How to store meter values for electricity ? ( and is this what AMEE should be used for ? )

[smallcog]

Hello,

I researching a carbon accounting project which would be based solely
on energy usage figures, e.g meter readings . In the basic form each
user will input the readings on his gas/elec/oil meter on the monday
of each week. I don't really need to have AMEE calculate a monthly
total for me as the plan is to display the evolution of energy usage
over time showing all meter readings in a chart. I suppose you could
say that I'm only using AMEE to store a series of data-values and will
then use the AMEE emission factor to work out emissions myself. Is
this a way that AMEE can be used or does it insist on doing
calculations on a per month basis ? I've been through the Profile and
Data API's and haven't found a clear answer to my question. If it
comes back here I'll gladly update the documentation to reflect the
answer.

Best regards, Colm

[James Smith]

Hi Colm,

You *can* use AMEE that way, though if you store your data values in
AMEE, then you get a monthly total back anyway, so you wouldn't need
to do the calculation yourself at all.

There is newly-added support for meter readings in the /home/energy/
electricity and /home/energy/quantity categories. For each month, you
can add a "last" and "current" reading, which correspond to the start
and end of the month. AMEE will then work out the difference and
calculate the co2 value for you.

The main issue with your requirement is that you want to do this
weekly. AMEE is currently locked to a monthly timeslice - we can't
support times shorter than that at the moment. However, there is work
happening on that at the moment, so in the next few weeks we should
have a way for you to input data weekly, or at whatever time
resolution you like.

cheers,
James