emporia Vue Energy Monitor with Expansion Module | Real Time 24/7 Smart Home Electricity Monitor/Meter with 8 Sensors | Solar / Net Metering | Track Circuits Without the Guesswork | 3-Phase Option

I have been looking into alternative electric rate plans and needed to get minute by minute usage info to figure out what plans worked best. I can't believe how well this gives me the needed data. Installation if pretty easy for a typical DIYer. You have to keep in mind electric boxes were never intended to have more stuff installed in them so no matter what you do this is going to look like a somewhat messy installation. Parts of the box are ALWAYS live so BE CAREFUL.What I learned from my installation.... if you let the big main CTs get too close to each other it messes up their readings. My big feed comes in the bottom and wraps around to the top where it connects to the input terminals for the whole panel. It's hard to get to where they are at the top so I put them at the bottom which you can see in the photo. Since they clip on loosely they both slipped down (you don't see that in the photo) and were just about touching each other. When in that position they no longer read correctly but read way too low. Obviously there is interference if they get too close so don't let that happen. I have a regular electricians clamp around ammeter which I used to verify that the Emporia was getting the right readings. It seems to be right on the money. If my regular meter says 70 amps the Emporia will be reading within about an amp of that. To keep the CTs from slipping down I put plastic zip ties around the wire to keep them in position. I also took direct readings for my Air conditioners amps right at the compressor and compared it to the individual Emporia reading from it's CTs and as with the main CTs got essentially the same exact readings.I have also compared the several full days reported kWh total from my utility with what Emporia reports. They are nearly identical, the difference is less than 1.5%.I have downloaded the data file and imported it into an excel spreadsheet I wrote to calculate my demand factor for each 30 minutes. The download worked and imported without any issues.For the price of this system it's an amazing bargain and works very well.

My husband and I are both data geeks, but this device/app has brought things to a whole new level of geekery in our house. We love it. I just got their email announcing new software features, and I felt like I should write a review because of how much we love this thing.We bought this unit (with the 8 clamps) in June of 2020, and it's still going strong four months later, and we still look at it at least once per week - if not daily. Because my husband is the son of an electrician, we felt fairly comfortable working in our breaker box. This allowed us to tinker with 2-3 different setups to learn more about the different circuits in our house. (We would love to have one clamp per circuit, but that's not possible with this unit. 8 is the max for this generation. Will have to research to see if Gen 2 can support more.)With regards to their claim of "you will use less power" - we can add our anecdotal evidence to this. YES. In particular, we started monitoring our _brand new_ electric water heater very closely and despite it being as modern as they can be (in the standard tank style) - it is still an energy hog, relative to our other appliances. To help mitigate this, I've installed easy to use valves on our shower heads (which were already the "low" flow style) and that dropped our electric bill significantly. We still take a "normal" shower from time to time, but it turns out a lot of the time you don't need the water running while you're lathering up - and it can make a significant difference to both your water usage and your electrical usage.The other discovery was that our fridge is probably sitting on the high side of electrical use. That will be harder to replace due to its space constraints, but it is definitely on the list (for when it starts to not be reliable.)Anywho - back to the product - the app is amazing. Simple. Straightforward. Down to the second (with some caveats about low watts being harder to measure and thus less accurate -well documented - not a problem) measurements allow you to track down that wall wart that you didn't know was still pulling 40 watts to charge your X or Y device in the corner. (Monitors also seem to be silent culprits as they're often acting as usb charging hubs.) I'm not saying you shouldn't charge your devices, but it is nice to know when/where/howmuch is being used.Their new software updates allow us to set alerts, and the ability to download the raw data from an s3 bucket is so ... awesome. I'm super excited to purchase some smart plugs by them because of how much I love their ecosystem so far. It just feels like they're investing in the right directions. Sure, no web app - but they're a small company putting out a reliable product, and their target market is going to have an iPhone or Android phone.(Also, did I mention it is subscription free? I LOVE this so much. I hope they never change that.)I don't know if this review really does this product justice - so I'm just going to say this...If you love data, and if you love the idea of quantifying your consumption, and if you want to support a small company doing good in the world, and if you have enough comfort level working in a breaker box -- you shouldn't hesitate to purchase an Emporia Vue product.I am not being paid for this review. I'm just someone who uses FakeSpot and saw that sometimes the Emporia Vue products have negative ratings, and I couldn't stand the idea that someone would discount this product based on that data. I love FakeSpot, but something is wrong with their algorithm here. This is the a cool gadget worth your time and money. Honest.