Solar - Solar Energy Monitor

Have had unit for about a week. Installation was fairly easy with some trial and error. No manuals or instructions came with unit. Downloaded directions from website. Instructions for North America state to install current clamps over mains in different directions (has arrow in clamp and letters L+K on either side) and repeat for solar wires. I have 200 amp service with 2 110 volt legs feeding into breaker panel. Installing as instructed caused any power draw from other leg to minus out from consumption bubble in app. No biggie, turned clamp so arrows face point of load or consumption(both same direction toward breakers) works great. My solar feeds into its own breaker in the electrical panel. The solar clamps can also be installed backward. In my case the clamps did need to be reversed. (arrows opposite directions) You should have a negative reading when system is not producing any energy due to the load of inverter stand by and the net metering meter. Its a small load of -4.4 watts when off. If clamps aren't right its reads positive, or wont give a reading at all. If you are comfortable being around high voltage and can use screwdriver and pliers you should have no trouble installing this. If you don't like the sound of high voltage buzz and don't have basic trouble shooting skills hire an electrician. I have solar monitoring, a net meter, and Smappee. Its is usually within .1 to .2 kwh of my net meter. That's great accuracy. The wiring from the clamps to Smappee is adequate, but I would like to see longer wires or extenders to get Smappee away from high EMI sources of electrical panels and inverter. The Wifi range is decent but not great. To be fair my phones have difficulty in the garage where Smappee is located. The app will hang on iOS and android phone if the Wifi signal is weak. You have to access expert mode of Smappee to see this info. When I had my electrical panel off (high EMI) it kept hanging. With it on it works fine -65db is edge of it working properly with app. It doesn't seem to bother the data collection. My numbers have been accurate compared to utility meters and the Kill-o-watt device. I moved router a bit and the signal improved to -60 to 63db. That made app much more responsive. The app works fine on iOS and Android. It has a clean easy to use interface. It recognizes devices and lets you name them. Then you can see how often they run a day, week, month, or year and approximate cost of device usage. The detection is decent. Finding the appliance can be tricky. Most are easy like furnace, blower, lamps, lights, It even detected furnace high and low speeds. You have to piece together the data with appliance DNA in app. I have a on demand water heater. It pulls 120 watts when first ignites (gas) in use power goes down, then stays in ready to fire state of 30 watts or so for a minute or 2. Smappee has not detected it yet. It also will falsely identify an item with a similar electrical signature in the Events list at times. Example:If too many things turn on and off within a couple of seconds like coffee pot comes on and fridge goes off it may not detect proper appliance. It is very complex to identify power usage signatures so I don't remove stars for this. I would like to see a Windows app or program instead of access thru web portal. It comes with a smart plug that can be triggered by events, schedule, manually. It programmed easily and works fine. I think the its range is about 30 meters from Smappee unit. You can get more plugs from Smappee reasonably. I wanted this to compliment my solar panels so I knew consumption vs production at any given time without having to read meters. It has made the family more aware of electrical consumption. I also like the fact that we don't have to guess if the flat iron is still on when we go out. Can help to locate energy hogs or a device that wont or didn't shut off. Once you know your homes normal energy draw you will easily see a draw that wont go away. Like a fridge that stays on. Be aware the data is stored on their servers and sent to your app. You can export some of the data from your portal to excel or the like. If the company goes under, sells, the unit may no longer work. Overall I am happy with Smappee! I hope thru continued development it will only get better. I have used their community forum and received answers to questions within 7 to 8 hrs (different time zones)

Customer service is not in US despite US phone number, it's Belgium.9-hours ahead of California. They informed it would take. 2-months to recognize 80% of the appliances. I used the "learn" function to teach big items like the refrigerator, AC, etc. I could complete the learning sequence successfully but Smappee never logged any usage. From time to time, an "un-named appliance" would show up and id have to figure out what appliance uses 42-watts in the middle of the night. It's a good concept and someday there will be a decent meter like this. But my sense is this was rushed to market by an undercapitalized business without a clue how to support consumer electronics and no money to fund software development. Their FAQ section in website support has dated answers - newest i found was 2015. NOV 2018 UPDATE: 1-1/2 years since install. Decent stats for overall usage (eg 9 kWh usage today and 15 kWh of solar production) but the device-by-device usage is worthless. I love in a small 2bdrm condo and it “found “ over 75 alliances - none bore any resemblance to things like a refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, or air conditioners. Found same ones over and over, and learning mode where you turn something on/off to force memory was ineffective. As many others have stated, customer support is useless and mostly absent. Takes days/weeks to get a response which is almost always wrong, so asking clarifying quesrioms can is a months long process.

Easy to install. Still getting used to the software.

Smappee requires that your main electric panel be inside your house so the main cable entering your house is accessible and you have a safe, weatherproof place to mount your Smapee and plug it in.

If your looking for ways to save on your electric bill this is a great way to see where you power is going its kinda fun running around shutting stuff off to see how low you can get your power use down . If you have solar even better it tracks that too . It's an easy install if your ok with putting your hands in your power panel if you scared of electricity call someone in less than a 10 min install . Ok something to note its android or apple interface no windows and its an easy set up . Now for what I feel is a downside its wifi only and has no capability's for a hard wire cat 5 so because I'm a fair distance away and another floor from my router I had to get an extender . I think that every home in america should have a device such as this I think it would help with our energy abuse problems its amazing to see real time the difference when you change bulbs from incandescent to led its cool to see and then get your first electric bill and its gone down just with a few changes .

I have a professionally installed a 7+kw solar roof top system using a Solar Edge inverter. The system has been permit inspected by the city and utility in California. After 20+ hours of e-mail...pictures...photos with the folks at Smappee, their unit continued to show solar production as utility grid usage. I asked them for a replacement unit. They never sent one. There is no US telephone number to call for support, other than a 408 area code number in the San Francisco Bay Area, that only leaves a voice mail, and never returns a phoncall. Support is only via e-mail to Europe. The unit did not show solar production, and cost me a lot of wasted time...I would not recommend this unit at all, and have returned it to Amazon with full comments...Lastly, shame on their e-mail support fellas... If the thing works...and a big if...why they took three weeks of my time and maybe should have thought to send out a replacement...So, I think their unit has huge bugs that make it unreliable... In my case Totally Useless and 100% reverse on solar production, even after spending hours reversing the direction of the CT's and corresponding e-mail support. Again, total waist of my time. Until the Fellas at Smappee get it right I will not recommend this device.

Works perfectly with a very smooth installation process. The app is very stable and updates the data nice and fast.

This units software was buggy and lacking for the entire first year I had it. Device identification left much to be desired. The smart plug is borderline useless since there is no confirmation on if it actually turned on or not. After a year they released new software that is significantly better but still is sorely lacking compared to their competition. Hopefully it continues to improve but I will not be able to review it since mine died for no apparent reason 1 month outside of it's 2 year warranty and support was not willing to compromise.