Correct Energy Monitor for Whole Home and a few select circuits?

I would like to add a Whole Home Energy monitor but would also like to monitor a few specific circuits. I am not adverse to a Curb unit but I think I would need multiple units given the number of circuits I have. The circuits I would like to get additional data on are the pool related ones (bottom right side of breaker box). What would the more experienced energy monitoring people recommend? Pic of the breaker box and chart of the circuits.


It really depends on how many individual circuits you want to monitor.

You can get the HEM V1 for as low as $18 shipped. It will monitor one 240v circuit or 2 120v’s.

I have two, 1 on my hot tub and one on my generator, I also us a TED 5000 for my mains/solar but that setup cost over $400(had it for years… I could have done it all with HEM’s for under $100. Then only draw back to the HEM is unless I missed it is there is no way to correlate data across the devices.

I have a Curb and have been pretty happy with it. If you’re comfortable enough with electrical work that you’ll install yourself (or have an electrician you can work closely with) there are a couple of tricks that I used to get more coverage out of the sensors from a single curb:

  • I found that my AC and Electric stove used the same amount of power on each phase of the two-pole breaker. With Curb, you can use just one sensor for this sort of circuit and tell it to double the measured power to account for the other phase.
  • You can combine multiple circuits into one sensor. This is definitely not recommended by Curb, but I tried it and it works great. Run multiple hots through a single current clamp. All must go the same direction through the sensor and (here’s the key) they must be on the same phase (ie connected to the same bus bar).

Side note: Your gas stove is probably on a 40A breaker because it used to be an electric stove. It’s possible that there is an adapter behind your stove which has a built-in circuit breaker, but if not, that breaker should really be swapped out for one with the rating specified by the stove manufacturer.

Follow up note: There is no requirement for Curb to monitor all the circuits. Since it also monitors the mains, any un-monitored circuits will just show up in the “Other” category.

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