Leviton smart load center

General Tech
1

Well this is somewhat interesting.

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well, that would work well, unless the internet connection/modem is on the breaker that poppedā€¦ lol

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It would be awfully nice to have circuit-level data feeding into Sense. However, their marketing material makes it look like itā€™s a full vendor lock-in situation. The smart breakers are non-standard, fitting only into a Leviton panel, or rather ā€œLoad Centerā€. It doesnā€™t look like thereā€™s any chance of selectively replacing standard breakers in an existing panel to get energy monitoring.

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4

Much more likely that Sense would work with future similar products from Schneider electric ?

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5

That makes sense. Now just to wait for such an announcement from Schneiderā€¦

Tim McBrayer

6

Holy cow thatā€™s a beautiful power panel

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7

To be fair most panels use vendor specific breakers

8

Has anyone installed this yet? Iā€™m considering a panel overhaul when I add Solar this summer.

9

I donā€™t think this is available yet.

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10

Other smart technologies coming to replace mechanical breakers.

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Looking at the latest Leviton Load Center Line Card doc it seems to have been published on May 1st, 2019. Doesnā€™t appear that the model XXXX-XS (=Smart) breakers are available yet but from what I can tell the Load Center backplanes are (HomeDepot even) and they are compatible with existing non-smart breakers.

@kevin1 I canā€™t say I fully comprehend what a non-mechanical ā€œbreakerā€ can do when it comes to the airgap equivalent of wired online security. As that article stresses, the complications of life-safety-related tech dictate caution ā€¦ is it even possible to be cautious when you take what was a mechanical process (flipping a switch manually) and putting it online? (e.g. would you put these on a nuclear power plant cooling pump?)

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12

Mechanical switching has a number of issues and hazards as well.

  • Arcing when switching on or off - dangerous in environments with flammable components in the air.
  • Much shorter MTBF compared to similar semiconductor switching.
  • Harder to detect failures remotely.

Itā€™s likely that over time, much more mid-high voltage switching will get converted to gallium-nitride and silicon-carbide semiconductors. But a long way to goā€¦

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Iā€™ll try again ā€¦

YES! Totally agree that solid-state control of electrical switching (especially high pole/current/voltage) is the way to go from a technical/safety/notification standpoint. It seems inevitable.

NO!(?) Non-wired control of that solid-state controller is not(?) the way to go in many cases (critical infrastructure etc). Making breakers break safely is one thing but making breakers too easy to manually & remotely (wireless) switch is another. I suppose eventually wireless communications will feel as secure as wired (why not?) but like solid-state breakers we arenā€™t there yet.

BTW: Case in point on a low-level ā€¦

  • Put my fridge on a Wemo Insight to view with Sense. Cool.
  • Deactivated the switchability in the Sense interface to avoid inadvertently switching the fridge off. Good.
  • Changed a Hue bulb that was set to light RED if my hot water was ON for more than an hour (IFTTT) to go RED if my fridge was OFF for more than an hour. Backup plan. Excellent!
  • Later ā€¦ vacuumed around where the Wemo is and managed to switch the fridge off without realizing it.
  • Later ā€¦ I see Hue bulb is red and think ā€œOh, I guess my hot water was on for a while because we had showers; did laundry and so on. Fineā€. Did nothing.
  • Oops.

Point is: Humans can be pretty stupid sometimes, either inadvertently or deliberately.

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Had the smart load center installed beginning of March 2020, just a few weeks ago. looks great. the company that did the install never worked with this system before so they got the basic breakers instead of the smart breakers. so iā€™m waiting for the new breakers to show up and the installer to return and swap them out. the breakers just snap in - all wiring is screwed into the load center instead of to the breakers so swapping them will only take a few minutes. as far as my sense monitor, with the power out for most of the day while they relocated my breaker box, moved wiring and so on, i donā€™t know if signals all changed coming out of the new breakers or what happened but the sense monitor pretty much started fresh scanning to create bubbles again and didnā€™t recognize previous found devices. but it is learning them again. i donā€™t have ability to post pictures here yet but that box looks great compared to what i had. Leviton has its own data hub that is needed to read the smart breakers so it will be interesting to compare apps once i have my smart breakers installed

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15

Would you mind sharing what the panel and smart breakers ended up costing? I assume the labor for the actual panel swap was similar to other swaps.

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i donā€™t have an exact number since i had a few things done at the same time and also they had to reorder breakers to get the right ones which are due in any day now but all the items are on amazon, or listed on Levitonā€™s siteā€¦ here are some approx prices from the paper work and quotes we are working from. 30 space 100 amp load center box $150 the smart hub $250 then the big expense 12 single pole pole and 3 double pole smart wifi breakers around $1000ā€¦ price of the breakers depends on if you just want smart breakers or smart with ground fault or smart with arc and ground fault. the nice feature is all the wiring hooks to the load box then the breakers just snap in no wires screwed to breakers. once my access allows me to post pics all post some of the install

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Leviton Smart Load Center installed with smart breakers. hereā€™s some images of the project and the app screens. dollar amounts not set yet in the app so disregard energy costs estimates.

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Looking at this makes me wonder about the integration of Sense into a per-breaker energy-monitored panel:

  1. Sense monitors the Main load legs: normal disagreggation scenario.

  2. Sense monitors the Main load legs and also has access to the panel/breaker load data (breakers treated somewhat like smart plugs?). There would be processor limitations. ā€œIntegrationā€ could be through post-processing the data.

  3. The panel is carefully wired to allow Sense to only monitor the circuits that would require disaggregation. The clamps would go around only those wires.

Good to see those ā€œHigh Voltageā€; ā€œLow Voltageā€; ā€œHigh Currentā€ notifications. Would be great to have the redundancy of Sense notifications for the same events.

19

Congratulations on your new panel!

I also like the Leviton features that detect: low voltage, high voltage and provide an alarm notification. This is a feature that I wish SENSE would also implement. I would also like to see SENSE display the voltage on each phase on a time graph (much like the ā€˜Power Meterā€™).

I have installed a lot of residential breaker panels so here are some picky points that I have with your installation. I didnā€™t see anything serious that would be a code violation. Overall it is a good job.

  1. There are 2 neutral (white wires) hanging down on the right-hand side. Either the installation had not been completed or the electrician did not need these wires. Any un-used wires should be terminated with a wire nut. It is a safety item. You can never be certain if those wires might accidently get energized in the future.

  2. The red wire nuts (connectors) are facing down. I like to have them face up. The closed-end should be up. In their current position there is a possibility for water or dirt to enter the open end.

  3. Did the electrical installer tighten down all the ā€˜un-usedā€™ screw terminations on the neutral bus bar? Screws should not be left loose. Heat and vibration can cause them to fall out and cause a potential short in the breaker panel. Itā€™s hard to tell from the photo, maybe they are tight and itā€™s difficult to see.

  4. Why all the extra wire nuts/connectors in the panel? They are allowed by code. Was this an upgrade from a previous panel?

  5. Does Leviton make a 'Whole House Surge" protector for this model of panel? I would recommend that you look into installing a whole house surge protector at your panel. There are other brands that you can retro-fit to this panel.

SENSE:

  1. I canā€™t tell where the SENSE monitor power wires (black and red) terminate. Did they get their own breaker?

  2. The CT clamp installation looks better than most. The only area for improvement is to make certain the CT clamps are centered on incoming service wiring. I used small foam spacers and taped the CT clamps closed to prevent a future problem if the panel is ever opened. Also positioning the CT clamps at a true 90 degree angle to the service wires gave my unit more accurate readings.

We are interested to see your future readings and see the data generated as a comparison by SENSE, LEVITON and your local Power company.

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20

Look real nice! My biggest question is how do you differentiate between regular breakers and those which are GFI or AFCI/GFCI versions? I found a picture which shows a couple, but none of your breakers seem to have two LED indicators.

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Hopefully you do have AFCIs as those would be probably be required by code.

" AFCI protection is currently required for all 15 and 20 amp branch circuits providing power to outlets in residential family rooms, dining rooms, living rooms, parlors, libraries, dens, bedrooms, sunrooms, recreation rooms, closets, hallways, and similar rooms or areas. Once the 2014 NEC is adopted, both outlets and devices in these locations will need AFCI protection, and list will be expanded to include kitchens and laundry areas."*

Unless your receptacles are AFCIs.
" (4) Arc-Fault Circuit-Interrupter Protection. Where a receptacle outlet is supplied by a branch circuit that requires arc-fault ciruit interrupter protection as specified elsewhere in this Code , a replacement receptacle at this outlet shall be one of the following:

*. 1. A listed outlet branch circuit type arc-fault circuit interrupter receptacle.

    1. A receptacle protected by a listed outlet branch circuit type arc-fault circuit interrupter type receptacle.
    1. *A receptacle protected by a listed combination type arc-fault circuit interrupter type circuit breaker.**"