Take control of energy costs, identify problems before they become critical, ensure code compliance, and improve everyday quality of life with smart services that let you see and control energy throughout your property.
Take control of your energy costs with professional energy monitoring and management services from Solar Ninjas. As licensed electricians and solar installation specialists serving Edmonton and surrounding areas, we provide comprehensive energy monitoring solutions that help homeowners and businesses track electricity consumption, identify inefficiencies, and optimize energy usage. Our smart energy management systems give you real-time insights into how and when your property uses power, allowing you to make informed decisions that reduce utility bills and improve overall energy efficiency. Whether you’re integrating solar panels or simply want to understand your electrical consumption patterns, Solar Ninjas delivers the technology and expertise to maximize your energy savings.
Your home’s energy usage shouldn’t be a mystery. Solar Ninjas provides advanced energy monitoring and management solutions that give you complete visibility into how your home consumes power—and the tools to control it intelligently. Whether you’re optimizing solar production, managing electric vehicle charging, or simply want to understand where your energy dollars are going, we install systems that put you in command.
Solar Ninjas relies heavily on the Emporia Vue Gen 3 line of energy monitors—one of the most sophisticated and user-friendly systems available. The Vue Gen 3 monitors every circuit in your home, tracks individual appliances, and provides real-time data through an intuitive mobile app. It does all the calculations for you, showing exactly how much energy each device uses, when it’s being used, and what it’s costing you.
But it goes far beyond simple monitoring. The Emporia Vue system integrates with smart home devices, sends customizable notifications when unusual usage is detected, and can even alert you when appliances may be wearing out based on changes in their electrical behavior. This isn’t just data—it’s actionable intelligence that helps you make smarter decisions about your energy use, catch problems early, and maximize the value of your solar investment.
The system is constantly evolving with new features, and because it’s widely supported with extensive online documentation, you’ll always have access to resources and updates. Whether you’re tracking solar generation, identifying energy vampires, or monitoring how much your EV charging is costing, the Emporia Vue Gen 3 gives you the complete picture.
Monitoring is powerful, but active control is where the real magic happens. Solar Ninjas partners closely with VEC Energy Management, a local Alberta company whose devices actively manage and control electrical loads in real time. We don’t just install their products—we participate heavily in developing them, ensuring they’re a universal solution that works seamlessly across a wide range of applications.
VEC devices are designed to protect your electrical panel’s bus bars by intelligently controlling loads, which means you can avoid costly electrical service upgrades that would otherwise be required due to poorly written code calculations. Instead of replacing your entire electrical service just to meet arbitrary code requirements, VEC allows you to safely manage your loads and stay within your panel’s capacity. We use VEC devices in 95% of our projects because they’re reliable, locally supported, and engineered to handle Alberta’s unique electrical challenges.
In addition to VEC, we also work with LoadMiser for load management and DCC controllers specifically designed for EV chargers. Every solution is tailored to your home’s needs, your usage patterns, and your future plans.
If you’re investing in solar, energy monitoring is essential. It shows you exactly how much energy your system is producing, how much you’re consuming, and where opportunities exist to shift usage to solar hours and maximize your savings. It turns your solar system from a “set it and forget it” installation into an actively optimized energy strategy.
Even without solar, energy monitoring helps you identify phantom loads, wasteful appliances, and usage patterns that are driving up your bills. Combined with active load management, you gain control over peak demand charges, avoid unnecessary electrical upgrades, and create a smarter, more efficient home.
Energy monitors can track individual load circuits, helping you track down phantom waste energy, monitor how much you’re spending for cooking, laundry drying, block heater or car charger usage, lighting and other loads like the microwave and fridge. By doing this, you can even see over time when equipment may be wearing out or having problems. You can have alarms when something has run for too long (a stove for example left on) or has NOT run (for example, your fridge has consumed no electricity for 12 hours) allowing you to step in before a catastrophic event.
Our energy monitoring system even allows you to tie in smart products like controls, so you can schedule or turn on/off plugged in appliances (like garden lights, block heaters, lamps, heaters etc) and tie smart EV chargers to adjust charging rates and times.
You can use some or all of these features and more easily from the palm of your hand by phone, tablet or web access and increase peace of mind, comfort and security while optimizing the savings or energy sales you enjoy from solar.
It brings everything to one place, which simplifies things at a glance.
You probably hate hearing “it depends” but it does. Energy monitors installed in one panel or 3 panels with 1 circuit to up to 16 circuits each will range in price and time to install and configure. A good bet is to mentally budget $1,000 and in many cases it will be less, and where it will be more you will understand because it can be clearly explained and you can choose how deep you want to go.
Energy Management can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 presently, depending on what equipment is needed, how many circuits (channels) you need and if its to be installed indoors or outdoors.
Energy management absolutely can NOT. A licensed electrician must install it along with your solar or charging circuits as part of the project. They require specific calibration by a professional so are not advised for DIY.
Energy Monitoring *CAN* be installed by a DIYer but, we most often see horror shows and damages caused by untrained people jamming these sensors into their electrical panel and then wiring the brain up however they can. There is a real value to professionals having access to special tools, equipment from the manufacturer which you won’t have off the shelf, and the ability to legally install these according to local codes whether inside the electrical panel or adjacent to it using safe wiring methods. We routinely spot emerging problems (like a mechanic checking out your car during normal service) and while installing we tidy up existing wiring to be safer, correct minor problems, tighten and service everything along the way and generally have it done the way you would want it done if you knew all about how to do it… without you needing to do a thing.
An energy monitor like the Vue Gen3 can tell you exactly where your solar energy was used, how much was sold to the grid, and provide you with a revenue grade metering record independent of the utility and their delayed or estimated records. It “completes the loop” from your built in solar monitoring system that shows you how much power you GENERATED and lets you see how and where it was used so you can understand,optimize and adjust for even better savings.
Well, regarding load management we work closely with the manufacturers constantly advising engineering and development teams on improvements related to how the products work, and therefore have a high level of mastery in how to apply them so you get the benefit of hiring people who actually helped develop and build the actual technology not just folks trained to put wires in the right place in a box… We’re proud to have helped develop a universal product tailored to the needs of the industry from the highest standards right here in Alberta. The VEC product is the brainchild of an absolutely brilliant local engineer and from its design to functionality, features and documentation, even to getting it approved by local authorities, we’ve been right there helping make it happen and make it better. We love the team at V-Electric Power (VEP) who invented this lovely product, and happy to help this product evolve to be used by everyone in the industry. We lead the way and set the bar as a standard operating procedure.
With energy management, we’re just happy to do it nicely, help clients understand the value, solve problems and dodge issues along the way and be confident that they’re getting what they need and not some junk product from online.
Load managers can be required to ensure protection of the bus bars (equipment rating of the “guts”) of your electrical panel. Until very recently these were not designed for higher power throughput like constant EV charging and very large solar. The load manager uses sensors that read the flow in your main panel and your solar (or other high powered) circuit and if things ever reach a certain safe threshold it can “shed” or reduce/eliminate the overage. There is an element of this which involves some EXTREMELY poorly written electrical code, which is well intentioned but frankly stupid. However, in the interests of having a sort of “universal standard” it is what it is. We are happy to be clear with you about exactly what is needed and why.
Sometimes a load manager is a great option as a much more affordable choice compared with replacing and upgrading an otherwise perfectly good electrical service. Other times it is simply a requirement to meet a legal standard that in physical terms could never be a problem… but whether its needed for legitimate control and safety, or ticking a legal box because of poor legal language in the code, it remains a requirement and we do it very well.
