Emporia Vue Gen 2 Installation experience.

[scrambler]

Hi,

I recently installed a Gen2 with 16 sensor in a house panel with some Solar inputs, and I thought I would share my experience to add some details to the installation guide.

My house is the classical Split phase system (two 120V lines). I have a Hybrid Solar system with a Battery, and therefore I have a Sub panel with the house critical loads that gets switched to the solar inverter in case of an outage.

In the main house panel, I only have the very large loads that are not backed up (Dual pole 240V breakers), like AC, Electric car charging stations, Electric Oven, Dryer, Critical loads Sub Panel, and I have two Solar inputs, the main Inverter dual pole Breaker, and a secondary dual pole breaker for some extra panels that are equipped with Micro Inverters.

I did have a free slot for a dual pole breaker, so I added that to connect the Emporia Power harness.

My Panel is in the garage, and there was no space for the Emporia Vue box in the panel, so I added an external conduit. To quickly test the system I did not install an outside box for the Vue, but simply planned to have the Emporia attached to the wall next to the panel conduit exit. I may do a box at a later date.

Being familiar with that electrical panel and electrical work, I did not shutdown the power for the installation (but wore gloves). Obviously the safe thing to do when you put your hands in an electrical panel is to power everything off…

1.       Preparation

So I could take my time passing the 18 CTs wires, I started by labeling each of the 50A CT at both ends with a small piece of white electrical tape and permanent markers (1 to 16).
I also made a table referencing the various positions in my panel with the CT number and the load name.
16 wires is a big tangled mess, I did not want to have to trace back each one when time to connect them to the Vue box would come J

 

2.       Harness

For my system, I took the dual pole breaker, flipped it off, then put the red wire into the top slot of the breaker, and the black to the bottom one (respecting the L1-L2 color coding of my panel).
I then plugged in the Breaker in the panel (in the OFF position).

Next the blue and white wires were joined and connected to the Neutral Bus bar.

Next I routed the harness to the outside through the conduit going to the emporia.

NOTE: At this point and until all CTs where installed and routed out, I did not connect anything to the emporia.

 

3.       Main 200A CTs

These went around the two main wires entering the panel. I red color coded the L1 wire for good measure.

 

4.       16 x 50A CTs

I have exactly 8 dual pole breakers in that panel (excluding the new one for the Emporia), so that was a perfect fit for the 16 CTs

 

IMPORTANT:
If you have Solar, I was told the Solar CTs must be mounted backwards. This means that while all CTs (including the large 200A one) have the K letter on the side of the Grid, and the L letter on the side of the load (arrow pointing to the load, away from the breaker), the Solar CTs have the K on the side of the solar production, and the L on the side of the grid (arrow pointing towards the breaker).

 

An easier way to visualize it for the 50A CTs, is that the CT wire goes towards the breaker for loads, and the wire goes towards the solar source (away from the breaker) for solar.

 

Note: I took the time to install and route the wire of each CT as cleaning and efficiently as possible and through and outside conduit.
Beware 18 CT wires plus the harness requires either a large conduit or two smaller ones. Depending how long the conduit is, keep in mind the wires have a 90deg jack connector. Once the conduit start filling up, it can be hard to go through if the conduit is tight…

5.       The Emporia Vue Box

Once all the cables in the panel where organized and zip tied properly, I connected all the CTs cable to the Vue box on their respective ports, using the label numbers. I kept the harness disconnected.

Because my Vue was going to be on the wall for now, I adjusted all the cables to have just the right length coming out so it would look clean. I attached the Vue box to the wall using Large Stick on Velcro, it is strong enough to hold it in place while making it easy to take it down if needed.

 

Given I did not need the cable extension for the Antenna, I detached the antenna from the extension cable and mounted it directly to the box.

Note: The connection between the antenna and the extension cable is shrink wrapped, so you need to cut the shrink wrap in order to unscrew the antenna from its extension.

 

IMPORTANT: Once all connections looked good and everything was secured, I turned off Both Solar breakers in the house panel, as I knew the app would want me to do that before setting things up. The Vue only wants one source of power during setup, so it can properly identify the L1 and L2 phases and configure everything properly.

I then connected the Harness to the Vue, and flipped its breaker on. After a few seconds, I got the long beep saying all was good.

 

6.       App setup.

·         Installed the App on my android tablet, created an account and started setup.

·         App asked if I had solar, then asked me to make sure Solar was off for the configuration (already done).

·         The app detected the Vue, I confirmed the last 6 digits of the serial # offered were the right ones.

·         Next was selecting a Wifi network for the Vue.

Note: I use a Guest network for my smart devices, so they are separate from my main network, and so that I reduce the risk of hacking through any connected smart device.

The first time I selected the network and entered the password it failed. My tablet was connect to my main network, so I changed its connection to the guest network and tried again and this time it worked.

·         After a short period, the Vue said it had completed its configuration but was doing a firmware update. It said I could now turn the solar sources on and go to the app.

·         I turned both dual pole solar breakers on, then went to the App, and everything looked good.
The 4 solar lines where showing negative numbers, everything else positive, and the House consumption value matched the grid import plus the solar production.

·         Last was to edit devices to enter names and select the device type for each Line input. I was glad to see all the needed choices there, including Sub panel, Solar and EV.

 

All in all, the installation was a breeze. The longest part was connecting the CTs and passing the wires cleanly.
The key here is to take your time double check CTs orientations and make it as clean as possible.

 

Notes:
Thank you to Marty with whom I chatted online before installation to confirm a few points!!
Congratulation to Emporia for what looks like a very well designed system. I hope you keep the development going to keep adding and refining functionalities.

I will make a separate post for a few suggestions I have to increase the App functionality based on the things I hope to do with the system 🙂

 

[networker1]

Excellent… Good point with reversing the CTs to capture solar production. I’ll try that with mine, which I just installed today.

[Author]

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