Hi!
I am doing electrical installation renovation for the lower floor of the house (which will include replacing the whole electrical panel). One thing that I want is to have a more detailed look at power consumption in the house. We already have solar panels on the roof, and the SolarEdge inverter with a dedicated power meter. So I already have the total consumption. But now I am looking at separate circuit consumption. Or at least per room. There are 5 rooms that I would like to monitor in total - 3 rooms will have 2 circuits - one for lighting and one for others. Two will have more - kitchen and bathroom. I would like at least the main circuits measured - so at least 6 channels. But if I can measure all - even better.
I am from EU, so we are talking 240V, but the input to the panel is 3 phase (with neutral), but those then get split. The kitchen will definitely get all 3 phases though (since the stove is 3 phase).
I am looking for either Zigbee or wifi solution. I definitely don’t want any switching here - just monitoring, so I would prefer if the meter uses clamp sensors. And if possible I would really like this to be DIN rail mountable - so it can fit nicely in the electric panel.
Hmmm, that only gives me 3 channels though. At a minimum I would need 2 then. But even then I would only have the minimum monitoring that I want. If possible I would really like something with more channels (or at least cheaper so I can buy like 3 or 4 of them).
It’s a 16 channel meter, which would be perfect for my use case. I would have to order it from the US though (instructions do say how to wire it in the EU, so it seems to be designed to work everywhere), which is a bit of a minus. Any experience with these? Or any better alternatives?
I have one of these - re-flashed to ESPHome. I wouldn’t recommend the standard firmware/cloudservice, but great with ESPHome.
There are many example configs floating around on the Internet, I studied several and made sure I understood what each was doing before picking bits off each and rewriting for my own configuration. Happy to share if you go down this path.
The alternative that I found is also Refoss EM06/EM16: Refoss Smart Energy Monitor, EM06 (EU Version) – Refoss Official Store
Obviously of Chinese origin, but has a first party Home Assistant integration. The EM16 is available in the US and I can get it from Amazon US (just like the Emporia), but I cannot find any instructions/manuals for it to see is it would work here as well. The EM06 has an European version that they sell here. I would probably get two to get 12 channels. I like that it is cheaper and has direct first party integration.
Thank you. After some thinking I think I might go for the Refoss EM06 - two of them. The shape is a lot more DIN rail friendly, and two of them are 100€ cheaper than the Emporia (mostly because of import taxes). Plus the first party HA integration, so I don’t need to do the whole dance of opening it up and doing ESPHome install.
Oh, that looks way too janky. Also a lot more DIY than I would like for an electrical panel.
In the end I have decided to go with two Refoss EM06. They were the cheapest option and in the form factor that makes the most sense for a European electrical panel. Plus first party HA integration.