"Smart panel" has become a category label for three genuinely different products, which is why homeowners comparing them end up confused. One replaces your whole panel. One replaces your panel but sells the intelligence breaker by breaker. One does not replace your panel at all.
We install and service all three across Hudson and Essex County, and the right answer changes completely depending on what you are trying to accomplish. Here is the honest comparison.
The Three Approaches, In One Paragraph Each
SPAN replaces your main breaker panel with the SPAN Panel MAIN 40 — 200A rated, 40 circuits, NEMA 3R for indoor or outdoor, with every circuit metered and switchable from the app. The intelligence is built into the panel itself, not the breakers, so it is all-or-nothing: you get the whole feature set on day one, and you pay for it on day one.
Leviton takes the modular route. The Leviton Smart Load Center is a conventional 200A panel that accepts standard plug-on neutral breakers today and Leviton's smart breakers whenever you want them. Monitoring and control live in each smart breaker, so you can make five circuits smart this year and five more in two years without touching the panel again.
Lumin does not replace anything. The Lumin Smart Panel is a retrofit controller — a small subpanel that installs alongside your existing panel and takes over a handful of circuits, typically eight to twelve, for monitoring and switching. Your original panel and breakers stay exactly where they are.
What Each One Actually Controls
This is the difference that matters most and gets discussed least.
- SPAN: all 40 circuits, every one metered and switchable. Whole-home visibility with nothing left out.
- Leviton: only the circuits where you have installed a smart breaker. A panel with six smart breakers gives you six circuits of data; the rest is dark. Fully populating a panel with smart breakers is expensive enough that most homeowners never do.
- Lumin: the eight to twelve circuits you route through the controller. You choose them at install time, and changing your mind later means an electrician moving conductors.
If your goal is finding the phantom loads on a PSE&G bill, only SPAN answers the whole question. If your goal is controlling the EV charger, the water heater, and the dryer, all three do it and the cheaper two do it for far less.
What They Cost in New Jersey
Installed prices in Hudson and Essex County in 2026, permit included:
- SPAN Panel MAIN 40: $6,500–$10,000 installed. Full panel replacement, one day on site, UCC permit and inspection.
- Leviton Smart Load Center: roughly a conventional panel upgrade plus $1,200–$2,500 depending on how many smart breakers you start with. Realistically $4,000–$7,500 for a panel replacement with a handful of smart circuits.
- Lumin: typically $3,000–$5,500 installed as a retrofit alongside an existing healthy panel — the least expensive path into load control, and the only one that does not require replacing a panel that is doing its job.
- For reference: a conventional 200 amp service upgrade with no smart features is $2,800–$5,500.
All three require a NJ UCC electrical permit and a final inspection. There is no version of this that is a DIY weekend, and any contractor who suggests otherwise is telling you something useful about how they work.
Battery and Solar Integration
This is where the three separate most sharply.
SPAN was designed around this problem. It integrates with Tesla Powerwall 3 and other common home batteries, works alongside solar inverters, and eliminates the critical-loads subpanel entirely — backup priorities are software, so you set them in the app and change them after the first outage teaches you what you actually wanted on. During an outage the panel sheds low-priority circuits automatically to stretch the battery.
Lumin came at the same problem from the other direction and is genuinely good at it. It was built to add intelligent load control to existing solar and battery installations, which makes it the strongest option for a homeowner who already has a battery, already has a fine panel, and just wants smarter control of what stays on. Many installers reach for Lumin specifically because it solves the critical-loads problem without a panel replacement.
Leviton is the weakest of the three here. It monitors and switches circuits well, but it was not built to be the coordination layer for a solar-plus-battery home, and retrofitting that role onto it is messier than choosing a product designed for it.
App Quality and the Software Question
SPAN's app is the best of the three and it is not especially close — clean, fast, live per-circuit data, sensible outage handling. It is also the most software-dependent product, and that deserves a clear-eyed note: the breakers trip mechanically, independent of the software, and the panel is certified to UL 3141, the smart-panel safety standard. Losing the cloud costs you app features, not protection. The panel also carries a cellular backup radio, so it keeps working when your home internet is down — which is exactly when you need it.
Leviton's app is well-reviewed, straightforward, and works with Alexa and Google Home. It does less because the hardware does less, and for many homeowners that is a fair trade.
Lumin's app is functional and clearly aimed at the load-control job rather than at being a home energy dashboard. If you want to look at pretty energy graphs, it is not the reason to buy Lumin. If you want the sump pump and the fridge to stay on for eighteen hours, it is.
Availability and Who Can Install Them
All three require a licensed electrical contractor and a municipal permit in New Jersey. Beyond that they differ in how they go to market: SPAN and Lumin both run installer training and certification programs and are most often sold through solar and battery installers, while Leviton's load center is standard electrical distribution and any competent electrician can source and install it.
The practical consequence for a homeowner is availability. Leviton is the easiest to get on short notice. SPAN and Lumin lead times vary, and it is worth asking your electrician what they can actually get before you fall in love with a spec sheet.
One more thing worth asking about, whichever you choose: who commissions it. A smart panel is two installations — the electrical work, and a networked device that has to join Wi-Fi, authenticate an account, and be configured with circuit names and priorities that make sense for your household. A panel full of circuits labeled "Breaker 14" is a panel nobody opens the app for. Michael Malfettone Jr. holds a Computer Science degree alongside his master electrician license, which is the reason we do the second half properly instead of leaving you a QR code.
Who Each One Is Right For
- Choose SPAN if you want whole-home circuit-level data, you have or are planning solar and a battery, or you are trying to add an EV charger or heat pump to a 100 amp service and want load management doing real work. It is the most capable and the most expensive, and in those three cases it is worth it.
- Choose Leviton if your panel needs replacing anyway, you want some smart circuits without the SPAN premium, and solar and batteries are not in your plan. It is also a sensible landlord choice for monitoring a few key circuits in a unit.
- Choose Lumin if your existing panel is healthy and you do not want to replace it — especially if you already have a battery and want smarter control of your backup loads. It is the cheapest way into load control and the only one that respects a panel that is doing its job.
- Choose none of them if what you actually need is capacity. A conventional 200 amp upgrade at $2,800–$5,500 is the right answer for a lot of NJ homes, and no amount of software substitutes for conductors.
Talk It Through First
We are not brand loyalists about this. What decides it in practice is the NEC Article 220 load calculation, the condition of your service entrance, and an honest conversation about whether anyone in the house will genuinely use the app. Any of those three can flip the recommendation.
Ready to install one? Our SPAN smart panel installation page covers what the panel does, what it costs in Hudson and Essex County, and how the permit and utility side works. Or call (848) 294-1739 for a free virtual consultation — family-owned since 1977, we pull the permits, and financing is available.