My 3 GEM Install

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drdaveradman
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2016 4:16 pm

My 3 GEM Install

Post by drdaveradman » Sun Sep 18, 2016 11:58 am

We built a new house last year and the power usage was above the predictions from the Manual J calculations. We have 3 Geothermal HVAC units, 3 water heaters, and lots of various tech that might be using power. I wanted to understand what was at fault and installed a Brultech monitoring system with 3 GEMs and a dashbox. It's been easy to get going and very useful. The short answer was the hot water recirculation was accounting for most of the power usage. It also identified that one of the Geo units wasn't working as well as the others -- talking to my contractor about that. I also found a couple of my older servers were chewing up a lot of power. Looking at their power usage, I can make the case to replace them with a newer more power efficient single VM server.

Due to the power usage of the geo units, my electrician put in a commercial type power panel outside where the meter is feed by current transformers. There is an 800 amp distribution breaker panel by the transformer and then into the house there are 3 separate 200 amp services. This turned out to be easy with the GEM. I just used one GEM per service. I could really use two more GEMs -- one for a sub panel and one for my outdoor panel at the transformer. But for now, I have the info I really need. For lighting automation, I self installed Lutron Homeworks and the cool thing with this is then that all the lights are separate from other loads in the house so it is easy to monitor lighting power usage.

Here's the first panel. For this panel I had access to the back side of the wall making wiring easy. I shortened all the leads but left a service loop in the panel if I need to move a CT. I found it easiest to tin all the wires when I shortened them to get them into the connectors. The provided labels side along the wires so I didn't have to replace them.
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Here's our house:
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drdaveradman
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2016 4:16 pm

Panel 2

Post by drdaveradman » Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:10 pm

I didn't have anywhere here to store extra wire, so again I shortened the CT leads. Seemed to make most sense to install the GEM upside down to bring in the leads.
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drdaveradman
Posts: 13
Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2016 4:16 pm

3rd panel

Post by drdaveradman » Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:18 pm

In this case, I had a wire chase under the breaker box where the underground wire was spliced. This gave me room to store extra wire for the CTs. Mounting it this close to a metal box made it so that I couldn't install the screws that hold the cover on the bottom half.
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