[jj613]

Yes, you have to separately buy special clamps that were made for exactly this purpose.  They are on their shopping site.  The included clamps won’t fit.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by jj613.

[jj613]

Connect the two boxes using conduit, use one conduit large enough to pass the right-angle plugs through, and another one just for the Vue’s power supply cables, to avoid conduit-fill questions.

[jj613]

That’s sweet.   I have more than 16 CTs so I installed a few extra and I leave the plugs loose in the external box.   I used a larger box than you, with a hinged door so it’s easy to get in there and swap CTs.  I also put CTs on my generator feed (I don’t have solar) and, during an outage, I swap the A/B lines from the utility with the ones from the generator.   That way they don’t normally occupy two of 16 channels.   Good thinking to separate the power from the data …. I missed that.

 

[jj613]

I also have a portable generator.  I bought a couple of extra 50A CTs (for a 30A generator).    I put them on the feed lines from the inlet box, and I leave their little plugs unplugged near the Vue2.    When I run the generator, which anyway necessitates going down to the panel to flick switches, I unplug the A/B mains plugs from the Utility CTs and plug in the two from the Generator.

If you have a supply-side interlock switch that will work nicely.   I have a load-side transfer switch so there are some additional complications I won’t mention here.

In order to do this easily, I put the Vue2 in a separate box, connected to the panel by metal conduit, with all the CT leads running to it.  The separate box has a hinged door so it’s easy to open and switch the CTs.

Obviously the Vue2 needs Wifi and internet *while on generator* and in most cases, after the fridge and sump pumps, that’ll be the first thing you think about 🙂  However, if an errant car or tree takes out your ISP along with your power, the Vue2 will be a brick til its Wifi comes back.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by jj613.

[jj613]

I have a 16-channel Vue2 in a 40-circuit breaker panel so I can’t monitor everything.   I use a few smart plugs to monitor some plug-in devices that have their own home-run circuits from the panel.  This way I can monitor them without using CTs.

I used one smart plug for remotely rebooting a flaky printer that would freeze up.  It saved me having to buy a new printer for a couple of years (Eventually it died completely).  I set a schedule to power cycle it a couple of times a day, and I could do it manually if I had to.

[jj613]

@7_2kW_in_Mesa_AZ I’ve seen photos of electricians with a solution for this, a special oversized parasol and attached fans where the whole thing clamps onto a nearby conduit and can be adjusted to cast shade on the work area and blow air at it.  I also noticed when visiting Phoenix recently that the Telco street boxes have integral fans cooling their insides, similar to computers or data center cabinets.  You probably can’t do that to your breaker panel but the first idea would bring it all down to ambient temperature pretty quickly.  I know that’s still pretty high but 100 is better than 160.

The even better thing with having your panel in the basement is it doesn’t fill up with decomposing leaves and bug parts.

[jj613]

I don’t know if this is allowed in your country but perhaps rather than putting the ring ends directly into the circuit breaker, you could join them in a separate lever nut, and use a short, suitably sized tail wire to the circuit breaker, then put the CT on that tail?

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by jj613.

[jj613]

@flaviu that is more effort than I’m prepared to go to just to understand my energy usage.   But … it is heart warming to know there are still people in this world who are still so curious, creative, and knowledgeable about the entire tech stack from sub-chip level to app level.   Seriously I enjoyed reading your blog, you made me happy.  Thank you very much for sharing.

 

[jj613]

I don’t care if they want to profit from my data.   I use lights at night, A/C when it’s hot, you know, it’s really not that private or that interesting.   If I had an illicit grow farm or crypto mine I obviously would not like this solution.  But I don’t.  For me, there are app features I’d like to have … and I accept that they have a roadmap and can’t do everything at once … but they could let their community build the features.    IMO the biggest trick they’re missing is *power* (as opposed to energy) monitoring and management.  You need much more granular data to do that, and you need to be able to do it off line.   The granular data is there …. they just throw it away.  🙁

[jj613]

@rpertusio That might work (in theory, I haven’t tried) but it would prevent some functions of the app from working especially the “Balance” function.

I think your approach might make sense if you are monitoring ALL  your circuits, so there is no Balance, you don’t use the app so yo don’t care about its functionality, and you only use the data downloads.   In that case, in fact, you could probably use the ABC inputs for more circuits rather than for the main legs.

 

[jj613]

@1madsci in hindsight I don’t think the Vue was causing my ZWave problems.  1) It was useful that Emporia confirmed they haven’t heard other reports of this.  2) I replaced the metal junction box that the ZWave was in, with a plastic one.  That eliminated the problem.

It’s possible that if a ZWave device has very weak signal and is just barely functioning, if you introduce a Smart Socket, or who know, any other Wifi device nearby, that might interfere enough to make it stop working.

[jj613]

In response to the last message from Ted about server load:   It’s reasonable to impose request limits on API users.   If you published your API instead of letting people reverse engineer it as they have, you would undoubtedly have published limits and best practices.  If you allowed the devices to work off the cloud, the heaviest users might get off your servers entirely.   And if you didn’t limit one-second and one-minute data in the app the way you do, there would be less reason for people to be sucking data out of your servers to begin with.   I’m not doing it yet but that’s the main reason I WOULD do it … so that I have permanent access to granular data.

I really think you’re missing a few SIMPLE tricks that would make a lot of your customers a lot happier and open up new uses and value for the Vue.

[jj613]

@hoof in my area most power outages are caused by trees taking down wires, and when they do, they take down everything.  The ISPs are strung on the same poles as the power and a tree can be awesomely destructive.     If I had to I would switch the Vue to my phone’s hotspot.  I haven’t tried that yet but it ought to work.      I’ve only had two outages in the last 25 years that were longer than 12 hours and I don’t think I’d go to the trouble of reprogramming the Vue for a shorter outage.    Also, my transfer switch has a couple of needle-style meters on it so my approach to managing power consumption during an outage is to put a webcam on the meters and watch them from my phone.

@emporiasupport Andrew – thanks for the tips on setting up the app for the generator.  I bought a couple of extra CTs for the generator feed and since I have a manual transfer switch my plan is, while running the generator, I’ll just unplug the utility A/B feeds and plug the generator CTs in there.  I have it all set up in its own box outside the panel so this should be easy.  I haven’t tried it yet.

[jj613]

Hey it looks like you fixed this!

[jj613]

Hi @mfaul all the things you want to try are workable!

I put a picture of mine here https://community.emporiaenergy.com/topic/my-install-pic/

My CTs are in 4 different boxes so I put the Vue2 in its own box with its own door.  I used store-bought audio cables for all the farther CTs.   Try to find ones with 600V rated jackets to avoid inspection problems.  I bought extensions with straight plugs and jacks so they’d go through 3/4″ conduit.   I bought a couple of extra 50A CTs from Emporia and was lucky they came with straight plugs.

For the main panel, with most of the CTs, and these were the ones that came with the Vue2 and all have 90 degree plugs, I installed a 1-3/4″ offset nipple. This saved me a LOT of hassle.

I’d love to see your install pics and hear about your ideas and plans when you are done.

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