DollaTek AC 80-260V 100A Current Voltage Amperage Power Energy Panel Meter LCD Digital Display Ammeter Voltmeter Multimeter with open CT

I took a chance on this (reduced to just £10 at the time) rather than one of the £40+ shunt options. This is excellent. It’s essentially a clamp on current transformer and display unit. I put this around the incoming neutral from the supply of my solar inverter,into a mini consumer unit. It displays the generated voltage, wattage, totalised energy in KWh and can be programmed to alarm if required. Needs panel mounting ideally as it has live terminals exposed on the back. So far, I’m very pleased with this device.

I'm an electrician and this is a cheap tool to monitor energy use. However, the supplied unit needs to go inside an enclosure (see photo) to prevent accidental touching of the live terminals underneath the unit. The CT clamp wires are too short for most applications and so you will need to extend them. In addition the CT clamp does not have a direction arrow as it needs to be placed on the power cable in the direction of the current flow. Hence, its advisable to test it first on a known source like a kettle and find which way works. Also, the wattage display units are in Kw not Watts as shown on display. Testing on a kettle reads 3.02 which is about right.

We are in dispute with our electricity supplier. Our meter has been reading about 200% over the true consumption value. The company have installed a parallel 'check' meter for a month so that we can have our charges adjusted accordingly (we first reported it about 3 months ago so are owed a refund). Afterwards, they have agreed to replace the faulty meter. However, I was planning to build my own energy meter using an Arduino microcontroller so that we would have a permanent alternative check meter to prevent this situation arising in future. When I saw this meter for sale, it seemed to be a better, less expensive and probably more accurate alternative and indeed, after testing it for two weeks, this has been confirmed.Pros & Cons:Pros:1. easy to install with no requirement to isolate the mains electricity as the sensor device, the current transformer (CT) opens and clips around one of the output cables from the original meter.2. only four connections to be made on the back of the device, two to the CT and a live and neutral which I wired to a 13 amp three pin plug.3. easy to read back-lit display. The display can be switched off.4. (seemingly) accurate measurement of volts, amps, frequency, power factor and energy consumed since first powered up.5. remembers energy when ac power is cut.Cons:1. you need to buy (or make) some sort of electronic project case to mount it in as the mains terminal connections on the rear are exposed and could pose an electric shock hazard.2. no mains power lead is supplied so you need to make one or get an electrician to wire it for you. However, if you can competently wire a three pin plug, you should be able to manage this.3. needs to be mains powered as there is no battery option in its design.Overall, I am very pleased with my purchase.

Bought this to get an idia of how we do with our electricity feed i think the price was fantastic and now i know what devices in my house hold are the heavy hitters iv closely switched things off one by one and can see clearly what batches of fevices are taking the most energy,some times you look at your electricity bill and think why is this so high with this device it will give you a base reading for all devices once yu clip the senser round the main intake feed to your distribution board,i did not want to modify anything inside the DB cable wise for 1 i am a tenent and 2 even though i am configent with electical cabling i am just not comfertable messing around in DBs ill leave that to the professionals, its not worth being cooked alive if you hit the feed in cable, theres no way of cutting it iffSo i decided to go with a plug close by i adopted a sovket choped the wires and installed the cabling to the energy monitor so if i did something wrong the braker would kick in! keeping me alive, and i have sucured the cabling to the wood near the DB and rolled the cable up in the cupboard and can monitor whenever i like leave plugged in,

Used to monitor output from solar panels. Surprisingly accurate. Matches my EV Zappi charger within 1 or 2 percent. Very pleased. Will see how long it lasts. But so far so very good. One word of advice. The AC input terminals at 230V are close together, so I soldered the ends of the wire to avoid any hairy bits of copper strand creating a short. Other than than, perfectly safe. Note that this is safe only when used as a fixed installation. I would NOT recommend this in place of a portable CT clamp meter.

Device works well but it doesn't come with any way of connecting to a power source. You have to do this yourself which is important to know

The product listing failed to mention that the unit is powered from the mains via two connectors of the type where you feed the bare wire in and hold in place with a screw. The cable to the hook are very short so either you'd have to extend them or leave the unit hanging - if you tried to use it as a hand-held device it could be very dangerous. Can't believe that this has a CE mark.

Excellent device - works very well and the indicated power usage corresponds closely with the ratings on appliances. So why only 4 out of 5 stars? I think stronger warnings should be given about the use of mains AC to power the device. I suspect that some purchasers may struggle! Due to the proximity of the power and measurement connections, care must be exercised by the person doing the installation. You need to know what you are doing. (I note that some users haven't realised that the sensing coil only goes round one mains feed conductor.) Other than that, it is a great piece of kit.