Refoss Smart Home Energy Monitor, Native Open API & Web UI (No Cloud Required), Real Time Electricity Usage Monitor, Power Consumption Meter Works with Home Assistant & MQTT, Solar Net Metering, ETL

Great Whole-Home Energy Monitor with Home Assistant Support!
I’ve been using the Refoss Smart Energy Monitor for a week now, and I’m thoroughly impressed. One of the standout features is its local integration with Home Assistant, which is precisely why I chose this energy monitor.The instructions were straightforward, and the video on the Amazon listing was particularly helpful, guiding me through the entire installation process. It should be relatively easy for anyone with basic electrical knowledge and some handy skills. However, I recommend doing some pre-planning before installation to determine which circuits you want to monitor. There are five L1 circuit sensor, five L2 circuits sensor, and six circuits sensor that can be used on either L1 or L2. You’ll need to choose one or the other. Additionally, you can combine some circuits and use one clamp for them, as long as they don’t exceed the current limit of the circuit sensor. For instance, I combined two kitchen outlets into one, saving me a sensor I used for monitoring a different.For balanced 240V loads like an AC unit or an EV charger, you can use one clamp and then change the circuit factor to 2 in the Refoss app or create a helper in Home Assistant that multiplies the energy usage by 2. This is because with balanced loads, the energy drawn on both lines is the same, which is why it’s called a balanced load. This way, you can save a sensor to monitor another circuit. I highly recommend making a note of which sensors are connected to which circuits to avoid wasting time trying to remember where you connected them.Setting up the energy monitor on the app was a breeze. I simply downloaded the Refoss app, followed its instructions to connect it to Wi-Fi, and updated the software of the energy monitoring module. The Refoss app allows you to monitor live energy usage for each connected circuit and view a history of energy usage for each circuit, broken down by day, week, month, and year which is awesome for using the app on its own.Connecting to Home Assistant was equally easy. I searched for the Refoss add-on, and the energy monitor was automatically detected on my network. It brought over all the entities shown in the Refoss app and then I got to setting up everything in home assistant.Overall, I highly recommend this affordable and reliable whole-house energy monitoring system. If you use Home Assistant, this is one of the best options out there that is supported natively through the Refoss addon.

Sweet kit for monitoring house electronics.
Have this product managing power usage in out house along with the Homeassistant management software. It took about 2 hours to plan out and install. While I was comfortable doing the work myself as an electrical engineer. I wouldn’t recommend it for most DIY folks unless they are able to completely disconnect their main outside the house before the breaker box.Wifi connection worked great. VLAN automatically setup with no issues. Size was good for my breaker box, not sure if it would be as easy for an older or smaller box.Two issues I had, the install is a total mess of wires… it wasn’t that easy to clean up. Wish there was a way to integrate current monitors into the breakers themselves. Second issue is the current readings were ALL backwards, despite following the directions to a T. Fortunately you can toggle this by adjusting your multiple from positive to negative in the app. Unfortunately thats annoying to do because of some android bugs making it hard to type “-” in their app?Look is ok if you don’t mind the rats nest of orange wires in your breakerbox.Cost seems appropriate given the components included. Just wish they included another 5-10 breakouts to cover a full box, or at least the capacity to add them from an expansion kit.Kit should be durable and last for years with no major moving parts. Curious to see how well the plastic clips hold out over the years if I have to move it ever…

I self installed this on my 200amp panel and it works very well. Installation was straightforward as long as you’re comfortable doing work inside the panel (make sure the power is off!). It’s been really useful to see where unexpected power draws are coming from, such as a heater in one of my adult children’s rooms that I did not know about! Recommended for all who enjoy having details of what’s happening in their house.

I’m very happy with the EM 16. It does everything I was hoping it would. Install was easy. It took max 30 minutes once I got started. The app connected without issue.I installed all circuits as called out in the instructions but some circuits were showing negative power (as in energy flowing back to the grid) which was definitely not correct. I think that has more to do with my house but either way there are 2 ways to fix that. Either flip the clamp or set the power factor to -1 in the app which is essentially the same as physically flipping the clamp.The Home Assistant integration is great. There’s almost no setup to connect it. The integration is native so when I added it to Home Assistant it connected itself to the EM16 without any additional inputs.Tips:- Install is really simple, power off to the whole house, connect the WiFi antenna, connect the power lead directly to a circuit, attached the clamps.- Do some planning before install. Consider which circuits should be monitored if you have more than 16. I wrote it out on excel first which made revisions before I started the install easy. It also made it easy to rename the circuits in the app after setup was complete- Mark the circuits you’ve planned on the breakers since the circuit numbers won’t be visible when the panel cover is taken off.- There are 3 types of clamps, A, B, and C. A and B clamps need to be on different phases. C clamps need to adopt either the A phase or the B phase but they can’t be on both. On North American panels, generally, each row of circuits (assuming the panel is oriented with the long edge vertically) is on a single phase. That means starting at the top of the panel and working down each row alternates phases.The photo with the panel cover is after the install. Apart from an antenna there’s no sign of the EM16.