eevBLAB 141 - Solar Analytics RIPPED ME OFF

[EEVblog]

Solar Analytics IS A RIP OFF!
Jacked up their fees 60%, and they refuse to respond to me. So screw them, I'm looking for a new home circuit energy monitors system.

[Psi]

I reckon get some Shelly DIN mount Wifi/Ethernet units.
Shelly stuff works great locally with Home Assistant, it's really the gold standard imho.
Then use Home Assistant for creating the graphs you want.

Note: I don't actually have these exact units, but I do use lots of other Shelly devices.

Note: Shelly sell products that are certified for use in AUS/NZ but I don't think that applies to all of their products. So you may want to check before ordering. I know AUS is pretty anal about electrical product certification in homes. It's usually listed in the Technical Details section right down the bottom under Compliance. Eg Shelly Pro 3EM 120A has a certificate of suitability PDF for AUS/NZ.

2 CT channel + one output for contactor
https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-pro-em-50

3 CT channel (it actually has 4 CT channels but i think one is for neutral measurement, not entirely sure)
https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-pro-3em-x1

Or here's their entire energy monitoring range
https://www.shelly.com/collections/energy-metering

They even have some wider DIN modules that are both 4 channel relay control and 4ch energy measurement.
https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-pro-4pm

[golden_labels]

The price is $95/yr:



No, it’s not your fault. You didn’t miss anything. It was designed to not let you notice it.

This is why so many companies block people until one runs their webapps and refuse to send plaintext mail. It allows them to dynamically adjust prices, hide details, lead reader’s eyes to see what they want to see and not see what they don’t want, and generally perfectly manipulate the victim to do exactly as planned, and all this leaves no traces.

[EEVblog]

Eg Shelly Pro 3EM 120A has a certificate of suitability PDF for AUS/NZ.

The 120A clamps are way above what I want though, could impact the resolution?

[EEVblog]

The price is $95/yr:

No, it’s not your fault. You didn’t miss anything. It was designed to not let you notice it.

Yep, someone else in the comments pointed that out too.
I missed it because it's not obvious in the website UI, and the $60/year was confusingly the same as what I was paying.
Still , they didn't inform me of the price rise, so screw'em. And it too much anyway for such basic monitoring.

[EEVblog]

Someone suggested Refoss
https://refoss.net/products/smart-energy-monitor-em16p

EDIT: Not RCM approved it seems.
EDIT 2: Meross seems to tbe the Australian RCM version of Refoss?
https://www.amazon.com.au/meross-Consumption-Automation-Electricity-Monitoring/dp/B0G8HCH74R/ref=dp_prsubs_d_sccl_1/355-6855030-4614422

[Psi]

Eg Shelly Pro 3EM 120A has a certificate of suitability PDF for AUS/NZ.

The 120A clamps are way above what I want though, could impact the resolution?

Shelly Pro EM-50 is 2ch and comes with 2x 50A CTs
So you could fit two in your 2DIN slot and get 4 channels.

You need someone with the Shelly app to check if you can manually configure the CT ratio for the channels.
Maybe you can set it to use your current CT's, dunno.

[EEVblog]

Shelly Pro EM-50 is 2ch and comes with 2x 50A CTs
So you could fit two in your 2DIN slot and get 4 channels.
You need someone with the Shelly app to check if you can manually configure the CT ratio for the channels.
You might be able to keep your current CT's if you can set that.

Yes.
I need minimum 6CH to match what I have now, but I do have 4  DIN slots available.

[EEVblog]

63A version available:
https://www.smarthome.com.au/product/shelly-pro-3em-63a/

120A:
https://www.smarthome.com.au/product/shelly-pro-3em/

Two units is getting a bit pricey.

[Psi]

Yeah, their Pro stuff has a Pro price

If you dont need DIN and are happy mounting it behind the box you can
use 3x of these to get 6CH.

They are 2ch but only come with 1CT so you need to grab 3x extra CTs to get 6 total.
Or use your current ones if possible.

https://www.smarthome.com.au/product/shelly-em-gen3-wi-fi-energy-meter/
https://www.smarthome.com.au/product/shelly-em-gen3-50a-clamp/

Would be $96 * 3  for the 3 units  +  $22*3 for extra CT's   So  $354 + pnp.
Note that it is sometimes cheaper to order from Shelly Europe in euros depending what you are ordering, how many and what deals they have.

Even if you wired your existing CT's up to the units and they reported the wrong current/kwh you could easily correct that in home assistant a few different ways.  Note you need a connector for the CTs on that shelly unit above, its not screw terminals. So using your own CTs is a bit annoying.

[Psi]

Maybe don't get the really old generation "Shelly EM". Get the "Shelly EM Gen3" or "Shelly EM Gen4".
The original Shelly EM is for sale cheaper on Shelly Europe but it uses an ESP8266 MCU, whereas gen3,4 use ESP32.
From memory ESP8266 can have issues with modern wifi encryption, i don't think it supports WPA3.
Most people use WPA2-personal which it does support, so it will work. but yeah ESP8266 is old so avoid if possible.

[EEVblog]

According to Grok the Shelly does not allow custom CT ratios, only the supplied ones. Not a show stopper.

[darkspr1te]

I have gone down this dark hole quite a bit running a school with 2 solar rigs, 3 phase, bore hole pumps, pressure pumps, pool pumps and what I have found is there is a lot of noise about home assistant and power devices. 
What worked for me was Tuya Din rail wifi power meter and it can be found in 20a/30a/50a/80a/100a models with and without display(these devices were branded ATORCH AT4PWP) . The non display models take 1 din slot where as the display model uses 3 din slots. both have inbuilt relay/Current resistor and use a wifi chip that can be flashed to OpenBK and provide mqqt and web page controls the latter being very handy if your HA system is offline for what ever reason. adding to HA is automated up to a point when flashed with openBK, in fact the hardest part is the flashing as they use long holes and short security torx style screws and then you need hot air to pull the board/flash and resolder.
We went down this route instead of having one large unit in central location as we wanted to monitor specific devices and they often shared a power line with something else and these units provided monitoring and control. 
URL to pictures/disassembly/flashing & setup guide for the ATORCH
https://www.elektroda.com/rtvforum/topic3941692.html


If you need to use approved items then
https://www.gavazziautomation.com/
They should be rated to AU and while they dont provide a wifi unit they do supply ethernet cable models or for wireless a MBUS system , so a central RX unit with many senders, one way AFAIK but compatible with HA as they use industry standard modbus , bonus note that many Solar units with modbus rs485 can use the rs485 power meters natively (Dyeye, victron, SolarMax etc) and provide more accurate data for two way power than the in-built CT these solar units have.

Your final issue is going to be remote access, some use the HA cloud option, some have public IP address on the internet, some who are cheap like me just use the free rustdesk tool to remote into my rasppi on same network and access HA that way.

[Psi]

Yeah ive been avoiding talking about options that requires reflashing devices as i don't think Dave wants to faff around with that.

Personally i love how you can flash ESPHome to Shelly stuff and have full control over them (or OpenBK/Tasmota), but stock Shelly's FW is fully supported by HA so it makes sense if you just want to get your current/watts/kWh into home assistant where you can do whatever with it.

The only thing Dave probably needs to decide is if he wants to use HA for graphing power usage, or if he wants a more pre-configured off-the-shelf system.

Watching some Home Assistant youtube videos on people setting up the energy usage page is probably something he should look at.

[EEVblog]

The only thing Dave probably needs to decide is if he wants to use HA for graphing power usage, or if he wants a more pre-configured off-the-shelf system.

I want it so I can not only monitor power consumption myself (see what's switching on and when), and also for use in videos where I'm demonstrating something.

I have an RPi touch screen thingo from the Mailbag I can run HA on.
Has a VESA mount so I can mount it on the garage wall.

[EEVblog]

If you need to use approved items then
https://www.gavazziautomation.com/
They should be rated to AU and while they dont provide a wifi unit

It must be WiFi. I'm not getting up in the roof and running an ethernet to the fuse box.

[Psi]

The only thing Dave probably needs to decide is if he wants to use HA for graphing power usage, or if he wants a more pre-configured off-the-shelf system.

I have an RPi touch screen thingo from the Mailbag I can run HA on.
Has a VESA mount so I can mount it on the garage wall.

Sadly Home Assistant OS is headless. I don't think you will get anything interesting on a display that's connected to the Pi running HA, maybe a terminal prompt. I'm not sure why they designed it that way, seems silly not to have it run a connection to its own webserver on its own display. I think they just wanted to focus on the important stuff and not X.org / rendering graphics. It's really intended for external web connections from other devices.  PCs, phones, tablets, wallmount tablets etc..  You can put your Pi touch display on another pi if you wanted and have that go to the HA webpage.

If you need to use approved items then
https://www.gavazziautomation.com/
They should be rated to AU and while they dont provide a wifi unit

It must be WiFi. I'm not getting up in the roof and running an ethernet to the fuse box.

You can use the Pi WiFi as well. The Wi-Fi built into the Pi4 and Pi5 is really good.
I have my HA Pi using its wifi to connect to the router and to 35 other Wifi IOT devices. (Shelly stuff running ESPHome FW). It's rock stable. Granted the Pi is only 3 meters from the router, but WiFi has a reputation.
I've never had any issues running my entire home automation system over Wifi at both ends.
(Wifi/internet router is a FRITZ!Box 7490 that the ISP supplied)

[EEVblog]

UPDATE: So, Solar Analytics (now Catch Power) finally contacted me and aren't too happy that I made a (genuine) mistake in my recent video. Where I didn't see where to correctly click to show me the web price was indeed $95.
I had already pinned the comment to correct that, but it seems they didn't see that or don't care.

Instead of just ignoring the whole thing and refunding me and that's the end of it, they actually want me to make a follow-up video pointing out my mistake.
They are literally ASKING to be Streisand Effected with another video! 

[tszaboo]

Honestly, to pay anyone 95 dollars a year to forward a few MQTT messages, and to show a website with statistics?
I was working at a company which was doing something very similar, and we were actively trading green certificates. Meaning whoever was connected to our system was getting paid extra for their generation. Alone, it's very difficult, but if you group together a few thousand installations, suddenly you can sell gigawatts of the stuff, and customers were getting more money than the subscription. But for data alone?

As I was telling to these SAAS companies: Amazon Prime, with free shipping, cloud storage, TV shows and music is 5 EUR a month.
All you do is you forward 2 megabyte of data, and you ask more than the double the price.

[thm_w]

Honestly, to pay anyone 95 dollars a year to forward a few MQTT messages, and to show a website with statistics?

For wifi connected inverter yes.
For the device Dave had its using a 4G data plan, so thats going to cost them $20-50/yr to maintain depending on volume.

[Psi]

Better to put your money to supporting Home Assistant development by paying for Nabu Casa ($65USD/year)

It's run by Open Home Foundation/Home Assistant so the money supports them.
It's an optional paid service that gives you;

- Easy remote control of your Home Assistant from your phone/PC anywhere. (The service gets you through NAT at each end automatically, You just open the HA app on your phone (or go to a Nabu Casa URL on PC) and it's instantly connected to your HA. You can roll your own remote access with tunnels if you want, it's just works automatically with a Nabu Casa account).  Being able to push text/voice notifications from HA to your phone when you're out is really useful.

- Better/easier support for voice assistants, eg linking Google Assistant/Alexa/Echo to HA.

- Cloud storage space for automatic backups of your HA config/instance.

[EEVblog]

Honestly, to pay anyone 95 dollars a year to forward a few MQTT messages, and to show a website with statistics?

For wifi connected inverter yes.
For the device Dave had its using a 4G data plan, so thats going to cost them $20-50/yr to maintain depending on volume.

Yes, they have the pay that 4G cost, although I'm sure they get a bulk data deal.
If you have WiFi or ethernet to your power box then it makes no sense to use cellular 4G like this.
With a recent house reno I how have decent WiFi at the fuse box without needing an extender.

[tszaboo]

Honestly, to pay anyone 95 dollars a year to forward a few MQTT messages, and to show a website with statistics?

For wifi connected inverter yes.
For the device Dave had its using a 4G data plan, so thats going to cost them $20-50/yr to maintain depending on volume.

Data/connectivity doesn't cost that much.
To give you some idea on LTE data plans, look up this company that published their data only sim costs
https://www.1nce.com/en-eu/1nce-connect/pricing
This is not the best deal, but it comes down to less than 1.5 dollar a year.
It's actually laughable that people try eg. Lora when you know the bulk prices.

[thm_w]

Data/connectivity doesn't cost that much.
To give you some idea on LTE data plans, look up this company that published their data only sim costs
https://www.1nce.com/en-eu/1nce-connect/pricing
This is not the best deal, but it comes down to less than 1.5 dollar a year.
It's actually laughable that people try eg. Lora when you know the bulk prices.

The pricing was based off of what we pay in Canada for IOT, many thousand 4G units.

That site definitely looks like a way better deal, and 500MB is decent for a small sensor. Though that company is losing money so expect prices to increase eventually.

[tszaboo]

Data/connectivity doesn't cost that much.
To give you some idea on LTE data plans, look up this company that published their data only sim costs
https://www.1nce.com/en-eu/1nce-connect/pricing
This is not the best deal, but it comes down to less than 1.5 dollar a year.
It's actually laughable that people try eg. Lora when you know the bulk prices.

The pricing was based off of what we pay in Canada for IOT, many thousand 4G units.

That site definitely looks like a way better deal, and 500MB is decent for a small sensor. Though that company is losing money so expect prices to increase eventually.

If that's the deal you get, then I would look at permanent roaming deals.
IOT should be less than 1 EUR/USD per month, everything else, someone is ripping someone off.