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Ok, so I chatted to emporia chat, the first guy thought that maybe there was a ‘channel problem’ (emporia listenening to the wrong phase). So he made some changes. My airco in standby would, according to the VUE, consume 180 watt. So he made some changes to the channel and brought it back to 90 watt. But still, this made no sense (since this is a very high SEER, energy efficient unit, it’s an expensive airco). So I decided to test with a different system from a competitor. It said that in standby it only used 3 watt and gave a VA of 168 Watt.
So then I chatted with Emporia again, told the (different) rep this time about the problem that the VUE2 seems to measure VA instead of Watts on my (3 phase) system and she said that they were aware of the problem and researching into it!!! Really happy to hear that!!
So then I decided to do another test, I bought a passthrough meter, this seemed to be one of the higher quality ones: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C619YRRM?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
And guess what, it showed again the same, standby usage of only a few watts and a very low power factor (about 0.04) , showing a VA in standby of 167 watt!! So this now 100% confirms that the emporia doesn’t work correctly on some 3 phase systems out of the USA, measuring VA instead of real power.
BTW, so it turned out that the first rep, who changed the channel, actually changed it into the wrong channel, since the emporia now measures 93 watts in standby. The original measurement of 180 watts was actually pretty close to the 167 watts. So it was set to the correct channel originally, it just measures VA instead of real power.
BTW, although I do have a 3 phase system, my airco is just a two fase one. We have 127V between neutral and line here and 220V between two lines, so we connect 220V airconditioners to 2 phase lines here.
Anyway, so the rep said they were aware of this problem and researching into it. I really HOPE they can find a solution, I don’t even have care if I need to buy a gen V3, I just want this to work. It’s an awesome device but right now it’s a bit hard to use. BTW, so when I turn the airco on, the power factor goes to about 0.98, so VA is almost the same as real power so it does work nicely with the airco turned on. It’s just kind of useless for devices that have a bad power factor (like airconditioner’s in standby mode).
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by
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So a recap of the last 2 days: I chatted with Emporia chat (Joe). Joe was extremely helpful and willing to guide me through some experiments. He seemed to think that the problem was that some clamps were being locked to the wrong channel (=phase). He made some changes which split the ‘ghost usage’ in 2. But I think his reasoning was at least partly incorrect. What he made me do is made me measure things with an AMP meter. However AMP meters don’t measure real power, so of course it showed up high (0.5 amp) for my airco in standby too, just like the emporia. HOWEVER I now just tested with this device: https://www.amazon.com/Current-Amperage-Voltmeter-Multimeter-Transformer/dp/B07JB9B2QL/ which is a simple clamp meter that also measures the power factor and THIS is where it all goes wrong. In standby this device also sees about 0.5 amp for my airco, HOWEVER it shows a power factor of 0.02 in standby!!! And thus only a real power of just a few watts …
Also when the air conditioner powers on and usage is over 1000 watts, then the amazon device shows a power factor of 0.99 and indeed, emporia measurement is then very close to that amazon device management (since VA is almost the same as watts in this case)
So in short, both AMP meters as the emporia indeed seem to measure apparent power instead of real power. Going to chat to emporia chat again, but to me at least this shows indeed that this is the problem
So, did anyone find a solution to this problem? According to the Emporia employee in the “EU 3 phase installation setup” thread there is no bug. It should work normally. However it just doesn’t for me nor for any of my friends here in Aruba, I have several who tried it too, all with their own devices and houses, everytime the same conclusion: the emporia incorrectly registers a 50-150 watt ‘ghost’ usage for Airconditioners, where a simple amp clamp doesn’t register that (and these are high SEER units, so it’s just impossible in the first place).
And it also doesn’t seem to work for the people here in this thread. What am I missing? Going to contact Emporia chat monday again to see what they say about this issue. I would just really LOVE to have my unit work correctly.
BTW, it also registers a ghost result for my solar panels, the device seems to think they’re generating energy at night. I have two 3.6 kwp inverters and both of them are generating 15 watts in the night, so that’s 30 watts of ghost solar energy that the device reports. Not sure if this has anything to do with the ghost airco energy, but still wanted to report it here.
Ah, I was talking about the VUE gen 2. It actually works correctly for the EV charger it seems (my EV charger is not an emporium one, sorry!). Well it shows 4.4% higher consumption than the charger shows but I’m very ok with that. Important thing is that it shows 0 consumption when I turn the charger off. As you probably know, the VUE gen2 doesn’t work correctly in 3 phase setups out of the USA, it measures apparent power instead of real power, thus shows consumption for all of my airco’s when they’re powered down, between 50 watt and 150 watt, depending the model. Just like everybody else outside the USA with 3 phase setup has been reporting on this forum. Hopefully you guys can solve this in your next version because I really love your system, but right now it’s hard to use with this bug.
I think the reason why it works fine for my car charger, because it doesn’t contain anything that uses reactive power. Just like it measures fine consumption of the lights in my house for example, all that has nothing that uses reactive power.
Hi, well I think most (or all?) of the devices i have that have high reactive power, like my airconditioners, are 220V devices. So yes, these are on 2 fase lines. I’ve tried both with 1 CT and multiplier and two multipliers, it’s always the same.
So my conclusion after doing some more measurements with that cheap amazon device that actually DOES correctly measure only REAL power, is that a workaround could be, for most of my problems, if we could just subtract a value per CT. I mean the difference seems to be roughly the same between the airconditioner being off, and being under load. For example I have a few airconditioners where that difference is always about 140 watt: it shows about 140 watt in standby and on load it’s about 140 watt too high. So if Emporia can’t fix this problem, at least an offset to subtract per CT would be a great workaround and would make this device much more usable on 3 phase situations.
No, it’s an extremely basic device. I merely pointed it out to show that this thing actually works. I’ve been comparing data so far for 3 AC units:
Unit 1: Emporia shows 70 watt in standby (no way that that’s possible), the ‘amazon unit’ shows 1 watt in standby (which must be correct). On max power the difference also is about 70-100 watt higher for the emporia.
Unit 2: Emporia shows about 70 watt in standby (cant be correct), amazon unit shows 4 watt (makes sense). Again, also on max power the difference is about 70-150 watt higher for the emporia.
Unit 3: Emporia shows only 19 watt in standby, amazon unit shows 4 watt. On max power the result is about 10-50 watt
Haven’t checked out if this difference is just the ‘reactive’ power …
I was wondering what 3 phase power you exactly have? Are there 3 phase users who do not have this problem? So to describe the problem again, on (some?) 3 phase installations the emporia seems to measure the apparent power. This makes a difference on devices that have huge reactive power flows, like airconditioners, tumble dryers, in general devices with a motor. For example my water heater (for tea) only has a heating element, no motor. It shows about 1600 watt, my killowatt meter shows VA=Watt and indeed, the emporia shows the same. But for devices where my killawatt shows a substantial difference between VA and Watt (mostly devices with a motor), the Emporia correlates wih the VA, not with the Watts…
As this is a problem on all locations that we’ve tested in my country (Aruba) I’m pretty sure this must be a bigger problem. For example big parts of Mexico and Brazil use the exact same 127/220 3 phase so I’m expecting people in these countries to have the same problems. But I was wondering if it happens on other 3 phase configurations too?
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