Can you see the solar eclipse without glasses?
The electric meter on the side of your house measures energy and because it’s already wireless it’s easy for regular folks to use. But does it measure with enough resolution to supply useful and actionable energy insights and alerts? Forget the technical details of data intervals and resolution for a moment — instead, practical questions like these are best answered with empirical testing and real world data!
Can you see a Tesla Model S charging?

Yep, too easy! We charged in an ordinary outlet in the garage. Since it’s a 10A circuit and 110V we’d expect 1000 watt charge. And there it is a new baseline appeared all night long that was about double our usual always-on baseline. It looks like we put about 12 kilo-watt hours into the Tesla’s battery pack since we did 1000 watts for about 12 hours.
Can you see how much water is in my tea kettle?

It’s certainly easy to find a large 1500 watt load suddenly appear when the tea kettle comes on. But because our power measurement read interval is fast enough and our latency is low enough we are treated to a surprise. We can infer how much water was in the tea kettle! More water takes longer to boil and you turn it off when it whistles. Since the pot was full Tuesday it took longer to heat, compared to Wednesday when we were just reheating the remaining water.
And finally.. can you see the solar eclipse?
This one is a little more difficult. Let’s look at some residential solar data on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. This would be the day before, day of and day after the solar eclipse. A few interesting observations. This data is certainly net solar because we can see the watt-hours go up at night and down during the day. Also interesting, watt-hours trend down. It’s net-negative and always making more power than was used each day.


We know the eclipse peaked here in Denver on Monday at 5:47 PM UTC. And there it is. Instead of seeing a normal solar day, there is a several hour window where we see a reverse curve — rather than a peak generation of 2500 watts, we’re seeing several hours of load curve peaking at 1500 watt load for 15 minutes.
So yes, we can see solar energy without going outside to the balcony and staring directly at the sun.
Access to real-time energy generation and consumption data such as this can help consumers make more informed decisions. A timely alert suggesting that it would be better do laundry the day after the eclipse, when renewables will once again be abundant, is a good example. Beyond the eclipse, consistent access to this information can help individuals make choices that reduce energy demand (or not) based on their unique consumption patterns and preferences.
We built Copper to give everyone insight into when and how they use energy at home. If you’re interested to give energy a voice contact us at copperlabs.com
