In the insights reporting I occassionaly find spikes in the report like displayed below. As I download the data for tracking energy consumption it disturbs the results. Is there a way to resolve this?
Trying to do
View/download energy reports of devices like Coolcam and Fibaro plugs
How to do this
Select a powerplug that tracks energy consumption. Filter a period of time
Expecting to see
Regular incremental line of power consumption
observed result
Spikes over 2 million A or Kwh value
These are transient spikes. They are real however skewed in time from the relatively low sampling rate.
All contact switches, appliances having transformers and especially motors when switched on generate enormous surges in current and voltage that oscillates then quickly calm to steady state. Electric motors can be extremely noisy.
Although these transients can spike to thousands of volts, they only lasts for thousandth of seconds and so mostly harmless. They are like looking through spinning airplane propellers. You can barely can see them. Electronics however are sensitive to these spikes but there they use coil and capacitors to smooth the spikes to protect the electronics.
So if the refrigerator suddenly kicks in the electric motor surges with thousands of volts throughout the house and even outside the house. The further away the source of the surge the more the surge is induced and suppressed it gets. So you are likely not getting a lot of surges from next door but this can occur. Switching on a simple light bulb can also generate these spikes though smaller than from an electric motor.
These days in the era of microprocessors all over the house it makes sense to install whole house surge suppressors. Electronics can suddenly stop working because of a surges. Cheap extension cord surge suppressors by themselves are mostly junk but something.
If your meter is sampling at once per minute or 10 minutes it will rarely catch a reading of a surge on the up or down swing because the surge is very short but it’s only a matter of time. Then suddenly your meter is reporting a 50,000 watt draw! But It’s correct! Where it’s wrong is for how long because you won’t get another sampling until whenever that is. So the kWh calculations for that sampling will be way off. The truth is the spike is so thin you might as will ignore it.
Programmers could recognize these spikes and toss the reading out as noise.
