Emporia Gen 2 Smart Home Energy Monitor with 16 50A Circuit Level Sensors | Real Time Electricity Monitor/Meter | Solar/Net Metering

I love the Emporia Vue 2 energy monitor. The monitor is the only monitor that provides detailed info on each individual circuit. Most monitors provide only the mains usage. The only near competitor to the Vue 2 is the Sense. However, I read too many negative reviews regarding the Sense's ability to determine what devices were being used in the house.The Vue 2 gives accurate information on each circuit. The Vue 2 matches my electrical bill regarding monthly usage per day and month. The total cost is off due to variation of end of month billing dates and add on utility company charges.The charts are functional and fine for my purposes. There is no API for to the feed data to an external program. You can download the raw data in CSV format if you want your own custom reporting. You can use the phone app or the website. You must login into the website to view your household information.I have not experienced any of the device or app issues that some people have reported.Tech support is awesome! They respond, know their stuff, and stay engaged until the issue is resolved.I did the installation myself. There are many You Tube videos that provide guidance. The instructions are simple, easy to follow, and accurate. The installation itself is easy and went relatively quickly. The breaker box will be a little crowded and messy unless you make an effort to wire-mind the cables.The Vue 2 can monitor only 16 circuits/breaker slots. I have 20 breaker slots occupied and 2 mains, so my Vue 2 is full. If you have more than 16 breakers and some are dual pole breakers, you can save a Vue 2 slot by monitoring 1 pole of the dual pole breaker and use a circuit multiplier of 2. If you still have additional breakers to monitor, you will need a second Vue 2 and "nest" the 2nd device under the 1st device. Contact Emporia support for additional questions.It is critical that you understand that when the main breaker is pulled the individual circuits to the house are dead BUT the mains that come from the utility pole into the breaker box are still live and dangerous. If you are not comfortable working around high voltage hire an electrician. Note: Make sure he records the breaker number and breaker amps to Vue 2 circuit number (explained below). Also make sure he dresses the cables neatly. After all he is a professional!As you make the connections you need to record the breaker number and what Vue 2 circuit number the breaker is connected to. This is important since you will need the information to set up the circuits in the monitor software.Once I had the device hooked up and working, I then determined what was connected to each breaker and corresponding Vue 2 circuit by turning on each household device one at a time (A/C, clothes washer, etc.) or by going to each wall outlet and plugging in a portable device that required noticeable watts. By observing what Vue 2 circuit showed an increase in usage I was able to develop a device mapping to Vue 2 circuit number to breaker number.In the VUE 2 software I labeled each Vue 2 circuit with the associated device name, the breaker number, and the breaker amps. This allowed me to have a breaker number to Vue 2 circuit number to device mapping with the circuit amps.The only downside to the Vue 2 is the AMPs reporting. As far as i can tell the individual mains and circuits are correctly reported in AMPs. However, the total of the mains is incorrectly calculated by totaling the two mains. This can be done for Watts/KW but not for AMPs since totaling ignores whether the result is from a 120 or 240 circuit if only 1 leg is being monitored. Either use the main with the biggest AMP usage or total the individual Vue 2 circuits to get a decent estimate. Emporia support says they want to fix this issue but there is no timeline.Yes I would buy this product again and recommend it to a friend.

My solar client who has been really great to work with reached out to me about consumption monitoring to go with their system. I looked over the work orders from the job and saw that Enphase CT’s which are somewhat bulky didn’t fit in their panel. I had seen this solution before and I decided to give it a try.You will need a drill, your drill bits, wire strippers, and electrical tape. Wear work gloves with rubber coated palms, eye protection and consider having someone else with you while you work, even if they don’t do much.If you feel uncomfortable about working on a live electrical system I would really recommend hiring someone to do this work who is licensed and insured.If you are not going that route and you feel that you can work responsibly it is a pretty easy job. The app tells you everything to do and it’s easy to follow along.I did not apply common sense at first, which would tell us to select circuits from the top of the panel going down on each side and try to keep the sides of the device correspondent to the order of breakers in the panel. I had to pull everything off, tape it up, and recommission it because I couldn’t close the panel cover.As a gift for my homeowners I like that it has purpose, longevity, and isn’t consumable. It’s interesting to talk about which can lead them to someone who needs a referral and wants to get their bill lower.Compared to other solutions like Sense and onboard CT’s from SolarEdge and Enphase this is way better. Since you pick the circuits you get high quality data unlike the Sense. CT’s are cool but it doesn’t tell you why your consumption is up, just that your consumption is up. This would be a great tool to get ahead of true up bills, stay on top of time-of-use, and cut consumption for anyone looking to save on bills.

Winter is coming and I was looking to get a energy monitor mainly because I added a generator inlet to my electrical panel and I would like to know how much load the generator has in order to know which or what circuit could I enable/disable to use in case of a power outage.I was hesitant because while you are getting most of this IoT devices your are giving away your privacy, most of these app collect all your personal info upload them to their cloud and you never know where it ends up. So, in this case I first installed their app (that looks just ok) but thanks God the setup was smooth and they did not require to share my social security number, a picture of my ID and the date I went to the beach for the first time. So I moved forward and bought the device, and wao, just wao, I'm now obsessed with this gadget. My only compliant is that it only support 16 sensors, but it's amazing the feedback you get in almost real time, for me it worth every penny, not only for it's use on controlling loads to add in case of power outage but as regular monitoring and hazard prevention in case you leave oven or any other appliance connected while outside your place. And surprisingly these guy don't push you to collect all your info, but only info arguably required to create your account and get your device up and running.The app is not the best, but it does what is supposed to do, not major bug so far and I'm happy about it. I was considering several competitors like Sense but just looking to the fact that they use AI to figure out what kind of device you have in use, that makes me feel uncomfortable, so I did not even bother to try to download their app to see what kind of personal info they collect to eventually submit to their AI servers. Social engineering has been in place for several years now, and although it was not that bad in the beginning the investment those people put in place will pay some how and more likely you are part of the product, so be aware about the info you give away. Always remember, information is power.