Energy Monitoring Moves to the Big Leagues – GreenBuildingAdvisor

Product Guide

What does device-level energy intelligence mean for builders, homeowners, commissioning, and residential electrification?

A few years ago, I installed an aftermarket energy monitor in my home: the Emporia Vue. It gave me a much clearer picture of where electricity was being used and helped identify opportunities to reduce both energy consumption and utility costs.

The drawback is that systems like these aren’t always simple to install. They require working inside an electrical service panel, which means users need to be comfortable around line-voltage wiring. The hardware also takes up valuable panel space and can make an already crowded panel look even messier.

The Emporia Vue uses current transformers (CTs) clamped around selected branch circuits to directly measure electrical consumption. Depending on the model, it can monitor up to 16 individual circuits at once.

I recently learned of another manufacturer offering a similar product. Refoss produces an energy monitor that uses the same basic CT technology as the Emporia Vue. The primary difference appears to be in the software.

Emporia focuses on energy management and ease of use, providing a polished interface for tracking consumption, costs, and trends. Refoss is geared more toward integration and customization, making it appealing to users who want to incorporate energy data into a broader smart-home ecosystem.

For homeowners primarily interested in understanding where electricity is being used and finding opportunities to reduce utility bills, Emporia may offer the better overall experience. For those who enjoy building automations and maintaining direct access to their energy data, Refoss could be the more attractive option.

At the time I installed my Emporia, another option was available: the Sense Home Energy Monitor. Rather than monitoring individual branch circuits, Sense measured electrical activity at the main service conductors and used machine learning to identify the unique electrical signatures of individual devices.

The technology is known…