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

I purchased this in March of 2021, and have enjoyed this product very much since then. The real time data logging is great, and can really help find areas that use excess electricity. Was pretty easy to setup in the breaker panel. Cut main breaker, installed unit, installed clamps, and then closed breaker box and powered up. One of my sensors was defective, and the company sent me one right away, free of charge. Everything worked perfectly after that. I initially did not have an EV, though in August I got one and this thing has been amazing at tracking energy usage for the EV. Was very easy in the software to rearrange a clamp and set it up for the EV charger. I ended up removing one that was a pretty unused circuit anyways. I am also a big fan of being able to export the data into CVV format. I have built a spreadsheet that breaks down monthly usage and % by circuit. I have also plotted an hour graph which shows me when my peak times of electricity use are during the day. Not necessary, but it helps me learn about my usage. A couple points of improvement I would wish for the future: 1) the export to CVV is completely manual. Not a big deal, but when I want to update my spreadsheets, it takes a few minutes to export and append into the spreadsheet. 2) I wish they had more support in terms of smart homes. Would be nice if there was an API that could be read from. It seems the app is the only way to read from the device in a live fashion. Would be nice if it featured a self-hosted server with all of the live data accessible from other sources. Overall a great product for an amazing price. App is pretty solid, device seems to work great, and quality customer service. Would definitely recommend to anyone looking to understand or learn from their energy usage habits!

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.

Purchased this to monitor our Barn Sub-Panel, a recent addition to the house. It's a 1500sq/ft building with two 18k BTU mini spits, 800w of LED overhead lights, 2 post lift, full wood shop, welding outlet, etc. There's eight 240v circuits and eight120v circuits in the subpanel this was installed in. Install was straight forward, but if you're not comfortable working in an electrical panel, I'd recommend letting a licensed electrician do it. I wired the subpanel and the barn, but am not a licensed electrician, it's all inspected Rough and Final, but different jurisdictions have different rules about is legally allowed to do electrical work on their home. On to the review - Well, it definitely muddies up a clean electrical panel with the sensors and their wires but it's not too bad. If your panel has a TON of excess wire and is very full, this is going to be a tough installation. Once installed the set up is pretty straight forward and the instructions to do so work well. For each 240v circuit (two 120v legs) only one sensor is needed and the software in the app can be set to multiply the value by two; this in principal works great on things like Mini splits or a dust collector for example. However some 240v devices will have 120v items that will run between one of the 120v legs and a neutral wire, so if it's monitoring the leg being used for that 120v item, it's going to double it's usage and if it's monitoring the other leg, it won't measure the usage. This isn't that big of a problem, the 120v items on these types of circuits are hour meters or small control boards, etc. but it can create some inconsistencies. The view of everything is eye opening and that's why I'm not sure I love it.... but I do. It's very helpful to know what things cost. For example the network (security cameras, network switch, wireless AP's and related) are operating at able 2kw/hr's a day (a little less than a normal 80w systained draw. For me, it's $0.32/day to run the Barn's network. HVAC usage as well being able to see it is helpful to know if it's worth the cost to keep the barn warm or just warm it up when I use it. Overall, I'd definitely recommend this, it's price point over other brands is a bonus. Since purchasing this, we've also added four of the US Smart plugs from emporia that do the energy monitoring and are just as happy with them. We'll likely be adding two additional 16 circuit monitors to our two existing 200a service entrance panels.

I’ve been wanting to be able to monitor my home’s electrical usage for some time now, not just from a standpoint of trying to minimize our electricity bills but also from a standpoint of situational awareness and equipment health status. I’d like to know if my well pump is running more than usual, if my oven has been left on, or if my heat pump is having a harder time starting up than it usually does. And, with a little effort, Emporia lets me set notifications for each of those things. Emporia tells me that the so-called “50A” sensors actually saturate at 75A, and will not be damaged if you go beyond that—they’ll simply fail to report any additional current. It makes sense that they’ve allowed some margin above the nominal value—a 50A breaker might easily let you draw 100A for several seconds without tripping. But that’s good to know if, like me, you have a 60A emergency heat circuit in your air handler that you want to monitor. There are alternatives out there. The most widely known one is probably Sense (also sold as Wiser Energy), which tries to infer based on only sensing your main lines what loads are running. That’s a neat idea, and certainly easier to install because of so many fewer sensors, but I can’t say I really trust their computer to be able to tell the difference between all the various loads in a house just from looking at the combined draw. Plus, Sense costs twice as much as Emporia—and I needed two monitors because I have two completely separate panels in my house (neither is a subpanel of the other), so I was doubly sensitive to price. Another interesting option, though, is called IotaWatt. Its price tag is comparable to Sense, but like the Emporia it relies on individual circuit sensors rather than guesswork (although you only get 14 sensors, including the mains). And the IotaWatt is open source, so you don’t have to rely on a company like Emporia to keep supporting the software ecosystem in the future (on the flip side, though, you’re almost certainly looking at having to fiddle more with the software, and I’d expect it to be a lot harder to contrive a way of looking at the data when you’re not at home on your local network). Another interesting option, although it won’t work for most people, is the Emporia “Vue Utility Connect wireless energy monitor.” If you happen to be in one of the relatively few markets using the appropriate Zigbee-connected smart meter, that cheap little device can tell you your total power draw by simply asking your existing smart meter what’s happening. Not as informative as being able to monitor 16 individual circuits, but not bad for the price tag and ease of installation. I also like how the Emporia ecosystem includes smart plugs to monitor individual devices. I bought some of those also because I wanted to be able to schedule the on and off time of certain equipment, and being able to monitor the power draw of that specific service is handy. You can nest the device to put it under the appropriate circuit in the app. If you’re getting the 16-branch-sensor version like I did, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s going to turn the inside of your breaker box into a rat’s nest. I don’t care for that, but I don’t have any better ideas. The Sense approach of only monitoring the mains is the only way around it that I can see, and as I said I don’t really trust that. The app feels a little dodgy. Sometimes the branch circuits don’t show up unless I fiddle with the time scale. Changing the name of a circuit doesn’t update until you leave the menu, so it can get confusing if you’re renaming several at once. And I ended up remaking all of them because when I finished typing them all in the first time it suggested I take a picture of the inside of my breaker box—and navigating from the Emporia app to my camera seemed to abort the entire setup process. It also failed to update firmware and said it would do it overnight instead. And even after it’s all set up, the high resolution data by the second—which is the only glimpse into how hard a motor is starting—disappears quickly (3 hours), in many cases preventing you from comparing to previous runs of that equipment if you haven’t explicitly gone to the effort of saving it. I would’ve appreciated emporia saving the peak draw from each circuit over the last day, week, and month. So on the whole I’m not feeling like it’s a very polished experience. The one second sample rate frequently misses startup spikes. If you’re really only concerned with total energy usage, that might not matter, but if you have an interest in how hard a motor is starting then that’s a bit disappointing. The one-second data is also only saved for three hours, which isn’t a lot of time. I wish they would save the peak consumption per hour and per day, ideally from a quick enough sample to catch startup peaks reliably. I’d like to be able to set a notification for power draw between two bounds rather than just above or below a threshold. If I want to recognize a hard start of my air handler but not confuse emergency heat with a hard start, I need that kind of functionality. If I’m understanding things correctly, setting the time scale to minute or hour or day shows me how much energy has been consumed so far during this minute or hour or day (etc) even if it just started seconds ago. I don’t see a way to view my usage over the last rolling 24 hours, or 60 minutes, or 60 seconds, which makes it hard to understand how much energy I’m using right now as opposed to one unit of time ago. About a week after installing the sensors, I accidentally hit the breaker to my heat pump while turning on another breaker that was new and quite stiff. The next morning, I got a bunch of notifications that I had configured to alert me when the system was in emergency (resistive) heat mode. I found my error with a quick investigation and remedied it before a lot of energy was wasted. In all, it could be better but I like it.

I bought a plug-in hybrid car and added a 240 volt single phase home charger. Me, being the inquisitive type that I am, wanted to know exactly what it was costing me to charge my car at home. I tried a couple of devices before coming up with this shining example of technology. The first device would quit reading in the cold, and the second just was lazy and didn't want to work (kind of like some kids I know). Then I stumbled upon this Emporia device. It reads 16 circuits and allows me to monitor exactly how much each circuit uses in power. It tells usage by the second, minute, day, week, month, or year; your choice. You can see the amounts in graphs, or numbers as well as the time of day that the power is being used. This last item, is especially important if you have a staged pricing system for your electric that gives you better prices late at night, etc. Also it is particularly valuable for those with solar systems. You get real time info! It took me about 1.5 hours to install it but I would figure on the average consumer taking about 3 hours. I have worked as an electrician in the past. There are risks though to doing the install yourself. If you don't know what you are doing you could get shocked (also called "Break dancing lessons). Don't be discouraged. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is not an AMTRAC headed for you. Wearing rubber gloves greatly limits the risks. There are accurate and helpful tips in the VERY GOOD INSTRUCTIONS to help you stay safe. Of course you have to use those tips to make a difference. Also there is the option of baking some great cookies and luring your electrician friend to come and try out these yummy delights (don't forget to tell them they need to bring their tool belt along, just in case). Oh, and also save the beers until the install is DONE! :-) Now I have cumulative tracking, real time info, and some good resources to fill those long sleepless nights researching, calculating, and celebrating my successes. Truly, I don't know how they can produce this absolutely awesome product for the price they do! I have since, added another 16 line unit to completely track my shop, hot tub, garage and RV pad usage. Now I can stay up even longer at night pouring through even more of those delicious numbers figuring how I can save those dollars for my trip to Australia and New Zealand. Hope you have as much fun as I have... Best wishes!

I can't bring myself to knock even one star off this review, even given the few quirks I found (see below). I love this thing so much, I bought two more and plan on buying more for my other properties. I won't get too into the specifics of this unit - yes, it will monitor two and three phase power panels, and up to 16 circuits per box, and it does so amazingly well. The data goes to a free Emporia cloud account and can be used to track usage over time. For quirks - out of the three units, one of them insists that I have wired its power supply incorrectly, but I have 100% verified this to be absolutely false. The 2-phase unit expects to be wired to both phases (i.e. one power supply wire to leg 1 and one to leg 2) to power itself, and I verified with a multimeter that I am, in fact, on two separate legs - but the unit insists that it is only being powered from a single leg. Fortunately, the unit allows you to continue even if it detects this "incorrect wiring" and go on with its life. Also, the connectors. OMG, the connectors. The sensors (both mains and line) use an audio jack-style plug to connect to the main unit. This is the worst part of the Emporia. With 16 cables, often crammed into a small area, the chances that one will come "just slightly enough" out of its jack, to interrupt your monitoring, is extremely high. I believe I've partially solved this by putting some metal brackets around the connector areas and zip-tying the two sides against each other, keeping the plugs all firmly secured in their slots. Others have reported these issues - be aware of it. I have a critical loads panel that is backed up by a generator, and a mains panel. The critical loads panel took a 16-sensor monitor and an 8-sensor monitor to cover all its breakers, the mains took a 16-sensor monitor of its own. You can combine two or more units under a main unit - for instance, I put the second 8-unit sensor as a "sub-unit" under the critical loads 16-unit unit, which allows for all those sensors to be grouped under one entity. Note that you DO NOT have to wire up the inlet sensors that go to the street (the larger sensors that go on the larger wires that feed the whole panel) unless you want to; it was very difficult for my setup to put two large sensors on each of the the incoming wires to my critical loads panel, so I didn't put them on the second 8-port unit, and everything works just fine. The larger sensors would be for people that don't necessarily want to monitor every circuit in the home, just certain ones, and then see the overall consumption (including the ones that aren't individually monitored) by using the input sensors. It's fascinating to monitor individual circuits and what they draw. This will be especially helpful for us when we monitor our place in the Caribbean; without understanding the power usage patterns, it's not possible to judge things like peak loads, vampiric loads, cyclical loads (like tankless hot water heaters and 'fridges), and AC loads so that I can size an inverter or battery capacity properly. Honestly, something like this should be in every home. Just wish the connectors had a retention screw or some other kind of connector, and the box would be about perfect!

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.

I recently purchased this electricity monitor, and I'm genuinely impressed with its performance. Installation was a breeze, which was a pleasant surprise. The user manual provided clear instructions, and I had it up and running in 1 hour. The real-time electricity usage display is a standout feature. It's fascinating to see how different appliances and activities impact my electricity consumption. This monitor has been instrumental in identifying unnecessary energy wastage in my home. By pinpointing these areas, I've been able to make more energy-efficient choices, which I anticipate will reflect positively on my electricity bills. One of the most helpful aspects is the ability to track usage over time. The monitor provides a clear, comprehensive view of my electricity consumption patterns. This data is invaluable for making informed decisions about energy use and has helped me understand my household's energy habits better. However, there's one feature that could take this monitor from great to perfect: an API for web integration. If I could access my electricity usage data through a website, it would enhance the usability and accessibility of the information. This addition would allow for more detailed analysis and the possibility of integrating the data with other smart home systems. In conclusion, I'm very satisfied with this electricity monitor. It's easy to install, simple to use, and provides crucial insights into electricity usage. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to gain a better understanding of their energy consumption and looking to make more environmentally friendly and cost-effective choices. A web API in future models would make it an unbeatable product in its category.