Emporia Smart Home Energy Monitor

[Radian]

Great update! So the lid did close on the CU 😬 phew.

If the CT's are all marked for current direction, can the device report the direction of power flow on all channels?

[Benpointer]

1 hour ago, Radian said:

Great update! So the lid did close on the CU 😬 phew.

If the CT's are all marked for current direction, can the device report the direction of power flow on all channels?

That's beyond me, I'm afraid.  I can't really understand why the direction of the sensors is important but it seems to be. 

[ProDave]

Can you post some more info on how the app works and what it displays?  Is it only a phone app or can you use it on a proper computer e.g through a browser?

 

If the PV is exporting power (i.e. you are generating more than you are using) does the app show export to the grid?

[Radian]

46 minutes ago, Benpointer said:

That's beyond me, I'm afraid.  I can't really understand why the direction of the sensors is important but it seems to be. 

No problem. Depending on the relationship between voltage and current, the output of the clamp can be used to determine the direction of power flow through the cable. That's really useful stuff to know if you have multiple sources of power like solar, battery and the grid. Consequently if you rotate the clamp by 180^o it makes it look like the power is going in the opposite direction.

[Benpointer]

On 20/08/2022 at 21:19, ProDave said:

Can you post some more info on how the app works and what it displays?  Is it only a phone app or can you use it on a proper computer e.g through a browser?

 

If the PV is exporting power (i.e. you are generating more than you are using) does the app show export to the grid?

I cannot post any photos at the moment due to time constraints but will aim to post some later this week.  Yes, the app does show what you are exporting to the grid.

 

The app is available on iPhone, iPad or browser.  It has the same look and feel on both iOS and the browser.  I assume there is an Android version too. (Edit, yes there is)

 

The app shows Net usage, PV generation, and Total usage, then spilts the total usage by circuit, depending on how many sensors you have.  So if PV generation is zero (e.g. at night) Net and Total are equal.  If PV generation exceeds Total usage, Net usage is shown as negative (i.e. you're exporting to the grid).

 

You can view by second (so effectively your realtime usage at that moment), by minute, hour, day, week, month or year.   For day/week/month/year you also get total amounts 'In from grid and "Out from grid' shown.  You can select which day week or month you want to look at (I'm not sure how far back you can go - hang-on, looks like a month for day data, six months for week data, two years for month and year data).

 

The data is stored on Emporia's storage (this is a disadvantage - fears they could charge fro this in the future).  You can download a .csv table of your recent data to feed into your own spreadsheets or database.  

 

Early days so far but the app is much batter than I expected it to be.

[Radian]

Well, if anyone wants to ditch the reliance on the Emporia cloud and it's query restrictions, there's at least one alternative firmware available. 

And this teardown shows it's based on the ESP32:

 

[Benpointer]

Haha thanks - I think I'll save that for the day Emporia want to start charging a subscription!

[joth]

On 17/06/2022 at 16:38, billt said:

It's worth looking at the Iotawatt. https://iotawatt.com/

 

They don't advertise, so you won't have heard of it, but having tried the Emon devices, the Brultech GEM and Brultech ECM, the Iotawatt is the best of these. (I wouldn't consider the emporia - don't like cloud dependency.)

 

It's a development of the Emon monitors, but it's a neat solution, logs locally (but can upload to other databases).

 

I've just bought my 4th, arrived from the US in just over a week. It will do everything that you list, it uses a voltage transformer for a voltage reference, so measures power correctly.

 

3, you just put a CT on the feed from the PV inverter.

 

4. The Iotawatt can record either the actual power on a circuit, including direction, or it can just log positive or negative power.

 

6. Presumably you can get access to the individual feeds for each device so you should be able to monitor them separately.

 

 

 

My emonpi is randomly freezing (responds to Ping and ssh but taking forever to reply on port 80, and mqtt outputs no longer being issued) and needing a reboot for no apparent reason, so I'm pondering trying IoTaWatt instead.

Can't see positive confirmation I can just plug emonpi CTs direct into  IoTaWatt but seems very plausible. I'll need to figure a way to extend the 4 outdoor CTs into the house (rather than buy 2x IoTaWattt) but that's feasible over one length of CAT6-A (yay for screening).

 

Main holdback is the lack of realtime API to display current values in Loxone. MQTT is low priority for the developers: https://community.iotawatt.com/t/availability-of-mqtt

Just a primitive UDP output would be sufficient - in fact, much simpler to process in Loxone.

 

All that said, now I have direct modbusTCP interrogation of my SolarEdge inverter, having real time data on all the other feeds in the house in Loxone is lot less critical. It's mostly of interest for logging (which is natively supported via influxDB or emoncms) as real time decisions are all about PV / storage / import/export levels. The only other real-time integration I have is automatically adjusting kitchen lighting and ventilation when the hob/cooker is on. Hmmm.

The live view dashboard in Loxone is cute and I'd miss that, but it does but hellofa load on the miniserver (and on its SD card) which is not really critical to running the house, so maybe I'd be better offloading that to Home Assistant anyway - it looks like that now has a native IoTaWatt integration.

 

Hmmmm.

 

[Radian]

14 minutes ago, joth said:

My emonpi is randomly freezing (responds to Ping and ssh but taking forever to reply on port 80, and mqtt outputs no longer being issued) and needing a reboot for no apparent reason, so I'm pondering trying IoTaWatt instead.

 

Can't see any reason for it to 'decay' like this other than if the power supply has weakened. How long have you had it?

[joth]

2 hours ago, Radian said:

 

Can't see any reason for it to 'decay' like this other than if the power supply has weakened. How long have you had it?

I think firmware rot is far more likely than the PSU. Tbf it's been doing this sporadically for quite a while, I've just been slow to address it. I would tinker more into it, but I bought the complete project in the hope I'd not have to do that. I much prefer tinkering in smaller (ESP) or larger (dockerised) systems. For some reason raspberry pi always seem to be the least sweet spot for my preferences.

 

[Radian]

13 minutes ago, joth said:

I think firmware rot is far more likely than the PSU

Pi's are indeed a PITA to keep going sometimes!

[SteamyTea]

Just now, Radian said:

Pi's are indeed a PITA to keep going sometimes!

Just don't overload them.

 

[joth]

On 17/03/2023 at 12:24, joth said:

 

My emonpi is randomly freezing (responds to Ping and ssh but taking forever to reply on port 80, and mqtt outputs no longer being issued) and needing a reboot for no apparent reason, so I'm pondering trying IoTaWatt instead.

Can't see positive confirmation I can just plug emonpi CTs direct into  IoTaWatt but seems very plausible. I'll need to figure a way to extend the 4 outdoor CTs into the house (rather than buy 2x IoTaWattt) but that's feasible over one length of CAT6-A (yay for screening).

 

Main holdback is the lack of realtime API to display current values in Loxone. MQTT is low priority for the developers: https://community.iotawatt.com/t/availability-of-mqtt

Just a primitive UDP output would be sufficient - in fact, much simpler to process in Loxone.

 

All that said, now I have direct modbusTCP interrogation of my SolarEdge inverter, having real time data on all the other feeds in the house in Loxone is lot less critical. It's mostly of interest for logging (which is natively supported via influxDB or emoncms) as real time decisions are all about PV / storage / import/export levels. The only other real-time integration I have is automatically adjusting kitchen lighting and ventilation when the hob/cooker is on. Hmmm.

The live view dashboard in Loxone is cute and I'd miss that, but it does but hellofa load on the miniserver (and on its SD card) which is not really critical to running the house, so maybe I'd be better offloading that to Home Assistant anyway - it looks like that now has a native IoTaWatt integration.

 

Hmmmm.

 

Well looks like the decision has been taken out of my hands. The commercial version of iotawatt has been discontinued by the original project owner and finding a new commercial distributor is in limbo.

 

https://stuff.iotawatt.com/?v=79cba1185463

 

As I potentially want 4+ of these things to put in multiple houses - all of which have Loxone - I'm going to explore the Emporia + custom FW route.

[Dan F]

On 11/06/2023 at 09:09, joth said:

As I potentially want 4+ of these things to put in multiple houses - all of which have Loxone - I'm going to explore the Emporia + custom FW route.

 

Let me know if you get this working.  Only have very minimal energy monitoring here currently, but would be really nice to improve on this, especially given Loxone's recent improved support for energy monitoring.

[Dan F]

Could always do this for monitoring (from https://www.loxone.com/enen/blog/ehome2-future-homes-standards/) 🙂

 

I was going to get some of the local bytes smart sockets (which are pre-flashed with TASMOTA), but there are some things that it is easier to monitor in the consumer unit or Loxone panel or that don't have sockets.

 

Does the Emporia support three-phase and voltage sensing (I don't have any three phase appliances, rather single-phase split across three phases)?

 

[kommando]

Raspberry Pi's are notorious for wearing out SD cards either slowly over time or after about 5 mins which a 3B I had did until it was binned after a week. 

 

You can mitigate this in several ways, 

 

https://www.dzombak.com/blog/2021/11/Reducing-SD-Card-Wear-on-a-Raspberry-Pi-or-Armbian-Device.html

[DamonHD]

FWIW I have used RPis back to back for many years and I have had no sign of any SD card wearing out.  I do take some precautions to reduce storage traffic, eg: https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-site-technicals-70.html#2023-03-04

 

Rgds

 

Damon

 

 

[Dan87]

On 20/08/2022 at 18:41, Benpointer said:

 

Hi Ben.

Thanks for posting.

 

I've also been looking at options for monitoring my 5kW system. This seems like a nice solution.

It looks we have a similar set-up, the same Mitsubishi controllers etc.

 

I am curious - are you also monitoring the Ecodan's output and Coefficient of Performance (CoP)?

And if so, what are you using to do this?

 

I contacted Mitsubishi to ask them if there were any add-ons available for my system, but unfortunately there are not.

 

Thanks in advance,

Dan

[Benpointer]

On 19/01/2024 at 14:23, Dan87 said:

 

Hi Ben.

Thanks for posting.

 

I've also been looking at options for monitoring my 5kW system. This seems like a nice solution.

It looks we have a similar set-up, the same Mitsubishi controllers etc.

 

I am curious - are you also monitoring the Ecodan's output and Coefficient of Performance (CoP)?

And if so, what are you using to do this?

 

I contacted Mitsubishi to ask them if there were any add-ons available for my system, but unfortunately there are not.

 

Thanks in advance,

Dan

Sorry for the delay in replying - no, I am not monitoring the Ecodan's output or COP.  I don't know how I would do that, sorry.

[joth]

On 22/06/2023 at 21:07, Dan F said:

Does the Emporia support three-phase and voltage sensing (I don't have any three phase appliances, rather single-phase split across three phases)?

Emporia supports 3 phase pretty well, setup detecting and confirming the phases (designed for US split phase installs but supports 3ph too it seems)

 

However it's not good for anyone with PV generation or especially bad for bidirectional loads like battery storage. The main meter clamp detects power flow direction but it seems the individual circuit clamps don't, so it detects charging and discharging my battery as the same thing. 

Also it only supports a single distribution board really.

 

It's a good product for quick and dirty monitoring setup but not something I'd want to use for fully designed long term monitoring. The lack of flexibility in setup and especially lack of local API is too big a limitation. Shame as it's excellent value and for what it does support a well implemented bit of kit. 

[joth]

7 hours ago, joth said:

Also it only supports a single distribution board really

Actually, perhaps it goes support sub distribution boards, I found an option for it. I think the idea is you need exactly one Emporia per board. I don't have two Emporia so can't test it (and won't be buying another due to the battery/PV limitation)