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 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.

This whole house monitoring system has saved me so much money! I had a 22-year-old refrigerator that was costing me about $350 a year to operate. By using one of the Emporia sensor outlets I was able to figure out how expensive it really was to use that refrigerator. We just purchased a new one that runs with 80% less energy! I also am able to monitor the costs for running my two mini splits which also saved me a lot of money over this cooling season. To be able to pull up the itemized electricity usage of 16 individual circuits in my house is absolutely fascinating. I know my wife thinks I'm a bit of a geek but she is beginning to understand that by monitoring these things we are able to take various actions to reduce our electric bill. The customer service is second to none! I highly recommend this product for anybody who is energy conscious and wants to do what they can to reduce electrical consumption. I'm on budget billing with our utility company and my budget billing just dropped by $45 per month and I imagine it's going to even be a greater savings once the new refrigerator has been figured into the total energy bill. I don't think you'll be disappointed if you purchase one of these. The only real issue I have had is bad sensor but the company replaced that for free within 3 days! I was able to call and talk to a human being that I could understand and that was extremely helpful. Way to go Emporia! Keep up the great work!

It was easy to install in my breaker panel and the setup on the app is also quick and easy. I love being able to track how much energy my home uses from anywhere. You can set it up to get alerts on your phone when certain things happen, like a circuit drawing over a set amount of current, etc. I currently have it set up to notify me when my attic ventilator turns on, not really a useful bit of information but fun to have set it up. I have the whole home energy meter with 8 CTs as well as some of emporia energy's smart plugs that all work well together within the app and on their web site.

I've read some of the negative reviews from people who obviously don't know what they're doing. This is a great product for monitoring your house's electrical usage by circuit or as a whole. My only challenge was my breaker box is not large enough to contain the monitoring unit which is find because I don't want a DC appliance inside my breaker box. The sensor wires easily routed outside the box via a 1/2" grommet and some fire block for safety. The monitoring unit mounted easily outside the box and can be set up to plug into a standard outlet (plug not included as this is designed to be hardwired within the breaker box). If your beaker box is large enough to accommodate the monitoring unit and is allowable by code in your area then I say go for it. Otherwise you just have to think outside the box, lol. The app works great!