New Smart Panel sounds like a great system

[mjs020294]

I would highly recommend to the Emporia VUE 2 to anyone remotely interested in energy conservation. Having the power of 1.8 million data points a day on your phone or tablet is very informative and empowering.

It saved me another 60w a hour over the weekend. I noticed a garage circuit was drawing power 24/7; that isn't so unusual because I have multiple tools on charge and a treadmill and bike on stand bye. However the draw was a little higher than I was expecting so I started shutting everything down. The final 60w turned out to be a fluorescent light in the attic over the garage we use for storage. Its an older unit so sometimes doesn't switch on straightway. Last time I was up there I must have switched it on but the light didn't actually come on before I shut the hatch. That was over two weeks ago and I might not have gone back up there until after thanks giving to retrieve the Xmas decorations.

[DanS26]

I use the TED system installed well over ten years ago. I monitor 28 circuits. I bought the TED originally to gain an understanding of my loads before investing in solar.

Over the years it has evolved to be my solar system monitoring device. I have a matched set of string inverters connected to eight strings of 12 panels each. Each inverter connected to 4 strings that are matched in orientation and power. The TED system monitors the inverter outputs so that any discrepancies in output are immediately noticed. Since everything is evenly matched it is a simple matter of tracking down performance problems immediately. It has allowed me to completely skip the added cost of panel level monitoring.

The TED system was early to this game and I would say it is expensive when compared to the competition now. I use it also to feed PVOutput.org and to monitor my EV kWh consumption.

[mjs020294]

The Smart panels are still very expensive and are only truly beneficial in you PV and battery backup. In that scenario they because very powerful at energy management, especially during power outages. Hopefully more competition will enter the market and prices will drop. My biggest concern is replacing a time tested robust circuit board with something equipped with high tech electronics. Hopefully the smart panels are designed with maintenance in mind allowing easy switch out of the WiFi module and other components. My suspicion is they have not built easy maintenance into the design.

[oregon_phil]

I would highly recommend to the Emporia VUE 2 to anyone remotely interested in energy conservation. Having the power of 1.8 million data points a day on your phone or tablet is very informative and empowering.

It saved me another 60w a hour over the weekend. I noticed a garage circuit was drawing power 24/7; that isn't so unusual because I have multiple tools on charge and a treadmill and bike on stand bye. However the draw was a little higher than I was expecting so I started shutting everything down. The final 60w turned out to be a fluorescent light in the attic over the garage we use for storage. Its an older unit so sometimes doesn't switch on straightway. Last time I was up there I must have switched it on but the light didn't actually come on before I shut the hatch. That was over two weeks ago and I might not have gone back up there until after thanks giving to retrieve the Xmas decorations.

Is Emporia data available when the internet goes down? I have read data is pushed to the cloud then down to the app, but it's nice to get data from real users.

I run Home Assistant with Shelly EM's behind my firewall so I don't pay much attention to the cloud.

[mjs020294]

Is Emporia data available when the internet goes down? I have read data is pushed to the cloud then down to the app, but it's nice to get data from real users.

I run Home Assistant with Shelly EM's behind my firewall so I don't pay much attention to the cloud.

Data is pushed to the cloud. From what I have seen if WiFi goes down the unit caches data until the internet connection is established. My Router and WiFi is on a battery back up so downtime is very rare.

I have been tracking the systems accuracy against the electric meter over the last few days; it seems to match the meter to +/- 0.3KWh over a 24 hour period. The slight difference might be some sort of timing issue or just the way the meter turns the single digit cog. On the Emporia side I have managed to get 96% of our consumption picked up by the 16 sensors, which is pretty good on a panel with 27 breakers. Two or three the mapped breakers aren't using much so I will play around and try to increase the monitoring rate above 96%.

All in all I think the Emporia is amazing value for $149. Easy to install, accurate and a great app.

[GTAZ]

hmmm ... Smart panels sound like a nice toy (Sol-Ark also has one btw), but when i start to think it through, I don't see the justification.
Back up from the details for a moment and consider exactly what it is you're buying. It's basically a system that turns things off. So if you are in a commercial environment, with lots of people running around that you can't control that might turn things on, having a way to control what is powered/not powered might be a need. But in your home? Really? Maybe just teach your family not to use the electric dryer or turn on the AC when the power is out. How hard is that?

If your system is very small, and you want to make sure you only power the bare essential, then maybe, but it's a very questionable maybe, because for the $3500 price tag, you could just add more capacity to your solar or battery systems. You'll get a much better return from increasing your system capacity than buying a fancy switch. You could even buy a low cost generator and a transfer switch and it will be years before you burn enough gas to hit that $3500 mark. Maybe there's a use case I haven't thought of, but I just can see the justification for an expensive switch for a home owner scenario. Just turn stuff off - It's free ha ha