.
kWh is a register which shows the total accumulated energy consumed since you last reset the register. Press and hold the FUNC key within the kWh function, to reset the register to zero.
Total Price which is described as “On time Price” in the engrish instruction sheet, multiplies the kWh consumed by the Price 1 or Price 2 tariffs depending on the time of day and day of week the power is drawn. For this, the Clock must be set correctly (see below).
Price 1 and Price 2 menu functions allow you to set on/off times for various tariffs, and multiply by the power used at that time, to arrive at a total price for a given period. It is possible to set 11 combinations of days (individual days from Monday..Sunday (7), Weekdays only, Monday through Saturday, Saturday and Sunday, Monday through Sunday).
Suppose you are paying a cheaper tariff at night from 10pm-6am, you might set Price 1 to be Monday through Sunday 6am – 10pm, and Price 2 to be Monday through Sunday 10pm – 6am. What you cannot do with this unit, is apply a rate based on consumption, which happens to be the model we use on our bill.
Setting the Price 1 and Price 2
Press FUNC to get to Volt or Current or Power functions. Now press and hold the FUNC key for about 5 seconds. Now press SET and then keep pressing UP. Cycle through the values with UP. Cycle through the options with SET, and press FUNC to exit.
Setting the Clock
Not as easy as it sounds. The UI is not intuitive. The display also is annoying in how it automatically turns itself off after about 3 seconds. I think about 10 seconds would be nice. To set the clock, press FUNC then press SET. The days of the week should be flashing. Repeatedly press UP to cycle through the days, then press SET to move onto setting the hours, and so on. Press FUNC when finished.
Power Factor is the percentage of time the appliance is running over a given period of time.
May 13th, 20086:05 pm at
These power meters are very cool. I purchased one late last year when they were first released. It was great to establish the power consumption of various electrical appliances.
I was amazed at how much power some appliances use when turned off (standby), but still plugged in. For example my 68cm TV uses 68watts when turned on. This amount drops to 17w when in standby. At night as we are off to bed, we now turn the TV off using the on/off switch tv rather than the remote. This drops the power consumption overnight to 0w.
Saving 17w per hour that the TV is ‘off’ overnight works out at saving 62kw per year. If you have a few TV’s stereo’s, DVD players and other occasional use appliances, you could save several thousand Kw of power per year,
November 27th, 200810:51 am at
Thanks for posting simple instructions! I’ve been using the MS6115 to measure appliances around our house, trying to reduce our electricity consumption.
It turned out my beer fridge was using 2.5 kWh/day! Time for a smaller, more efficient replacement, I think.