Emporia Smart Home Energy Monitor with 16 50A Circuit Level Sensors | Real Time Electricity Monitor/Meter | Solar/Net Metering

Having just dropped a sizeable chunk of our savings on 8.5kW of solar PV and a Tesla Powerwall, we've gotten very conscious of energy use in our home. I wanted a way to measure individual circuit consumption, and after trawling the internet, looking at the technologies and reading reviews, I decided that the Emporia Vue 2 was probably the best bet.Firstly, it's very accurate, as in +/- 1% accuracy from my experience so far. Being mains powered rather than battery powered, the unit can reference the measured circuit phase angle to give very accurate power consumption.Secondly, it's easy to install and setup, though UK consumer units pose certain challenges. More on that later...Thirdly, the App is really well thought out, easy to use, provides a phenomenal level of granularity and is easy to export .CSV data to manipulate in Excel for instance. The level of detail available will easily satisfy even the nerdiest of nerds!Rather than install the first unit in the house, I opted to install it in my garden Office/Workshop/ManCave so that I could tinker around, figure out how it all works and determine the best way to fit it without disrupting the main house supply. SWMBO works long hours from home, much of the time on conference calls, so killing the power/internet/network regularly whilst tinkering wasn't a viable option.The biggest challenge I had is that UK consumer units just don't have much free space in them. Just getting the sensors in there is a fairly tight fit. Trying to shoe-horn the excess sensor cabling, the unit itself and the wi-fi cable into my CU was impossible, so I had to get a little creative. In the end, I opted to mount the unit externally to the CU. I used one of the bottom, 20mm knock-outs, drilled it out to ~23mm and fitted a PG16 gland, which was just big enough to fiddle the (5) sensor plugs and power cables through. I also snipped the heatshrink off the WiFi lead and unscrewed the antenna from the cable, then fitted the antenna directly to the main unit. The unit has no wall mounts, so a few adhesive velcro pads hold it in place.One item the instructions don't cover is UK final ring circuits (ring mains). Reading between the lines in the instructions, you'd think that clamping 1 wire and using a 2.0 X multiplier would be the correct approach, right?Wrong. Ring circuits rarely balance properly. It depends very much on the circuit load and how close it is to one end of the ring vs the other. The right approach is to clamp both wires and use a 1.0 X multiplier. CT sensors measure Total current passing through the sensor, so will measure the sum of the current passing through each wire. Fitting this way gives much more accurate readings.The unit is really easy to configure. Connecting to WiFi is easy and the App is very intuitive.If you want to properly monitor power consumption in your home then this is by far the best option on the market.

This product is really easy to set up if you have plenty of space in your distribution board (the installation guide on your iPad is brilliant) I had to do a bit of moving around in mine to make space for the CTs and to be honest I would recommend getting an electrician for the install (it will still be worth it). I have 2 boards next to each other (one for automation) and managed to get the main device sat in trunking in between, then it ends up being a nice install. If you take a bit of time with the install you’ll find it will benefit more in the long run and it’s definitely worth rechecking all your connections after as you’ll be moving cables around and you won’t want loose connections. Also as a note I completely isolated the power whilst I worked on the install. Once I restored power the rest of the setup is very easy. It finds the device via Bluetooth then connects to your wi-fi (so you also have remote access) and once you name your circuits and add them to the app your away (when I followed the start up it came up with an error as only one phase was detected but I carried on without fixing as I assumed this was normal as there was only one phase and it seems to work fine) what is really outstanding about this product is you can monitor individual circuits to see what devices cost to run in real time or over a period of time e.g kettle, tumble dryer and induction hob won’t be going on again in my house 😃😃..You can also discover how little items are to run, I thought my air heat recovery system will be costing a fortune but it runs on 100w (same as an old style light bulb). I also realised having certain items on standby was costing more than I thought. Prepare to turn into a geek for the day switching equipment on and off to see what it uses.. By the way at first I thought you could only use the dollar sign as a currency but you can change it easily in the app and put in your usage cost and bill date too. It also has a proper iPad app and not a phone one converted, the app is very impressive. I’ve installed a fair few monitoring devices commercially and residential and for the cost of this one and what’s included it’s brilliant.

Es la mejor forma de controlar el gasto de energía.

I tried this system because I just installed a solar system on the house and wanted to track my net power usage through the grid. In Alberta you can switch plans throughout the year to take advantage of times when you're producing rather than importing power. This system gives me that data, and I can view it via a website or phone app, which works with no issues.What really attracted me to this was the fact I could also track 16 individual circuits as well. It's been very informative to see where I'm using power, and again the app / website is easy and convenient.Installation was pretty straight forward as long as you're comfortable working on your main panel. The app has a step by step guide which walks you through the install. I made a small mistake by hooking up both voltage sensors to the same leg of the panel, and it picked up the error and told me how to correct it.The biggest challenge is definitely dealing with all the extra CTs and wires and the main unit in the panel. I had to move a few breakers around to make room for the unit, and my panel is now completely stuffed with all the extra wires. But there's no way around that if you want to monitor your circuits at the breaker.I also like this unit because you have the option to switch it over to open source. I don't care too much, but if you don't like the idea of sending your private power consumption data to a distant web server, it's possible to re-flash the unit using ESPHome to make it fully open source so you can keep the monitoring local to your own network.Overall it's a great product and you get a lot of good, flexible hardware for the price.

You need space in your distribution board to fit the sensors.I have 16 fitted, it would be great if it could extend further but that is the limit.I have it installed 10 months and the data is most helpful to understand your usage. From the usage pattern I was able to see how my heat pump was not operating efficiently and I made programming changes to the heat pump that saved me over 80 euro per month during the heating season.The data goes to the company’s servers and you read the data from there. This may be a problem if they ever start charging for the service. But for now it is free. Do independent research yourself if you are concerned about this aspect. But for my application, I am delighted.

This is an excellent product and it comes with great support and customer service also.I like it so much I bought a second one for Mom's home - which is where things went wrong (but appears that this may be due to someone buying a Gen2 and doing a return putting their old original first-generation Vue in the new box and then Amazon sending it to me as 'new'.)For the real product that I did get earlier (direct from Emporia) -Packaging: Wow - it's beautiful.Documentation: Clear and concise.Android app: Very good (I'd like to see some tweaks here and there, but it works and gives you access to all the usage details.)Installation: I respect electricity and don't like getting shocked! But, it really wasn't difficult to safely install on live panel. I took my time and was careful.Support: Accessible and responsive - both phone and email.Price: Good!What more could you ask for?I've always wanted to know how much electricity things were using and have a Kill-A-Watt which works well for things that plug in. But, what about things like lights on switches, heat pumps, cooktops, etc? This device will let you see your total usage on everything, and up to 16 different individual circuits. And since the app shows usage on the whole home and any individual circuit in real time 1-second intervals, it's quite easy to see electric usage even on circuits that power multiple things. For example, a typical breaker may shut off power to all the lights in one or more rooms. Either have all the lights off and turn just the one you want to check on - or, if other lights on circuit are also on, just use the difference between the usage on that circuit from the amount with and without the light you want to measure being 'on'. Same technique can be used for receptacle circuits.With the Emporia Vue I was able to see: my modern washing machine draws about 6 watts constantly when it's 'Off'. Oral-B toothbrush chargers draw more than 5 watts constantly if plugged in, with or without a toothbrush on the charger - there's basically no difference if you charge a toothbrush or not. My central A/C draws 10 watts less when my smart Sensi thermostat has it 'off' than when it's in 'cool' but not running. These are all little things, but they add up on things that run 24x7. Reduce 24x7 demand by 100 watts, and that's 72kWh per month. In Hawaii at about 25 cents per kWh, that's $18/month!The Vue will also give you insight into the big things as well - the usage of electric water heater, clothes dryer, cooktop, oven, etc.I'm glad I bought this, and I'm also glad to see some delays in availability - demand for the product is picking up as more people realize what this can do for their energy awareness/conservation, and hopefully allows Emporia to be successful and continue to offer this at a reasonable price! (It does require Internet/cloud to work and continue working.)

great product at a good price with prompt delivery. I had a small issue with one CT, great customer service and support on getting a replacement.