I bought a Span smart panel because I wanted to see exactly where my electricity goes. I have Tesla Solar on the roof, and after a year of looking at the Tesla app’s production numbers with no insight into which circuits were benefiting, I wanted more. Span promised circuit-level monitoring, real-time wattage per breaker, and a smart layer on top of my electrical system. At somewhere between $3,500 and $6,000 installed depending on your electrician and location, it’s not a casual purchase.
I’ve had it for about eight months now. My verdict is genuinely mixed — more positive than I expected in some areas, more frustrated in others. Here’s an honest breakdown.
What Span Actually Is
Span replaces your existing main electrical panel with a smart version that has a built-in circuit monitor on every breaker. Each circuit gets individual current sensing, so the app can tell you in real time that your dishwasher is pulling 1,800 watts right now, your refrigerator is cycling at 120 watts, and your HVAC compressor just kicked on at 4,200 watts. You can see usage history per circuit, get alerts when something unusual happens, and control individual breakers remotely from your phone.
It also has features specifically for solar and battery systems: it can manage which circuits get priority during a power outage (if you have a battery), automate load shedding during peak utility pricing windows, and track your time-of-use costs at a circuit level.
The panel itself is a sleek, gray box that looks considerably better than a standard electrical panel. The internal components are solid — Span is a real electrical product, not a consumer gadget bolted onto an existing panel. It meets UL and NEC standards and can be permitted like any other panel replacement.
Installation: What to Expect
The installation is a full panel replacement. Your electrician — or Span’s own certified installer network — removes your old breaker box entirely and mounts the Span panel in its place. Every circuit that fed your old panel gets moved over. Depending on how many circuits you have and how complex your service entry situation is, this typically takes four to eight hours and requires your power to be off for most of that time.
I paid $4,200 all in, which included the panel hardware and labor. I’ve seen quotes as low as $3,500 for straightforward installs and as high as $6,500 for service upgrades or homes with more circuits. If you’re in a HECO service territory in Hawaii, Span has had specific incentives and installer partnerships there. California and the Northeast are where the bulk of their installations happen.
Setup after installation is straightforward. You download the Span app, scan a QR code on the panel, and it walks you through naming your circuits. This took me about 20 minutes. Within an hour of power being restored, I had real-time data on all 42 circuits in my house.
What Span Does Very Well
Circuit-level consumption monitoring is genuinely useful. Before Span, I had no idea my home office was my second-highest energy draw after HVAC. I knew the HVAC was expensive in Florida summers, but I didn’t realize my two monitors, a desktop workstation, and a network rack were collectively pulling more electricity per day than my water heater. Span made that visible. I’ve since switched to a more efficient monitor setup, which has meaningfully reduced my bills.
The app is well-designed. I don’t say this lightly — most utility and energy apps are barely functional. The Span app is clean, fast, and actually useful. Historical data is easy to navigate. The real-time view updates every few seconds. Circuit grouping (so you can see “kitchen appliances” as a category) works as advertised. Push notifications for unusual consumption are helpful without being obnoxious.
Remote breaker control is underrated. I can turn off any circuit in my house from my phone. On vacation last month, I remembered I wasn’t sure if I’d turned off the space heater in my garage. Instead of worrying about it, I just checked the Span app — the circuit was pulling 0 watts, so it was fine. If it had been on, I could have switched it off remotely. That’s a legitimately useful safety and peace-of-mind feature.
Outage prioritization is well-executed. I have a Tesla Powerwall, so during a grid outage, Span switches to battery backup automatically. The circuit priority settings let me specify that the refrigerator, internet router, and select bedroom circuits should always stay on, while things like the garage door opener and landscape lighting can be shed to preserve battery. This actually worked during a short outage last spring — the priority circuits stayed up without any manual intervention.
Time-of-use optimization helps if you have complex rate structures. My utility has a time-of-use rate plan. Span can automate load shedding during the expensive peak hours (4-9 PM in my case) so high-draw appliances like the water heater or washer/dryer run outside the peak window. This takes some setup but the automation works reliably once configured.
Where Span Falls Short
Solar monitoring has a significant caveat. This is the one that caught me off guard and the main area where Span underdelivered against my expectations.
Span can monitor solar production — but only if your inverter is wired to a breaker inside the panel. If your installer wired the inverter output to the service entrance (the point where utility power enters your house, before the main breaker), Span never sees the solar electricity at all. It bypasses the panel entirely.
That’s exactly what happened with my Tesla Solar installation. My inverter output feeds into the service entrance, not a panel breaker. Span has no idea solar exists. I get full consumption monitoring but zero solar production visibility in the Span app.
This isn’t Span’s fault — it’s an installer wiring choice. But it’s an extremely common installer choice, and nobody warned me about it when I was deciding whether to buy Span. If you have solar and you’re considering Span, you need to verify your wiring before assuming you’ll get solar monitoring. I’ve written a dedicated post about this specific issue and the technical reasons behind it.
The workaround is to use the Tesla app for production data and Span for consumption data and do the math manually. It works, but it’s not the unified view I wanted.
The price is hard to justify on consumption monitoring alone. If solar monitoring had worked as I’d hoped, the $4,200 I spent would feel more defensible. As a pure consumption monitor with remote circuit control, I can see the value — but it’s a premium price for a premium feature set that is most compelling when the solar integration works.
No third-party API for DIY integrations. I wanted to pull Span data into Home Assistant to create automations based on real-time circuit loads. As of my installation, the API access is limited and not officially supported for consumer integrations. There’s community work happening to reverse-engineer it, but official Home Assistant integration doesn’t exist the way it does for, say, Sense Energy Monitor.
Software dependency risk. The panel is a physical electrical component, but its advanced features depend on Span’s cloud service and app. If Span the company were to shut down or drastically change their terms, the panel would still function as a standard electrical panel, but you’d lose all the monitoring features. This is a general smart home risk, not unique to Span, but worth naming when you’re talking about replacing your main electrical panel.
Is It Worth It for Solar Homeowners?
It depends on two things: how your inverter is wired, and what you actually want from the product.
If your inverter connects to a breaker inside the panel and Span can see your solar production, the combination is genuinely excellent. You get circuit-level consumption and offset data, outage prioritization that works with your battery, time-of-use optimization, and a single coherent view of your home’s energy flow. At that point, the $3,500-$6,000 is paying for a qualitatively different relationship with your home’s energy system.
If your inverter connects at the service entrance — which is common with Tesla Solar and many other installers — Span’s solar integration doesn’t work. You’re buying a very capable consumption monitor and smart circuit controller, which is still useful, but you’re not getting the solar-integrated experience Span markets. Temper your expectations accordingly.
My recommendation: before installing Span, walk your electrician through the question of how your solar inverter is connected. Ask specifically whether there’s a solar breaker inside your main panel. If there is, Span should be able to see your production. If there isn’t — if the inverter goes to a line-side tap — factor that limitation into your decision.
For the consumption monitoring and remote circuit control alone, Span is good. It’s not a must-have at this price unless the solar integration works as intended. Get the wiring question answered first, and decide from there.