Emporia Vue is an Interesting Companion to Solar and Powerwalls

[mnsweeps]

I have been using Emporia vue for past few months now and love it. SCE also gave a $25 rebate for it. Once I found how much the dish heater from Costco consumes, I sold it the next day.

 

[Akikiki]

Any one had Span installed? I'd like to, but I won't rewire my home's box to get it.

 

[arnolddeleon]

Any one had Span installed? I'd like to, but I won't rewire my home's box to get it.

I was looking into it. The features are nice but for what it would cost I could another Powerwall (so I wouldn't really have worry about load shedding) plus all the All the Emporia Vue's I would need to monitor every circuit. I didn't get a clear answer about a local API either.

 

[jedmo]

Oh and one last downside... if your wife likes to run a space heater, this extra info will kill your soul. You'll now see just how bad that space heater is, but you'll never convince your wife to stop using said space heater. So maybe it's not worth the money.

I know this all to well.....

Thank you, for the great review.

 

[funkadelic]

thanks for sharing about the emporia. i bought a Sense a while back but discovered that the CTs that the Sense comes with do not work on my busbar service panel. Looks like Emporia has a flexible CT that can work on busbars which is great

 

[israndy]

I am in the same boat, I got the Sense CTs, then the Vue CTs, then Vue sent me some special CTs they thought would work that looked like Sense CTs. I finally gave up and got the Vue Utility Connect and a few plugs that allow me to control and measure individual appliances like my fridge and furnace. That was cheap and works great, although the VUE user interface to the data is TERRIBLE. But software is the easiest part to change. NOW they come out with the flexible sensors that probably would have worked, although they require you plug in a power supply, who has an outlet next to their panel? Why can't they work like the VUE itself and just hook to the panel?

A friend just got his whole house set up with VUE and the flexible sensors, across two sub-panels he was able to get all the data into the app. With Sense you need two logins or you need to repurpose the solar CTs. He then put CTs on every circuit in his house. Of course the two sub panels in VUE behave like they are in different houses, you cannot use the data from one to relate to the other. You get totals looking like two houses worth of use.

But they are certainly cheap.

 

[israndy]

Any one had Span installed? I'd like to, but I won't rewire my home's box to get it.

What does the SPAN cost? Their website only let's you put contact info in for them to call you. Weak sauce.

 

[Oceanwolf]

I'm not sure what is the forum policy around this, but hopefully this post isn't considered a schill-type of thing since I'm not affiliated with the vendor.

The Tesla app is great to see the balance of the grid, solar, battery, and home consumption, but it doesn't provide much insight to what is actually happening in the home. For the extra data layer, I installed the Emporia Vue a few weeks ago. Big thanks to @Oceanwolf for originally mentioning the tool here.

The Emporia Vue allows a homeowner to stick a current transducer (CT) on the load side of individual circuits at the breakers. The hardware then measures and logs consumption each second. This has been a great way to see energy use by zone instead of being beholden to EnergyStar/EnergyGuide stickers or manufacturer claims. It also lets you get that one level deeper than just seeing the total home graph on the Tesla App. Emporia also make devices that track individual outlets, but that just seems like a bit overkill and a poor ROI compared to CT tracking on circuits.

With all this data, you can see the kWh consumed by a load of dishes, laundry, etc. So now I know that "extra dry" setting on my dishwasher actually uses 2 kWh of power. I can also quantify the snazzy wine fridge, upstairs mini-fridge, and garage-freezer to a daily energy cost. This data is useful knowledge to start energy-managing my home in conjunction with new self generation equipment.

Another interesting thing, I found that each of my two air handlers use a continuous 35 watts each even if the blower motor is off and the HVAC is not operating. I have no clue what this 35 watts is actually doing other than powering the blinking Lennox control board and thermostat. But this means the two systems together bleed 70 watts 24/7 no matter what unless I de-activate the HVAC breaker. This is interesting since that means 613 kWh per year is going away to just then enable me to pay more energy costs for air-circulation, heating, or cooling. That underlying 70 watts bleed came out to be $200 worth of energy I paid in 2020 to PG&E and MCE based on what my tiered rates were costing in 2020.

Also of note, it turns out my smart-home, AT&T gateway, set-top-boxes, mesh-wifi, and cameras are taking about 200 watts continuously 24/7 by just existing. Such "vampire" loads add up; and it's something I don't think I would have seen so clearly without tools like the Emporia Vue.

The most major cons lie their user interface. Navigating their app is rather poor, and their API is very limited. You can get CSV exports, but no cool automated reporting/dashboards like what @bmah could dream up. And as with all smart-tech, if Emporia goes belly-up, then your tool will be worthless since all info has to run through the cloud. This doubles as a potential privacy risk as well.
Oh and one last downside... if your wife likes to run a space heater, this extra info will kill your soul. You'll now see just how bad that space heater is, but you'll never convince your wife to stop using said space heater. So maybe it's not worth the money.

The major problem for me was the mess in my panel. It gets very crowded very quickly..

 

[holeydonut]

The major problem for me was the mess in my panel. It gets very crowded very quickly..

View attachment 626825

Haha yeah, your panel actually looks relatively clean still. You should see my tight panel with 16 of those Vue CT's. I gave up trying to tie/wrap those wires together. It's now just a big nest of wires.

I'd post a picture... but then I can imagine some county inspector finding the pic, driving to my house, and hitting me in the face with violations and sanctions.

 

[P3dStealth]

I've had the emporia vue for over a year now. Works great. They have been slowly making the app better but it still needs work.

I don't have solar though.

 

[Vines]

What does the SPAN cost? Their website only let's you put contact info in for them to call you. Weak sauce.

Span gave a presentation to us, the panel retails for somewhere around $3k. It really is a nice product, just quite expensive.

I can see somewhere in the future someone using multiple Span panels to accomplish whole home backup on a 2x200 type main service panel with a single Gateway.

When on grid, you could have all the PW and PV resources in one basket, and both sides of your 2x200 connected in parallel to the grid. When the grid went down you could isolate both panels from the grid, and connect them together in series, all from your smartphone.

I am getting ready to do my personal Powerwall project to add to the PV so the Emporia might be a good thing to add while literally everything is torn apart. I currently have an E-Gauge, which has stopped working recently after about 10 years.

 

[mjptech]

Any one had Span installed? I'd like to, but I won't rewire my home's box to get it.

What does the SPAN cost? Their website only let's you put contact info in for them to call you. Weak sauce.

From Your Span Order
$5920 for a subpanel swap, $7520 for a regular installation, $9520 for a more complicated installation

Most people will fall into the Standard tier at 7520, which includes installing the Span panel and moving loads into it next to your existing service panel (adjacent or behind wall). The panel only has 28 spots for customer loads (with 32 controllable circuits in the panel total). It's not a metered panel, so, you'd be adding this and having all of the wiring and breakers moved into it (which also dictates how "complex" the install is and if you get bumped to the higher tier pricing). If you have sub panels, you won't be able to individually control those circuits without another span panel for them (though they are supposedly going to come out with a smaller version for such instances).

The main issue, like any other cloud first company, if the company goes under, the panel becomes a normal panel without any of the smarts. So, it does require a constant connection (at least according to the rep I had meetings with back in November when I looked at getting it). It does include 4G/LTE in the panel as a backup connection, but, if you're in a location where a power outage will knock out internet access, and you have shoddy 4G/LTE coverage at the house, your Span panel is a dumb panel when you actually need it to be smart and do its thing.

 

[Akikiki]

@mjptech, - Thank you. Excellent explanation.

 

[holeydonut]

Looks like Schneider/SquareD want in on this as well.

But no big blade disconnects means no good for NorCal

Schneider Electric Unveils the Energy Center for Distributed-Energy-Enabled Homes

If they put this in a NEMA 7 enclosure i can mount it closer to my gas riser...

 

[Vines]

Looks like Schneider/SquareD want in on this as well.

But no big blade disconnects means no good for NorCal

Schneider Electric Unveils the Energy Center for Distributed-Energy-Enabled Homes

If they put this in a NEMA 7 enclosure i can mount it closer to my gas riser...

Thanks for that link, looks like the big dogs are getting in to this market now, good news!

 

[sorka]

FYI, the Emporia store is back in stock now. I used the 10% off coupon, emporia10%deal and ordered 3 more Vue 2s with 24 more CTs to add to my existing 16 CTs.

If you have a chase card on Amazon you're already getting a 5% discount so going direct only saves 5%. However, they're out of stock on Amazon while in stock on Emporia store so I ended up ordering direct from Emporia. Had I not already tried the product, I wouldn't have risked it.

Still, I'm taking a gamble they actually do the software merge of multiple units

 

[Akikiki]

I wanted to install this device. The 16 sensor version. I opened a chat session with a rep there and they said it would not work with my utility company. So, no go. Looks like a fun product.

 

[sorka]

I wanted to install this device. The 16 sensor version. I opened a chat session with a rep there and they said it would not work with my utility company. So, no go. Looks like a fun product.

What does it have to do with your utility company? I've discovered their chat support reps have been very knowledgable about the product.

 

[holeydonut]

FYI, the Emporia store is back in stock now. I used the 10% off coupon, emporia10%deal and ordered 3 more Vue 2s with 24 more CTs to add to my existing 16 CTs.

If you have a chase card on Amazon you're already getting a 5% discount so going direct only saves 5%. However, they're out of stock on Amazon while in stock on Emporia store so I ended up ordering direct from Emporia. Had I not already tried the product, I wouldn't have risked it.

Still, I'm taking a gamble they actually do the software merge of multiple units

Wow, thanks for the heads up. I just want to get a second Vue Gen 2 with only 2 CTs to measure my AC subpanel ... but they weren't selling single CTs on their site until today.

 

[Akikiki]

I don't know. But I figured they know what they are talking about. There's a note on their some of their products that they don't work everywhere.