Efergy Engage & Elite Kit, Online Energy Monitor & Display

Don’t waste your money, the Home Hub is totally unreliable – it connects for a few seconds and then goes offline. I bought this product along with the Efergy Elite Classic Power Meter so that I could track my energy usage over time using their Engage Android software after creating an account on their website. The website is easy to use and navigate and setting up an account was straightforward, you answer the questions and then go to the “Settings” page to finish setup. It is at the Settings page that you can determine the status of your Efergy Equipment which consists of the pairing of the Engage Home Hub and it’s ability to receive the data from the AC sensors clipped to the AC feed wires in your Breaker Panel which is broadcast throughout the house by the Efergy transmitter. Never once did the Engage Hub connect long enough to give me an accurate power reading – one that would match the instantaneous power reading I was receiving on the Elite Power Meter sitting right next to the hub!So I purchased two devices from Efergy to provide me with information about my energy consumption, the Elite True Power Meter which provides “Energy Now” usage with limited history information and the Engage Hub that would also provide energy use over time in addition to instantaneous energy use accessible by my cell phone or computer. The Elite Power Meter works flawlessly anywhere in my home and has no difficulty whatsoever receiving data from the transmitter located in my garage. The Home Hub is useless and incapable of receiving data from the transmitter even when connected to my router by a long cat5 extension cable bringing it within 20 feet of the transmitter. The Elite Power Meter can receive data anywhere in my home, even 30 feet further away from my router and the transmitter, so the flaw must be in the design of the Engage Hub which in my opinion is poorly designed and should never have been released.I contacted the company which is in the EU for assistance and they were able to confirm that their Hub was indeed connecting to their server as they could see it’s MAC address but it would not link up with their transmitter even though their other product was able to do so without difficulty. Letters went back and forth which was a total waste of time as they were unable to resolve the problem. Either my Hub is defective (they did not offer to send a replacement or authorize their USA distributor to do so) and/or it’s design is flawed as it does not have anywhere the receiving range of their other product, the Elite True Power Meter.If you're okay with the limited information available from the Elite True Power Meter, it actually works and had no difficulty ever communicating with the Efergy transmitter. If you are looking for a more detailed report and historical data of your energy usage which I think would be very useful – LOOK ELSEWHERE. Now for some people, the Home Hub worked right out of the box which begs the question, why didn’t mine? As I bought the two items together, I can’t return just the Engage Home Hub. I actually bought the combined package because I wanted the more detailed information that only the Hub could provide. I would also add that buying a product created by a company not based in the USA has it’s shortcomings as it took days to get a response and the assistance provided was useless although very polite. I wasted way too much time attempting to get this product to do what it was intended to do with nothing to show for my effort. It you check my other reviews, you will find that I am mostly very positive and my reviews are usually detailed, so a product has to be really deficient to get two stars from me.BTW, I tried to write a separate review of just the Home Hub but was prevented from doing so as I did not purchase them separately and so the Home Hub was not a verified purchase.

This doesn't detect your appliances and offer advice like the more expensive options do. And that's a shame because the hardware is there, they would just need to write some code to make it do that. But this wasn't aimed at the connected market. This does tell me my realtime (and historical) energy use, and it allowed me to determine that I'm using up to 100 of my 150 amps from FP&L so I don't need an upgrade to support the new equipment I will be bringing in. It also gave me a good feel for how much energy my stove uses. The only other downside is that my remote unit randomly disconnected and I haven't had time to resync so I can't monitor remotely right now....

Reading some of the reviews made it sound like this was going to be difficult to install and setup. It actually turned out to be one of the easier electric/electronic network devices to configure and attach to a cloud account. Took less than 30 minutes to open the boxes, install in the sensor in the power panel, configure the display, attach the hub to the wired network and create the efergy cloud account.Setting the cost per KWH was very simply on both the display and online. Device was default USD currency.This device was purchased to monitor the energy usage of a hot tub. Just placed the sensors around the hot tub load wires instead of the mains. Some quick tests when activating then deactivating the hot tub pumps showed the usage meter was very responsive.Its only been an hour since I opened the box, hopefully it performs long term as well as it has during the install and setup.

I was torn between giving this item 3 or 4 stars. It works pretty well, and has helped me to identify some energy hogs in my house. My issue is that it is consistently 10-15% off of my actual electric bill (electric bill is higher then the readings I am getting with this device). With this large of a variance, I cant tell which device is at fault, this device or my "smart" meter from the electric company. I contacted support twice to ask a basic question, and both times it took about 2 weeks to receive a response. Both times the response was to contact someone else, and never received a response to my question. My question was about the consistent variation between the reports on the wireless hub and my actual electric bill. My question was:I am in the US. I set the device up as 120 volts in the settings. However in the US, many households have 240 volt appliances (refrigerator, freezer, AC unit, dishwasher, clothes washer, clothes dryer...etc). When a 240 volt appliance is drawing electric, does this device account for the difference in voltage, or is it being recorded as 120 volt usage, thus skewing the data?If the above turns out that 240 volt appliances are incorrectly gauging usage as 120 volt, then it kind of defeats the true purpose of using the monitor. Based on my experience to date, this device is good at identifying ways to cut back on the use of energy hogs, but cannot be relied upon as a tool to determine if your electric company is overcharging you, or if you may have a faulty electric meter, which was my driving force for installing the monitor. If support was more responsive, or took the time to forward my question to the appropriate support staff inside their own company so I could get an answer to a basic question, I may have given it 4 stars.This device was clearly developed in Europe, and implementation of US localization seems to have been an afterthought. The way that reports are tracked from the 1st day of the month to the last day isnt useful for a US consumer, since billing period can be mid month to mid month. I suspect the different voltages for different appliances also skews the reporting from this device, but even though I have reached out for support, no one has confirmed this yet.

I like that the Home Hub lets me know how much energy is being used. However it's not great at calculating the costs in our area. Our electric company charges 12 cents per kWh for the first 400 kW and only 7.5 cents for any used after that. There is no option to calculate using that formula. Only a constant price. But aside from that, it has really helped us become a bit more efficient when it comes to our electrical usage. This will definitely save us some money in the future.