Home energy monitoring (electricity and gas ideally)

🌎 Around the World 🇬🇧 UK
#1

After Loop discontinued their gas and electricity meter which was working perfectly for 2+years, and "upgraded" everybody to their new electricity only platform I was a bit annoyed but could live with it. As of last week that seems to have died (in ~8 months :roll_eyes:) so I'm looking for alternatives.

I've lost track of what improvements have happened in the home energy tracking space over the last 2 years so would love to hear people's thoughts on the below...

Smart meters seem to have improved a bit but still not many options for easily exciting this data to Hubitat or another platform? From what I can tell the were some IHDs that did this but with so many suppliers having gone bankrupt I can't seem to find any where this is still an option? Which is a massive shame as I was holding off a smart meter to wait for this to improve, and had the advantage of reducing the amount of kit needed, and capturing gas usage.

The electrical energy meters as DIY options seem to mainly be Efergy and Aeotec, and seem to both have some integration into Hubitat but can't look at gas usage.

Have I missed anything when trying to decide what to do next?

2 Likes
#2

I know Bulb in the Uk used to integrate their energy usage into the SmartThings app. I did look at this but decided against it as I knew I was moving to Hubitat. Ultimately they are about to go bust so don’t think they will continue. I previously had an Aeotec monitor but it wouldn’t work with SmartThings, the price of the device has put me off buying again to test with Hubitat.

#3

I was using Loop too for Elec and Gas it is was GREAT!

But was forced to move to a 'smart' meter that is really really dumb.

Scottish power make it almost impossible to get data out from them and forced to copy typing from their app which is a pain in the butt.

I was using the new Loop Elec monitoring but it was so wildly out it was not use at all.

I am about to buy a house and will look for a better solution then, looking at fuse boxes that report to IOT energy usage and put it in as part of multi battery pack, elec car prep and solar prep.

On the back burner for now.

#4

I'm going of topic here but thought it worth mentioning.
My gas and electricity meters were upgraded to smart meters around 9 months ago.
The next day my zigbee devices started playing up.
Research found a few people had suffered from this and changing my hub zigbee channel cured the problem.
Evidently there was some clash going on.
Just thought I'd mention it.

4 Likes
#5

I've been using Emporia energy meters to monitor electricity, across three buildings. They're decent, and give me information about individual circuits as well as overall use. The only hassle is that their software is cloud-based rather than local. I've no idea who might offer a gas use monitor, nor whether Emporia is available outside the US. I've not attempted to integrate with Hubitat.

#6

Thanks for all the responses so far!

Hadnt heard of Emporia before but that is an interesting option if I wanted loads of detail, though annoyingly cloud based (not worried about reliability but just unnecessary given what I want to do is all local). Will have to investigate a bit more, though I will definitely want/need the integration as that saves me having another platform to look at occasionally....

Seems like I should avoid smart meters for a bit longer then as they dont yet do anything useful for me....

1 Like
#7

IOTAWATT devices seem to get good reviews and have been in my shopping list for a while
See this post

3 Likes
#8

Interesting, I like the fact that IOTAWATT has a mains reference so gets power factor and voltage - while most of the others just use current from what I can tell which is a significant disadvantage...

Shame its so expensive but I guess I could theoretically DIY the build given I have plenty of ESP8266 chips lying around at home...

#9

Decided I didnt have time to DIY it so have ordered an IOTAWATT and look forward to giving that a go! Will be cool to play with somebody elses project for once! Sadly I didnt think through import fees which look like they will make it outrageously expensive, so definitely should have thought it through!!

After all of that I also found Shelly EM which looks to do a pretty damn decent job of giving me what I need in a much smaller/simpler implementation, though with far less 'on board' tech so would definitely be more work on Hubitat side. But thought Id post that here for anybody else looking, seems Shelly have done a good job of designing the unit, with a proper external ADC for decent accuracy!

#10

Without looking is the Shelly unit zwave?
If so, and it's a USA version it will be using a non-compatable frequency with the UK.
Your probably aware but thought I'd mention it just in case.

#11

Its actually WIFI.

Shelly EM

  • two independent measuring channels up to 120A each
  • one contactor control (or load up to 2A)
  • 365 days of internal memory in case Wi-Fi is not available
  • voltage measurement and configurable alarm reporting
#12

The Shelley link isn't working for me, but the internal memory (in case wifi is temporarily unavailable) might be useful. One of my Emporia devices just stopped connecting for a few days, for no apparent reason. It came back online after a few days, but now the weekly/monthly data is all but useless for that building. That soured me on their product quite a bit. If a device doesn't store the data and then transmit it later, a loss of wifi connection wipes out one's trend data.

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