[ArubaUser]

Anyway so in the end, it doesn’t have anything to do with apparent/real power. The VUE2 and VUE3 do measure real power, just like Emporia said. I think this is important to realize.

[ArubaUser]

So I finished all research and in the end, the Emporia rep who chatted with me was right. It’s indeed the way they see and lock the phases that causes the problem. The thing is that if you have a 3 phase system, OR you have a ‘fake’ 2 phase system (with 120 degrees between the phases, so it’s really 2 out of 3 phases that you have), AND in 1 of those 2 scenarios you then supply 2 phases to a breaker (so not L+N, but L+L) then you can not simply use a multiplier on 1 pole of the breaker. You need to put them on 2 poles. However, the emporia is very likely to choose the wrong phase in that scenario. So the easiest fix is to flash ‘home assistant’ firmware and the just lock the correct 2 phases and sum them up.

[ArubaUser]

Here’s the explanation, it’s finally 100% solved:

https://github.com/emporia-vue-local/esphome/discussions/287

[ArubaUser]

Ok, updated the post in the github findings above. I understand what’s going wrong with the emporia firmware and made some improvements. But will make an even better version soon.

[ArubaUser]

After quite a bit of more research I must say my earlier comments are wrong. Emporia DOES measure real power! In the world of discrete samples, real power is the average of the product of each voltage sample and a current sample taken at the same instant.  That’s what Emporia does, or I should say TRIES to do since this seems mostly a calibration issue. Within the VUE2 the voltage and amps are calibrated to be almost 180 degrees out of phase. However they’re not exactly 180 degrees. When I shift the voltage 4 samples for the smaller CT’s, my air conditioner standby power drops from 120 Watt to 16 watt (should be 8 watt). However some other measurements which were a bit too high already, get even a bit higher.

Anyway I’m surprised Emporia shipped the device like this. I’m sure it would be possible to create a better, more calibrated device. I’d definitely pay for a premium device that works better.

Anyway, going to see if I can calibrate things myself a bit better, but it’s a lot of work …

• This reply was modified 5 months, 1 week ago by ArubaUser.

[ArubaUser]

Yeah still working on it. I must say that I should have rephrased the above. @emporiacs was right, in theory they DO measure real power. However the theory doesn’t always work out correctly, still investigating, closing in on it …

[ArubaUser]

So in short, emporia only measures real power when voltage and amps are in phase. When the power factor is low, it indeed measures apparent power. So, hopefully Emporia can solve this themselves, if not we’ll do it for our open source firmware. But the idea is to:

 

1. calculate apparent power via RMS
2. Measure phase difference
3. use that to calculate real power

[ArubaUser]

Ok I talked to my brother who has a major in electrical engineering and he explained it, why it’s not correct what Emporia is doing. The problem is that if the current and voltage is completely out of fase, then V*I will result in apparent power. So we’ll have to adjust for that.

[ArubaUser]

Not sure why I can’t react to the other thread (‘why things dont add up), so I’m posting it here now. I’m by no means an expert at electrical engineering, in fact I’m a beginner. I do know how to reverse engineer code though that’s how I could create the open source firmware. But honestly I’m REALLY confused at this point. I’ve been reading up and in theory, what emporia does SHOULD result in real power: if you take a voltage sample and a current sample at the same time, then multiply them and then take the average, that SHOULD equal real power. However Emporia does things slighly different, they don’t simply multiply current and voltages, but the DIFFERENCES with the average current and average power from the last half second. But I guess those averages should be 0 anyway? So why does it not result in real power for the 50A CT’s !?!? I’m still hoping someone with a major in electrical engineering can jump in.. Because I’m 100% sure that at least on the 50A CT’s the result is apparent power, I’ve tested it extensively and always come to that same result, as the others in this thread …

Ah something else that might be important is that Emporia does use the latest voltage samples but the sample from T-2 for the main currents and the sample from T-4 for the smaller CT’s …

Anyway now that the firmware is open source, hopefully we will be able to figure it out. It’s such a shame, this is such a nice device but rather useless when we can’t get it to show real power for the smaller CT’s

• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ArubaUser.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ArubaUser.

[ArubaUser]

That’s correct, the emporia VUE only measures apparent power, no real power. I’ve completely reverse engineered the emporia firmware and there’s no real power calculation going on AT ALL. BTW We’re working on a replacement firmware that WILL calculate real power. Right now I’ve just finished the first open source replacement firmware for the SAMD09, it works now! Right now all it does is exactly the same thing as the emporia VUE original firmware, but since it’s now open source, anyone can now adjust it to include real power calculations. I will soon start looking into that myself

 

https://github.com/gekkehenkie11/emporia-SAMD09

 

[ArubaUser]

I’m not sure why you guys keep saying this but this is 100% incorrect. The topic opener had it right all along. It’s not only in the EU though, it’s everywhere on the earth. I’ve completely reverse engineered the SAMD09 firmware, which does the measurements. There is NO code whatsoever to calculate the real power or power factor. And it’s even worse than I thought, because I thought at least on the 3 mains the real power would be measured. But that’s also not happening! The only calculation that’s being done in addition to the RMS is the phase calculation (to calculate the frequency) and the Voltage degrees calculation, to calculate the angle between the 2 fases. But that’s all, there’s no calculation taking place at all to calculate real power.

We’ve been working as part of the ESPhome project (alternative firmware for the VUE) to create an open source firmware for the SAMD09 with the final goal to include the calculations to get to the real power. It’s coming along quite nicely, the first version that just completely replaces the Emporia firmware is nearly done. After that we can work on calculating the real power. See:

The discussion: https://github.com/emporia-vue-local/esphome/discussions/173

and the resulting open source firmware:

https://github.com/gekkehenkie11/emporia-SAMD09/tree/main

• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ArubaUser.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ArubaUser.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ArubaUser.

[ArubaUser]

BTW I have found out that this is NOT specific to EU, nor specific to the amount of phases. The VUE2 (not sure about VUE3) only calculates real power for the 3 mains, NOT for the 50A breakers. It’s very easy to see once you take a look at the raw data that the SAMD09 sends to the ESP. It only sends phase angle information for the 3 mains!!!! So it’s 100% impossible that it calculates real power for the 16 smaller CT’s. Not in the USA, not in the EU, not on the moon, LOL.

[ArubaUser]

I do wonder if this issue still exists on Vue gen 3? I’ve actually ordered one, eager to find out …

[ArubaUser]

Ok had another long chat with Emporia and they said they are aware of the issue: “Its the way we see and lock 3 phase and there’s no easy way to fix that” was the response. There’s hope for a fix in the future though “we are always making changes to the database so it will get fixed one way another but dont know how long” so let’s hope Emporia can figure this out. I really would love for this device to work in my country (aruba)

[ArubaUser]

So I’ve bought some ‘homewizard’ SD230 meters single phase, which I connected to some airco’s. The great thing is that I FINALLY get to see the real standby power that’s being used (8 watt insteadby instead of the 95 watt that the VUE2 registers) AND have it logged online!!. However the bad things are of course that it needs free double slots in my breaker box, it’s WAY more expensive and worst of all, only saves data on 15 minutes basis. So again, really not what I’m looking for but I’m getting desperate here 🙂 Emporia keeps silent on the issue, REALLY hoping that they’re working hard on a fix. The VUE2 is just unbeatable in terms of features. But right now also unusable for 3 phase setups out of the USA.

PLEASE FIX THIS EMPORIA I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE !!! 🙂

[Author]

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