Emporia Vue 3 Home Energy Monitor - Smart Home Automation Module and Real Time Electricity Usage Monitor, Power Consumption Meter, Solar and Net Metering for UL Certified Safe Energy Monitoring

The Emporia 3 Energy Management system has been a fantastic addition to our home — definitely a five-star product. Installation was much easier than I expected; with a little patience and basic DIY skills, we had it up and running in no time. The app walks you through the setup step by step, and the system connected smoothly without any issues.What we love most is the level of insight it gives us into our energy usage. We can see exactly where and when power is being used throughout the house, down to individual circuits. This detailed data was incredibly helpful when planning our solar panel installation — it gave us a clear picture of our real energy needs, which helped us size the system properly. If you’re looking to reduce your power bill, understand your usage, or plan for solar, this tool is a no-brainer.

First, although I ordered the 16 sensor version it wasn't clear that the 2 main supply sensors were included. They were. Installation is messy in a 200 amp box but doable.The software is the best software I've encountered - and I do programming myself. Response is almost instant and the displays are extremely well thought out, easy to use and as far as I can see fault free. I don't think I've ever gotten a program for a cell phone where I didn't see things I would like to change but this one rings all the bells. 5 star!.My utility supplier is Dominion. They supply 15 min data via downloads but it takes them 2 days to get it on the internet and then it's only Main Use. This thing is instant. Want to know which breaker serves a particular outlet? Just plug something in and watch which circuit changes. Zip a do! instant wiring tracing.Likewise I can watch the performance of my heat pump in real time and see immediately how it responds to changes in the thermostat. Graphs are instant with easy movement back in time.This thing has the potential as a great way to monitor heat pump performance in rental units remotely.I do have some concern about the long term viability of the product since it sends the data to Emporia and you are totally dependent on them for it to function. If they go under or are bought by a less than ethical company then they have the right to turn it off - or I guess they could start charging a subscription fee for use. All in all though a great buy.

I just received my Vue 3 this week and it has been online for less than 24 hours, but I'm already impressed with the value this system provides. I installed it myself, and it took less than two hours. I'm not an electrician, but I am pretty handy with household DIY, and am used to working with electronics, etc. Working in a breaker panel is very dangerous, so if you have any doubts, please just pay an electrician a few hundred dollars to install it for you.The installation documentation is very good, and straight-forward. Emporia also has a lot of information on their website. I had a complete gameplan and realistic expectations going in. I have a total of 20 breakers, so i knew I would need to be creative to get full coverage. The only 2-pole breaker that I didn't use a single CT and multiplier on was my dryer, because I knew dryers are notoriously unbalanced. This was confirmed by my readings washing and drying 4 loads of laundry last night. Good call. My HVAC and water heater seem balanced enough to use one CT and a 2x multiplier going by my readings so far. I also combined several circuits on the same legs (2 wires/alternating breakers) to achieve full coverage with 16 CTs. This works well. I also have a couple of breakers for items I rarely use, like a floor heater in the basement, so I opted to just leave them unmonitored and if I do use them, they'll show up in the "balance" from the mains. The last atypical part of my setup was to connect the hot wires for the monitor to 20 amp breakers instead of the recommended 15s. This was just due to their proximity to the monitor and required me to replace the supplied 14 gauge pigtails with 12 gauge THHN. Easy peasy.I also bought a four-pack of Emporia's smart plugs to cover one outlet at the panel that has its own breaker, and to give me the flexibility to drill down individual appliances on a monitored or unmonitored circuit.Adding the Vue and the SPs to the app literally could not have been easier. If you prepare by reading their documentation first, you'll be ready to hit the ground running. Write down the circuits and ports to which they're connected. Know any CTs that will need to be merged, like my dryer. I also nested my unmonitored SPs under the main device, and monitored SPs under the appropriate circuits. All was easy to do in the app.So far, the balance, or the difference between the reporting from the mains and the totals from the monitored circuits has been negligible. I know this will vary, but I think I've got it as good as I'm going to get it with 16 CTs. I'm happy.The provided data in the app is great. If I could make any suggestions, one would be to make it easier to look at a specific time on the graphs. You have to slide the graph to the right to go back in time and you're limited by the width of your screen. Going back several hours can take dozens of swipes. That's annoying. Put a drag-bar at the bottom, and/or allow me to pick a time manually. Also, you can only see spikes (such as HVAC startup) at the "second" resolution, so if you're trying to determine peak loads for an alternate energy source, there's no easy way to get them in the app. The export feature certainly helps by generating granular spreadsheets at all resolutions, though. It just emails a link once created, which is pretty slick.The whole Emporia Vue system is meeting or exceeding my expectations at this point. If anything changes, I will update my review.

Ease of use:I researched this product quite a bit before purchasing. I was looking to find out why our true up (solar system) was increasing every year. After a month it was pretty obvious that it was my old AC systems were sucking down the power. We replaced the ACs and it was pretty satisfying to see the reduction in power that the new systems. It was a bit of a pain to install, but that was due to my panel configuration and not the product. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied, but I think the real payoff will be in the long term. The more data it gathers the more you can see patterns. Only had it for 5 months so far, so more data will show more patterns (seasonal differences). The only drawback is that the user interface is not exactly the greatest (not intuitive) however it seems like they keep updating the app, so it should get better. Once you get used to it it is not a barrier, just a learning experience.