Installation starts at your breaker box -- here's mine with the cover removed.
The TED5000 kit I bought came with these two donut clips -- you clip them around the main power lines that go into each bank of circuit breakers.
A close-up of one of the donut clips -- from high school physics (what up Mr. McKinsey!), I remember that these must use the Biot-Savart Law to measure current flow in the wire. And knowing the voltage (120V here in the States), it's easy to go from current (amperes) to power (watts).
Those donut clips connect into this box which measures the real-time power (watts) usage every 5 seconds. It then sends this data over my home's powerlines to the 1) TED5000 Gateway and 2) the TED5000 display.
Another shot of the TED5000 power measurement device (they call it an MTU).
The red and black wires in the foreground are from the MTU -- they run into one of the breakers in my box. This is how the power measurement is transmitted to the TED5000 gateway.
The TED5000 Gateway! 1) This plugs into the wall in my home office -- it has a web server running inside of it and grabs the data from the circuit box downstairs. 2) it plugs into my Internet router (via ethernet) so I can access the web interface to configure the system, and so it can access the Internet and upload my data to Google's Powermeter product.
Finally, this is the real-time energy usage display that sits on our kitchen counter for everyone to see. When we leave the house, we glance at this and ask ourselves, "Hmm, that number's high, what lights did I leave on?"
The TED 5000 Gateway's web interface. I don't use this much, except when I first setup the device... setup screenshot next.
The TED5000 Setup Wizard. The main thing here is you have to enter the device IDs for the MTU (the thing in your breaker box) and any displays you have.
And you have to specify how much you pay for energy, so it can approximate your costs. You can setup a simple flat-rate (which is what I have) or a tiered and/or time-of-use rate plan.
This shows my energy utilization in November through Google's Powermeter. It just helps to provide useful visualizations of my usage data. I use this to compare month to month. It also sends me a weekly usage summary on e-mail. I like Google's visualization better than the ones that the TED web interface produces. Plus this iGoogle gadget can also be viewed on the iPhone (next screenshot).
My energy usage in November, also viewed on my iPhone.
The settings screen for Google Powermeter
