Monitoring a chain of subpanels

[InglesideNorth]

I have a main panel when the power comes into my house. This is in the newest addition. There are 9 breakers here to monitor. There is a feed to a subpanel that is elsewhere in the house. This 2nd panel used to be the main panel and has 24 breakers to monitor, though I am sure I won’t need to monitor them all. This panel has a subpanel that leads to my large garage. That panels has 12 breakers. There is also a subpanel from the garage to a barn with 6 breaker that I really need to monitor. So essentially I have 4 panels, chained together and very distant from one another.

I suspect I need 4 base units, so I should likely start with 2 Vue’s with 16 sensors each, plus 2 more Vues and then I can shuffle the 32 sensors to my big users with the option of buying more sensors.

Does this seem sensible? Assuming my WiFi is working properly near all 4 panels, is the app going to understand that I have 4 bases alright? I don’t care about the total % numbers. I am interested in total usage by breaker.

[scrambler]

You will have 4 separate devices in the App, each reporting the individual loads connected to them properly.

There will not be any global view accounting for the interconnection

[djwakelee]

What you described will work fine as of the new 2.5 app update.  That lets you nest the Vue2 devices, so the accounting will be correct.  The only issue right now is that visually the devices furthest in the chain will be hard to read as the app indents each Vue and associated devices when nested.  You need short named devices or they will be cut off – bad enough with one, likely much worst with a chain of 4.  Hopefully they do something better visually moving forward (2.5 app with nesting is bran new).

For proper accounting, I do believe you will need to use the 200A CTs on your subpanel feeds also.  You didn’t mention that in your ‘parts list’ of things to buy, but they seem to use that when calculating the balance totals for the full system – instead of summing up the nested loads/devices.  At least that is what it appeared for me, as I have a 2nd Vue without the 200 CTs, and the totals didn’t work right.  By using the 200A CTs on each sub panel, you’ll also get a nice tally for the consumption downstream of your daisy chain.

I’d maybe suggest you try this with 2 Vue’s first and see how you like the new nesting feature, before getting all 4.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by djwakelee.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by djwakelee.

[dornhetzel]

If I deploy a 2nd Vue at a subpanel, and use the 200A CTs there to measure the total for the subpanel, do I also need a set of CTs on the main panel breaker feeding the subpanel?  Or do I exclude using CTs on that breaker feeding the subpanel so the power doesn’t get counted twice?

[scrambler]

If you were monitoring the sub panel with CTs on the lines going to it, but now will actually install CTS on everything inside that sub panel to monitor all the lines in it, then you should remove the CTs on the lines feeding the Sub panel, or you would be reporting the consumption twice.

There is also no need to keep them there, as you are getting the Sub panel consumption with the sum of all its loads.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by scrambler.

[Author]

Posts