TED 5002-C The Energy Detective - Compatible With Single Electrical panel and Wind/Solar Installation

I installed this 3 days ago on my house. I have a "grid-tied" solar panel system on my roof, and this system measures everything I need:1) Solar power generated2) Power used by the house3) Net power bought from (or sold to) my power companyA real-time display and historic graphs on my computer show everything I want to know.It took about an hour to install the hardware. It wasn't too hard, but as always be careful working around the switch box. The software was a little trickier to get tweaked. It was simple to initially set up, but getting everything the way I wanted took a couple of days.The 5002-C system comes with a handheld monitor. This monitor is practically useless. It needs to be within a few feet of the Gateway in order to receive a signal. It also seems cheaply made, and doesn't respond well to clicks on the button. I recommend the cheaper 5002-G version of this monitoring system that comes without the handheld monitor. Save some money, and just use a laptop or smart phone. (I didn't see the "G" model for sale on Amazon, but you can get it directly from Ted.)Update January, 2014: I lowered it to 4 stars because it has stopped working. It still sends web pages to the computer, but the data is all messed up, showing billions of kWh used in one day. So it was good for a couple of years and helped me understand how my solar panels were working.

TED's are clever little devices, and the company has a bit of a niche. You pay consumer prices, and you get a consumer-grade product. Don't expect perfect accuracy and performance ... if you need that, you'll need to spend more and get a professional grade model.An important point that's omitted from their website and seemingly all documentation: the device itself DOES NOT provide a way to view your electricity monitoring info when you are away from home. The device claims that it supports "remote access" but this works only with either a VPN or port-adjusted router (if you know how to do that) or the aid of a 3rd party software provider (such as myEragy), which often requires subscription and fees. You can access your TED from your phone or computer, while at home and on the same network, but accessing it remotely is a whole other animal. Not to mention, that when your newly set up remote access through a 3rd party fails, you have at least 2 companies/products/services to wrestle with to figure out what went wrong. Since the device relies on your router and your internet provider, a problem can be very difficult to hunt down.Lastly, our TED randomly drops at unpredictable times, but comes back online shortly after. Is it the TED? (The CTU's or the Gateway?) The 3rd party tools? My router? My ISP? Yikes ... who has time to fight with something like this?? It's not TED's fault, it's the nature of a product that doesn't provide much feedback but relies on multiple components.I'd buy it again for non-professional use.

The TED 5002-C is a great product and does everything promised. At least it does now after having to have Energy, Inc replace one of the MTU's and the Display. The system arrived in excellent physical condition. However, one of the MTU's was defective in that it wasn't able to communicate with the gateway via PLC. This was verified by Energy, Inc. The other MTU worked fine. The display was also defective in that its battery was only able to hold a charge for about a minute after being charged for over 8 hours. This was also verified by Energy, Inc. Energy Inc did pay for surface shipping both ways and took full responsibility for the defective units which they replaced with new units. Because of the defective units my final installation was delayed by three weeks. The system is fully functional now and I am very happy with the features and performance. I am using the system for my home which has a 8.9kW solar array. I'm still trying to figure out a way to access the TED data online similar to the way I can access my SunPower panel information. I would have given it 5 stars if everything had worked out of the box.

I would try to find something else. This system is very bugy and a pain to get working correctly.I have this system installed and looking for something different. It's a constant fight to keep this working. and if the power goes out and back on the TED system goes crazy and loses data logged. What's the point of having it???

Simple to install and produces very insightful info. I am very excited with the prospects of cost reducing using the info collected.The only minor is the handheld display. Material seems to be of low quality

Bought two MTU's for monitoring solar. Works when it works, doesn't when it doesn't want to. Currently it's not recording solar, it may be my fault as I have three internet connections and possibly during setup selected the wrong connection. The house usage is recording fine as always, but because the solar won't subtract from it, I'm not sure what's really being used. Love the chart and history.

Arrived as promised still working no issues

Installed for my solar array, had trouble getting things comunicating due to distances involved, as such errors were high. Communicated with the manufacturer, who responded quickly and we got it up and running. The thing is ungodly accurate and easy to live/work with. Very pleased here.