# SPAN "Smart Home Electrical Panel" - opinions?



## rexowner (Apr 12, 2008)

An acquaintance sent me this about a startup with a product that can:
"track and control behind-the-meter batteries, rooftop solar inverters, EV chargers and other key household loads via smartphone "
(They did not say it could leap tall buildings in single bound, though)

https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...panel-sales-in-growing-backup-battery-markets

IMO, something that had a built-in transfer
switch with a more standard installation for PV battery backup would
be a good thing, but just leave the rest of the loads on a regular
panel.

Anyone have any opinions about this?


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

I don't see the benefit of putting it into the panel. Anything that you mentioned can already be done separately, better, and more durably. It might not look like a pretty Tesla charger on the fruitcake's garage wall, but it's not supposed to.


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## nrp3 (Jan 24, 2009)

My customer wants one of those, but from what I can see from the website, it's not available yet. He wants to pair that up with a couple of Tesla battery packs ahead of getting one of the Tesla solar roofs when those become available. One of the initial problems I see is its only 30 spaces, which I can understand from an engineering standpoint of trying to stuff all of that stuff into one package, something has to give. This house has two subpanels in addition to a full 40 space panel. I've sent a few inquiries and only recently got an automated response back. I'm not sure if they'll sell me one or not. The batteries I have to get from someone else because they won't sell them direct to me either.


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## Bird dog (Oct 27, 2015)

HackWork said:


> I don't see the benefit of putting it into the panel. Anything that you mentioned can already be done separately, better, and* more durably*. It might not look like a pretty Tesla charger on the fruitcake's garage wall, but it's not supposed to.


In 5-10 years will this company still be around? That includes the software & apps.


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## nrp3 (Jan 24, 2009)

My customer is aware of this having owned a couple of software companies himself. He’s a big part of where I am now , so I give him what he wants.


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## JoeSparky (Mar 25, 2010)

Bird dog said:


> In 5-10 years will this company still be around? That includes the software & apps.



:no::no:

This is why I try and steer my customers towards some of the more open home automation protocols when they want smart devices. Their stuff will keep working when one company goes out of business.


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## Bird dog (Oct 27, 2015)

JoeSparky said:


> :no::no:
> 
> This is why I try and steer my customers towards some of the more open home automation protocols when they want smart devices. Their stuff will keep working when one company goes out of business.


...and as someone pointed out in a thread a good while back, still wire the switch boxes for standard snap switches.


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

TRENDY! Oh wait, I can do better than that. Ok , from their own article, this gobbledegook, the best part of which I will highlight in red: 

Outside of attaching current transformer clamps to every circuit, this level of data granularity is very hard to collect, he said. Energy disaggregation devices from startups like Sense can make do with induction clamps on a home’s electrical mains, but with a loss in accuracy and certainty of measurement, he said. But for the electrical panel, it’s a simple task.


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## nrp3 (Jan 24, 2009)

I sat in on their webinar yesterday and the only thing I can see thats a problem is the limited space for breakers. Looks like only 28 spaces. You can have multiple panels though currently, each would have it's own login. From what I understand, software will change this in the future to one login for all of your panels. I'll be talking more with the customer on Monday to see whether we get one or more of these and some batteries.


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## brookmckemie2 (4 mo ago)

I know from my own experience that panels of this kind save a lot of resources and, as a result, money. I have a big family that consists of me, my wife, and our 4 wonderful children. Just imagine how much electricity it takes so that we all charge electronics. When I decided to optimize all processes in the house, I first studied the topic of electrical panels and converters. Most of all, I liked the company luminsmart.com. I have been using their services for about a year now and pay much less money for electricity than before. These panels help me control the amount of electricity consumed and set custom saving modes according to our family's needs.


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## backstay (Feb 3, 2011)

Tell us more!


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

Government wants us all to use panels like this so they can turn off the breakers for the furnace and the AC systems, whenever they like which will be only for 12 days to lower the curve......


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## nrp3 (Jan 24, 2009)

I haven't met anyone yet who has one and all the trade shows they advertise at seem to be out west so I can't see the product unfortunately. I still believe that it needs to come in a full 42 space size. I have Sense in my panel at home, but it gets lost in all the other info that gets shouted out at me during the day. Need to play with it more now that electric rates doubled and my latest is about $740.


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## SWDweller (Dec 9, 2020)

The text says UL certification, WHICH ONE? I can see the need for at least 3 certs needed.

I tend to steer away from "all in ones" as they do not provide equipment that can be replaced easily.

I grew up in the Midwest and total electric homes were everywhere long before it was a "thing".
Our water heater had a remote device so the POCO could shut off the water heater when the demand for the water pumping occurred. Everyone had one. A couple of times growing up the water was just warm when because they did not turn the heaters back on soon enough. Or maybe we used to much hot water.

I am not a fan of Big Brother making power decisions for me.


https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2022/september/energy-emergency-denver-customers-blocked-from-using-a-c-ca-tells-electric-car-owners-not-to-charge-them



California will muck this up beyond believe. They do not have the grid to sustain all the charging for EV's that will hit in the next few years.


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## paulengr (Oct 8, 2017)

SWDweller said:


> The text says UL certification, WHICH ONE? I can see the need for at least 3 certs needed.
> 
> I tend to steer away from "all in ones" as they do not provide equipment that can be replaced easily.
> 
> ...


Long before California first mandated EVs then mandated you don’t charge them they literally banned power plants from their state. The idea was to “export” their pollution to neighboring states. Then faced with nobody continuing to increase supply because they made it economically infeasible they started rolling blackouts. Now they are exporting their population hoping to reduce usage to “manageable” levels.


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## nrp3 (Jan 24, 2009)

I do like the idea of load management and individual circuit use monitoring. I don’t think the intent was allow utilities to shut things off.


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## mikewillnot (Apr 2, 2013)

I looked at these a while back. Other companies have or are coming out with "smart panels": leviton, Schneider (QO based), for example. SPAN is different because the "smarts" are built into the back of the panel, not into the breakers -- the "benefit" being that you can plug standard breakers into the panel. This basic conceptual difference and approach bothers me, because that's the part that's likely to go south in a big way, and there goes your whole panel....in contrast to the smarts being in the individual breakers. I'm thinking, 10 years down the road we may well be hearing ourselves say, "Remember SPAN panels, where the brains were built into the back of the panel??"


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