[weirdheater]

Update…

I’ve been paying close attention to what happens when my boiler runs, and I’ve gathered some more relevant data points.

First, I did shut off the circuit with the fridge on it, and it still registers 13-14 Watts when the boiler is drawing maximum power (around 9.2 kW). When one of the boiler’s heating elements turns off, the power reading on the shut-off fridge circuit goes down by about 2 Watts per element. Weirdly, at least once the reading went to zero when I re-energized the circuit with no change in the boiler’s power draw (all 4 heating elements energized). And then it started registering a very noisy signal spiking from 0 – 5 Watts when one of the elements turned off.

Another strange thing is that the CT for the fridge circuit registers about 5 Watts when that circuit is shut off and my electric kettle (totally separate circuit) is turned on!

I also noticed another circuit (some outlets and lights) showing about 7 Watts when it’s turned off at the breaker and the boiler is on. It’s also on the same phase as the other circuits that are showing activity when they shouldn’t be.

So that’s a total of 3 circuits that show power consumption, even when shut off, while the boiler is running. The unusual power consumption fluctuates with the power consumption of the boiler as elements turn off and on.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the voltage across all circuits including the mains dips by about 5V whenever the boiler is running. I guess because it’s such a huge load. Could that be causing the Emporia device to read things improperly?

I’m stumped. Any ideas what could be happening?

[Author]

Posts