I’m wanting to add a bunch of energy monitoring stuff so I can both track costs, and maybe implement automation to turn stuff on and off based on power costs and timing.
I’m using some TPlink based plugs right now which are like, fine, but I’m wanting to add something like 6 to 10 more monitoring devices/relays.
Anyone have experience with a bunch of shelly devices and if there’s any weird behavior I should be aware of?
Assume I have good enough wifi to handle adding another 10 devices to it, but beyond that any gotchas?
Shelly’s are great. I have 24 of them installed(plugs,1pm,1pm mini) and they are the most reliable thing in terms of devices in my setup
Hi I have installed half a dozen Shelly 1PM Mini units around the house and they do work well. I’ve not had one fall off the wifi, and they are great with HomeAssistant. I use InfluxDB to capture data from HomeAssistant and do calculations and aggregations in the DB to get overall costs of devices. I also use HomeAssistant to automate the relays so lights come on at night etc.
Installation is a bit tricky so I tend to use IP64 rated enclosures rather than leave them in the drywall like the website says you can. I also find the mains cables a bit thick to go into the terminals and adding ferrules would make it impossible. Other than that I think they’re great.
Emporia Vue has circuit level monitoring. You can flash ESPHome to get rid of cloud functionality.
Depending on how accurate you need your energy usage data to be for individual devices, you might be able to get away with just using a whole-house energy monitor. I’m using one of these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LV8DDFP
I already have a large number of Zigbee plugs, so by looking at the power usage from my energy meter before and after one switches, I can get a general estimate of how much power a device is using. Of course, the rest of your home is going to to skew the results, but you can mitigate this a bit with some of HA’s statistics functions. It’s been a while since I tried this, but I did test it with a 3.5kW heater a while ago. I took a median from a certain number of samples before and after the heater switched on (I think 10 seconds worth of samples), and the result was generally accurate to within about 100w.
Oh sorry; my goal here was for individual metering. I’ve got an Enphase solar system, so the Envoy is already doing whole-house monitoring.
I’d like to be able to identify and ultimately be able to lower my load to stay under what the solar panels are generating, but that needs data I mostly don’t have, and specific equipment to actually turn things on and off.
I’ve done this and it works well. I’m upgrading to some pro 3s for mains and AC circuit monitoring. The Shelley em does a good job but I’m looking for a quicker response cases and want to monitor individual AC circuits. The 1pm works well for larger device monitoring and control. I was using it to control a hot water system but it had a short life as it was quite hot where I installed it. I coupled it with the add-on to monitor hot water temps to turn it on and off. I also use them to monitor water pump temps for the pool and an irrigation pump. I use home assistant for energy use visuals and control as find my old phone is slow to load the Shelly app. I still use the original wifi plugs (similar to U) as I still like controlling random devices like tv and screen time.
