When will we be able combine circuits?

[skwerl]

Per the title. It’s been 3 years and still no ability to combine circuits. Surely it can’t be that hard to add that feature

[emporiacs]

Circuit merging is a feature request on the top of our list! We are working on that to make it available soon!

[flyoffacliff]

Why not just combine the circuits by sticking the breakers on opposite legs and running multiple wires through a CT. It’s even better than implementing it with software because you don’t need an extra CT then.

[emporiacs]

Hi,

That would not work because that’s not how the sensors work. More info here:

https://help.emporiaenergy.com/hc/en-us/articles/9555006954135-CT-s-Sensors-How-they-work-

[Data Is Better]

Most people in North America have at least one 240V appliance. I would love to see the 120V circuits combined so I don’t have to add the separate legs to compute my real-time A/C power consumption. Please add this feature. Thanks!

[emporiacs]

We haven’t given up on this feature, and it is still planned to be released just as soon as possible.

We are doing our best to build the many feature enhancements on our roadmap – both those requested by our customers and those that will make Emporia the best Smart Home Energy Management service available.  We maintain a very small development team in order to ensure this service remains free to you.  Their priorities are often adjusted to fix critical customer facing issues or to build features that will have the broadest impact to our customer base. I will definitely pass your feedback on to the team. Rest assured, we have not lost track of this enhancement. To make sure you get emails when new features are announced, please make sure you are subscribed to our mailing list at http://eepurl.com/gxAMZv

We appreciated your support and understanding.

[flyoffacliff]

You can just put a CT on one leg and use a multiplier in the app since it’s a balanced load (no neutral)

But yeah I agree this should have been implemented years ago.

[Doc]

So long as you are combining circuits that are on the same phase you can run multiple branch feeder wires through a 50A CT in the same (correct) direction (you can easily fit 3 #12 THHN wires though a 50A CT though you do need to make sure that you are not exceeding the capacity of the CT), the sensed current is proportional to the sum of the branch currents and so long as the total is less than the saturation current of the CT you are golden. The article referenced above is not helpful in analyzing this case.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by Doc.

[flyoffacliff]

Yes this is what I did with mine, but then you have to rearrange all the breakers and splice them so they are all long enough to go through the same CT. Most DIY installers are not going to do this.

 

The install and setup took me almost a full day and I am experienced with this stuff.

[Scooter133]

Any Update since August? I have many 240v devices.
Mini-Splits, Pumps (Well, Booster, Septic Pool), Steam Generator, radiant Floor Heater, Wood Shop Tools, EV Chargers.
Those all could get by with the multiplier, though would prefer the the merging on the 2 hot Leg Circuits.

I have 11 Sub Panels on the property, Its many of these sub panels that I cannot use the multiplier as the the 2 Hot Legs may or may not be 100% balanced at the Subpanel since they are then broken down into multiple 120v circuits.

For some I’ve just put another Vue in the Sub-panel. Though I’d prefer to just monitor the Sub-panel from upstream.
I’m up to 5 Vue 2 units. )-:

[emporiacs]

Using 2 x 50A CTs in a dual pole breaker brings more accuracy (in case you’re not sure if the line is balanced) By our experience, we know solar lines and EV Chargers pull the same amperage from both phases, but that might not be the case for pumps or other appliances.  You can test by adding 2 x 50A CTs to the circuit, one per leg, and running the appliance while checking the app, so you know if both sensors are pulling same amps or not and then device to use 1 CT and the multiplier to double the measurement, or 2 x 50A CTs and no multiplier.

More info: https://help.emporiaenergy.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408547870871-CT-Sensors-Monitoring-Dual-Pole-Multi-Pole-Circuits-and-using-Multipliers

[Scooter133]

Thank you, Yes, there are some Sub Panels that I’m monitoring, so they are not going to be balanced.
Some things like the MiniSplits, Steam Generator, Electric Range, Floor heating and my Single to 3 Phase Drives are all 240v, but use one leg for 120v Electronics. So I can get one leg at 0.5amps and the other at 0.0amps.  I know it’s not much, but there are slight differences.

So far I have 5 Panels with Monitoring units. 55 Circuit CTs installed. 25 are 120v Circuits. And 30 are for 15 240v Circuits.
I’ve would be great to be able to merge them.

 

Thanks!

[emporiacs]

Unfortunately, right now, the Emporia app does not offer a way of adding circuits together. It’s a very common feature requested by our customers, and we’re working on that to be launched in a future firmware update, but we still don’t have an ETA for that functionality.

More information: https://help.emporiaenergy.com/hc/en-us/articles/9556368100631-Combining-measurements-

[willp4139]

Do you have an ETA for any of the planned added functionality for the Vue Gen 2 system? In other words, when should we expect the next new feature to be available, whatever that feature may be?

[emporiacs]

Hi, we’re happy to report that this feature is now slated to arrive this year!

[flyoffacliff]

I would just assume it’s not coming. They’ve been saying this feature and others are in the works for years now. They don’t give time estimates for anything.

[Scooter133]

Being a Programmer and also familiar with the ESP32 chips (they are what is used in the Vue2) I sent an email to support to see if they needed some assistance in helping implement the Circuit Combining (2 pole)  feature and that I could offer my programming assistance to them.

This was the reply:

Hi Scott,
 Thanks for reaching out!
 We are developing the Circuit Merging feature, it should be available for users in a couple of weeks now.
 If you want to send your resume, please send, and I’ll pass along to the developers.

Let’s hope that the ‘couple of weeks’ will really be a couple of weeks!
Mid March?  Fingers Crossed!

[eldonb46]

Fingers still crossed, and waiting !!

[Kevin @ Emporia]

Testing this feature now (and have seen it in action w/ our test devices in office). Should be coming in a very soon app update given QA goes well!

[Chip.Brown]

I really could use this feature, are we done with QA?

• This reply was modified 8 months ago by Chip.Brown.

[Kevin @ Emporia]

Not yet.

[flyoffacliff]

Thanks for the update! Happy to see this product being worked on more recently.

[Westdonkeyk]

Add my name to the list of folks requesting this feature, would certainly come in handy!

[EnergyNerd iThree]

I would absolutely use this feature, for monitoring both halves of a split phase (240V) subpanel, with two current sensors.
The big issue I’ve had with Emporia is tracking down “balance” errors: and the ability to both combine the two sensors AND see how balanced they are would be great:

Subpanel   500W  (Split 300W/200W)

[Kevin @ Emporia]

Hey everybody – just wanted to give you a heads up that circuit merging as a feature should be deployed by the end of this month. QA is wrapped up on that feature and we’ll be including it with an update coming towards the end of this month (targeted release date 27th of June). There’s a separate app release slated for mid-June, but circuit merging will be deployed as part of the release after this upcoming one.

[Westdonkeyk]

Thanks for the update Kevin!

[Kevin @ Emporia]

The day has arrived and the app updates have been pushed to the relevant app stores (version 3.4.4.6070) – should be available to download as of now. Check it out whenever you have a sec, this update includes Circuit Merging as well as Bi-Directional 50A CT detection (and some other small improvements/fixes). We’ll be launching the knowledge base articles explaining the two major improvements later today as well @ help.emporiaenergy.com.

edit: Circuit Merging article on help.emporiaenergy.com

• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Kevin @ Emporia.

[Milo]

Gretn news! Thank you for adding this feature!

[Gareth]

Can we customize the way the multiple circuits values are added together?

I have a hybrid solar inverter which is connected between my main panel and the subpanel. The power can flow bidirectional (either feeding back to the main panel / grid or pulling power from the grid when there is no solar). I would like to use the Emporia Vue 2 to monitor the total solar production after the loads are accounted for. Right now I’m only able to measure the Net Production for the whole house via the 200A CTs on the main panel.

The feed from the main panel is split phase 240V so I guess I would need a pair of 50A CTs to monitor this, let’s call this circuit A. This number would be negative when there is solar production exceeding the loads and positive when there is no production (just like the 200A CTs on the main panel are now).

The subpanel is connected to the load side of the inverter. I assume would connect a second pair of 50A CTs to monitor that circuit, let’s call that circuit B.

So my total solar production (T) should be represented by the formula T=A-B

Example 1 – 3kW Solar (A=-2), 1kW Loads (B) = Total solar -3kW

Example 2 – 0kW Solar  (A=1), 1kW Loads (B) = Total solar 0kW

Example 3 – 1kW Solar (A=2) , 3kW Loads (B) = Total solar 1kW

Can I use the logic in the app/software to show these results?

 

[Gareth]

Well since I didn’t get a response I went ahead and tried it anyway, and the good news it seems to work.

I put a CT on each of the hot for the wires going from the inverter to the subpanel since many of the loads are 120V so unbalanced. I entered these with a multiplier of -1.0

I put another CT on one of the hots for the circuit feeding the inverter. I didn’t check to see whether it is balanced but it seems to be close enough. It has a multiplier of 2.0 and set up as bi-directional

I combined all three circuits in the Emporia app as a ‘Solar/Generation’ circuit

It now shows me a pretty accurate reading of my solar net of any loads powered by the inverter, at least compared to the display on the inverter.

When PV is off (nighttime) it shows me (close to) zero. I assume the inverter has some standby load.

The only thing I haven’t tried yet is loads in excess of the PV (example 3 above) but I think it should work.

I can still see my ‘net production’ back to the grid (net metering) which with my house’s base load is usually a few hundred watts less than my PV production.

[Author]

Posts