home energy usage - new shiny graphs!
Mood: geeky
Posted on 2010-07-06 11:09:00
Tags: projects
Words: 163

I've been wanting to play around with Tableau Public, so I decided to revamp my home energy usage graph.

Anyway, the new version is here, and I think it does a good job of showing the difference that having someone upstairs during the day makes, as well as the new A/C unit we bought a few months ago. I used a quadratic fit which seems to fit the data much better than the linear one I used before (you can mouseover the trend lines to see the equations!). Now I just need to wait to get some more data points!

You can click on points in either graph to see the corresponding one in the other, and Tableau makes it easy to download the raw data I used. If you select "True" for "Upstairs during day?" you can really see the effect of the new A/C. (green points vs. orange)

Thanks to Robert Morton for his help in getting it up and running!

3 comments

Comment from spchampion:
2010-07-06T11:20:49+00:00
Very cool! Where are you getting the usage data? Is it your monthly bill or are you using some kind of measurement device?

Comment from gregstoll:
2010-07-06T12:59:50+00:00
Thanks! Just the monthly bill - Austin Energy has a nice online interface where you can easily see the kWH used/day of the cycle.

Comment from spchampion:
2010-07-06T21:38:51+00:00
Interesting. I can't say that National Grid has a similar system at all here in Massachusetts. Very sad, but then again so much of my energy consumption up here comes in the form of things like gas and heating oil. Figuring out how those are consumed is nearly hopeless.

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