Nobody900
Member
- Location
- Los Angeles
- Occupation
- Electrical Engineer
I am an electrical engineer, not an electrician. I live in California. I am installing an Emporia Vue 2 in my service entrance panel to try to figure out why my electricity bill is routinely $800 a month as Edison is no help in trying to diagnose usage. The installation requires connecting to a breaker on each leg of 120v power, and another wire to the neutral bus. In my panel the very few empty neutral bus locations are difficult to access, while there are many easily accessible ground bus locations. My expectation is that since this is the entrance panel, ground and neutral are bonded together at the panel, but I have not personally verified that. My question is, is it acceptable to connect to the ground bus for this application or do I have to go digging through the wiring in the panel to access a neutral? Emporia told me this is OK, but I am not sure I trust their knowledge of code requirements so I am asking experts.
Also, given the way the device is installed, it seemed possible that an internal failure could result in both 120v legs of the incoming service getting shorted together, albeit each leg protected by a breaker. I asked Emporia about this and they responded that while that failure couldn't be ruled out, they had no reports of this occurring. Any thoughts on what the consequences of that failure might be? Thanks in advance.
Also, given the way the device is installed, it seemed possible that an internal failure could result in both 120v legs of the incoming service getting shorted together, albeit each leg protected by a breaker. I asked Emporia about this and they responded that while that failure couldn't be ruled out, they had no reports of this occurring. Any thoughts on what the consequences of that failure might be? Thanks in advance.
