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Smart Electrical Panels, Yes?

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MacFun

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I have a home, built in 1978, has never been upgraded or remodeled it literally needs EVERYTHING. I wanted to ask your opinion about electrical panels since the “Federal Pacific” panel in place now is a known fire hazard.

The immediate thought was to get a new dumb panel from: "Square D”; “Eaton”; or “Siemens” with Arc-Fault and GFCI breakers…. However, now I would like to consider a “Smart Panel”.

Do you have any experience with SPAN Panel (SPAN® Panel | Lower your energy bill) or Leviton Load Centers ( The SPAN seems more sophisticated from the ground up while the Leviton relies on smart breakers to make the magic happen. A potential downside to SPAN and perhaps others is that you are beholden to their cloud infrastructure. From what I can tell there is no local control or API and that if they go out of business down the road we could be left with am expensive dumb panel.

Would you be concerned about government control of your electrical panel or harvesting of data…? I normally love to collect any and all data but I don’t necessarily want to share it. :)

What do you recommend?

Thanks,

R
 
Teken

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Gimmons

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“Would you be concerned about government control of your electrical panel or harvesting of data…?”

Not quite on your point, but there’s an interesting project to reverse engineer smart meters, and what the guy has already discovered is unsettling, including the potential for the government or pretty much anyone with a will to shut your power off remotely. These meters are strangely complex, hopping frequencies exery half second and apparently transmitting large amounts of data about everything except your power usage.

 
David L

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I am ignorant on this subject, I remember reading of a company that you could send your Electrical data to that would analyze the Electrical Signatures of the appliances and was able to break down how much each appliance in a chart showing usage, but it was a few years ago, can't remember which company did that. Reason I mentioned it, it was not a cloud service, you would use their data collecting device and send the data to them.

So not sure if that is what you are after, if you are after this type of data, I would assume there should be a local solution, I know Home Assistant has it's own Energy section.

www.greenbuildingadvisor.com

Whole-House Electricity Monitoring - GreenBuildingAdvisor

A rundown of the capabilities, applications,
www.greenbuildingadvisor.com www.greenbuildingadvisor.com

To Add, what I found interesting is with Smart Meters attached to everyone's house, the Electric companies can do the same thing, your water heater, if electric, has it's own signature, your dryer, your AC unit, etc. Example the AC unit when it comes on draws ALOT of Power/Load, it can then be identified by the electrical waves it makes, your compressor on your Frig., so I would assume in reality if it were mandated that you could not certain appliances, like electric dryer, or washer, etc. during peak hours, future may bring fines for people who do.
 
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M

MacFun

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JNDATHP said:
Get a whole house generator!
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It's always nice to have a whole house generator but I think you are missing the point.... having a smart panel has nothing to do with backup power.... take a look at the original post.

Thanks!
 
JNDATHP

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I understand. We have a smart meter and do not like it. We did install a generator because we don’t want to be subject to power outages.

My post was tongue in cheek.
 
M

MacFun

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JNDATHP said:
I understand. We have a smart meter and do not like it. We did install a generator because we don’t want to be subject to power outages.

My post was tongue in cheek.
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Understood, but do you understand we are not talking about a smart meters....

Thanks
 
Teken

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Did anyone see where the SPAN Smart Panel calls out what brand of breaker is being used?!?

If it’s a proprietary one - Oh Hell No!
 
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MTL4

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No way I’d ever be using a smart panel, overpriced (plenty of 3rd party solutions for this) and no control plus you have another potential security point to look after.
 
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Not me. No smart panel. Dumb panel works just fine.

I actually caught the smart meter installation guy while on my street. Power company sent letters saying they would be changing meters within 90 days. A year and a half later they show up. I declined the smart meter. They say I’ll have to pay an extra $15 per month. So be it.

That meter is outside my bedroom wall. 6 feet from my head while sleeping. No way was I going to allow that thing to beam who knows what into my bedroom. A few of my neighbors did the same.
 
David L

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Heavyopp said:
Not me. No smart panel. Dumb panel works just fine.

I actually caught the smart meter installation guy while on my street. Power company sent letters saying they would be changing meters within 90 days. A year and a half later they show up. I declined the smart meter. They say I’ll have to pay an extra $15 per month. So be it.

That meter is outside my bedroom wall. 6 feet from my head while sleeping. No way was I going to allow that thing to beam who knows what into my bedroom. A few of my neighbors did the same.
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I am surprised they gave you an option...
 
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I dabble in home automation (hence my user name). I've been doing for about 20 years. Personally I've never felt the need to have a "smart" electrical panel. I certainly would not want that system connected to the internet and communicating with a cloud solution. I really don't even see the need for energy monitoring when you are on the grid (off grid is a different situation). I think it's something that most people end up looking at for a couple of months after installation. Once the "wonderment" fades away however, they never look at it again.

That being said, you can definitely add that type of energy monitoring functionality pretty easily. There are plenty of systems out there that include current sensors that you place on each electrical circuit (in the electrical panel) as well as a "brain" that monitors everything. These systems can be easily retrofitted to just about any electrical panel. Some of the systems are stand alone, but there are also systems that can be integrated into a larger home automation system as well. If you want the energy monitoring functionality of the "smart panel", I would suggest that you look at these types of systems instead.
 
Teken

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The Automation Guy said:
I dabble in home automation (hence my user name). I've been doing it for 20+ years. Personally I've never felt the need to have a "smart" electrical panel. I certainly would not want that system connected to the internet and communicating with a cloud solution. I really don't even see the need for energy monitoring when you are on the grid (off grid is a different situation). I think it's something that most people end up looking at for about a month after installation, and then they realize they really don't care and never look at it again once the initial wonderment fades away.

That being said, you can definitely add that type of energy monitoring functionality pretty easily. There are plenty of systems out there that include current sensors that you place on each electrical circuit (in the electrical panel) as well as a "brain" that monitors everything. These systems can be easily retrofitted to just about any electrical panel. Some of the systems are stand alone, but there are also systems that can be integrated into a larger home automation system as well. If you want the energy monitoring functionality of the "smart panel", I would suggest that you look at these types of systems instead.
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This area is very dependent upon a person’s lifestyle and long term needs. As it is with almost everything in the world.

One only needs to consider how many people in your area have a video security system in place.

The only thing that has increased this market share is the ease and convenience that brands such as Ring and others have offered.

Smart TSTAT?!?

People would be hard pressed to know a single person rocking one. Until the likes of Nest came out and many others that followed.

Smart Locks?!?

The very same and all the above examples are almost ubiquitous in many homes.

Energy monitoring is just the beginning and if a person lifestyle is serious it eventually turns to energy management.

Almost everyone here probably has some kind of smart switch / outlet now.

Just think the lowly clapper to X-10 . . .

Now it’s Wifi, BLE, Insteon, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Matter etc.
 
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