What RFX components to buy?

[Illumina]

Hello all!

I'm new to the forums, and a complete newbie to the topics on this forum, so sorry in advance if I ask the wrong questions.

I've searched the forum, but couldn't find the answer I was looking for, so here goes:

Problem: I just recently received an electricity bill asking me to pay 2400 euros for 11.000kWh extra consuming in the past year.
Turns out something was broken in the heating system causing it to run at max power for a long time.
Ofcourse I now want to measure energy consumption on a more regular base than once a year

I have nothing installed at the moment, but have a Windows 2008 R2 server in my fusebox space.
I want to measure energy consumption for the entire house on an hourly (or maybe every minute) basis.
I have a lot of experience in C# programing in Visual Studio 2005/08/10
I may want to measure more then just the total energy consumption sometime in the future

So here's my question:
Am I correct when I think I need to buy the following to do so:
1 x RFXMeter with pulse counter, Order code: 70095, € 103.77, as shown on http://www.rfxcom.com/sensors.htm
1 x Photo sensor, Order code: 70093, € 11.42, as shown on http://www.rfxcom.com/sensors.htm (or is this one included in the "RFXMeter with pulse counter" package?)
1 x 433.92MHz receiver with USB (1 port), Order code: 80002, € 115.43, as shown on http://www.rfxcom.com/receivers.htm

I can then start measuring using Homeseer, and program my own software later?
Or Am I missing something? Overkill? Other options?

Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for answering!

Arjan

[Snelvuur]

You want to buy a rfxmeter with pulse counter, and you want to measure electricty right?
order number 70087 actually comes with a device which you can clamp on your main wire so it measure complete usage of the house (unless you have 3x power coming in)

But if you want to watch the pulse with the sensor thats also fine.. (and yes you need to have the sensor too)

[Illumina]

Thank you for the reply Eric,

With 3x you mean "3-fase"? Then I can't use the clamp you mentioned

[Snelvuur]

yes 3-fase, but i mean you can clamp it on 1 fase, or 3 .. depending on how it comes in.

[John]

I also want to measure my elecriticty consumption. I have a 3 phase system.

Do I need to clamp a RFX power module on all 3 phases directly after the main switch? of the "groepenkast" (electricity cabinet)? Is there always sufficient space in the cabinet to place these modules.

With regards,

John

[yjb]

I've installed the clamps inside the fuse-box(groepenkast). This is probably the easiest, since there won't be any need to separate the individual phases from each other. Basically you will install one clamp on each phase at the point it enters the fuse cabinet before the phase gets distributed to the fuses that protect the individual circuits (groepen).

In my case there was no space issue, it will highly depend on what kind of fuse-box you are using, and how dense it is populated.