Get some Sense... [sense monitoring solution]

[israndy]

"As summer arrives I won't worry about free solar much"

Do you not get paid for exported solar?

My point was that in the winter I am WASTING solar if I don't absorb every drop, any that goes back to the grid just means I need to claw it back. But in the summer time I get no bill, just credit after credit that takes at least a month to burn off all the extra. So with all that sun it doesn't matter so much when I charge as I just have gobs and gobs of electricity.

 

[Rocket_man]

I have a Sense energy monitor and agree with other posters on the device. It does not live up to the marketing (what product does?) and I think its usefulness varies person to person. I do get value from it by monitoring my energy usage real time and I have a much better understanding of what loads really matter in the house. For example... all my LED lights don't use much energy at all (that was the obvious right?) compared to major energy users such as my two A/C systems, or the clothes dryer. But the major disappointment with the device is the 'machine learning' that really just doesn't work as advertised. It is hit or miss and mostly miss. It has found my two A/C systems and I was able to label them in the app. But it took a long time to find them. It found a hair dryer, a vacuum cleaner, the coffee maker (maybe), one of our TVs, and a few other devices. I think I have more luck than most in the discovery area. It also directly reads the power from my Philips Hue bulbs since they have built in power reporting, but these are pretty low power. It has not found the Dryer, the single largest power user in the house. Nor the wall oven or fridge. The frustrating thing is that it won't allow me to give the system a hint... it detects the huge load from the dryer, I can see it real time... but it doesn't ask 'hey what is this thing that just turned on?' If it would ask for this learning the algorithm could work much better. I think the developers have just given up on investing in this thing.

But overall, now that it is installed, I do get value from having a real time energy monitor. Will it save me money? Probably not a lot, but for example in a power outage it will allow me to manually manage loads so my solar and PW's can get me through an extended outage like from a Hurricane without losing power over night. So I'm keeping it, not worth removing it. I don't have room in the power panel for more CTs or a device inside the panel, so the Sense is probably the only thing that fits in my case.

 

[israndy]

I wonder how often they have thought about re-training the Ai. The original example Elon gave was they sat an Ai down in front of the game of breakout and walked away. For a long time the game just sat there, but eventually the Ai moved the controls and some time after that it seemed to figure out that the controls did something and then shortly after that it was the best breakout player EVER. Several other games have been done like that.

So for the Ai in the Tesla they couldn't have the cars driving around for years w/o the Ai trying the controls so they put a layer of human written code that would check what the Ai was seeing and drive the car. The balance between human code and Ai has been changing, but they are able to do a release of new code that still drives the car but has much more of the trained Ai in it. This is different from the breakout playing Ai as that was self learning, the Tesla (and probably the Sense Ai) only learns when they retrain it with all the data that they feel is significant, this trained Ai becomes the new version, no more learning is done inside the individual releases.

How Sense is handling this is a question. Each of us has told Sense that devices it has discovered are certain things. So could the company go and retrain the Ai? Would it break all our saved data if they did?

How do they really use the Ai, is it just what tracks the CTs and intelligently pushes data to the servers or is it some monolith that lives on the servers analyzing waveforms? Or is it in anyway in the app...

Not sure I know after following the company for 5 years or more

 

[HankLloydRight]

some monolith that lives on the servers analyzing waveforms?

Yes, I'm pretty sure all of this happens back at HQ.

 

[brkaus]

I’m curious if their goal is even realistic? Overlapping signals. Items that behave differently depending on many variables (dimmer setting, temperature, load). I’m guessing this looks good on paper for a small house (or a few rooms) but really doesn’t scale well.

 

[BGbreeder]

I’m curious if their goal is even realistic? Overlapping signals. Items that behave differently depending on many variables (dimmer setting, temperature, load). I’m guessing this looks good on paper for a small house (or a few rooms) but really doesn’t scale well.

And it is predicated on the assumption that mass produced items are intrinsically different in their energy "fingerprint", when devices are penalized by the regulatory authorities and IOUs for deviations from power factors of 1. Never made much sense to me.

 

[israndy]

I’m curious if their goal is even realistic? Overlapping signals. Items that behave differently depending on many variables (dimmer setting, temperature, load). I’m guessing this looks good on paper for a small house (or a few rooms) but really doesn’t scale well.

With enough data, problem is getting and verifying all that data. I fear they are spending so much time trying to keep customer's happy they haven't been able to build a giant dataset and label it accurately

 

[BGbreeder]

With enough data, problem is getting and verifying all that data. I fear they are spending so much time trying to keep customer's happy they haven't been able to build a giant dataset and label it accurately

I haven't seen any data to suggest that they are sampling the power stream at a data rate high to enable their claims. I think your actual experience bears out that belief, despite my hope that they succeed in their efforts.

All the best,

BG

 

[SabrToothSqrl]

Earlier this week, sense on it's own, proclaimed my Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model X would be 'combined' into 1 device.
I emailed sense, and after some back and forth, they said 'tough $hit'. and to delete it.

It will most likely re-appear, hopefully as 2, and most likely auto merged back into 1 at some future point.

I am so sick of companies doing things I didn't ask for, I didn't approve, and then making it MY problem.

Don't buy a sense. It's overpriced, the device recognition is mediocre, the support is meh.

Use the $ to just pay your electric bill, and cut back what you can if you want a lower bill. It's not rocket science.
If it wasn't actual physical effort to pop open the panel and remove it, I would. Next time I'm in there I might. a dumpster we will go.

 

[HankLloydRight]

Yup. I ditched Sense.

Even though their CTs detect forward and reverse flow (i.e. net metering), they refused to report the net metering as power flowing back to the grid and just reports it as 0kw. I contacted support and they just said to turn the CTs around. No, you dunce, that doesn't solve the problem. What's strange is on the settings monitoring page, it actually showed negative kW flowing, but on the main tracking page, it reports that as 0kW.

So I dumped Sense and instead installed an Emporia Energy system: In-Panel Energy Monitors

It doesn't do automatic sensing, but it's a lot cheaper and you can put up to 16 individual CTs on different circuits.

So if anyone wants to buy a sense with the two extra CTs, PM me.

 

[mspohr]

Yup. I ditched Sense.

Even though their CTs detect forward and reverse flow (i.e. net metering), they refused to report the net metering as power flowing back to the grid and just reports it as 0kw. I contacted support and they just said to turn the CTs around. No, you dunce, that doesn't solve the problem. What's strange is on the settings monitoring page, it actually showed negative kW flowing, but on the main tracking page, it reports that as 0kW.

So I dumped Sense and instead installed an Emporia Energy system: In-Panel Energy Monitors

It doesn't do automatic sensing, but it's a log cheaper and you can put up to 16 individual CTs on different circuits.

So if anyone wants to buy a sense with the two extra CTs, PM me.

The Emporia system looks good. I think I'll give a try.

 

[brkaus]

So if anyone wants to buy a sense with the two extra CTs, PM me.

I think you just ruined the market

 

[SabrToothSqrl]

I think you just ruined the market

I think Sense ruined the market.

 

[brkaus]

I think Sense ruined the market.

If I could only double-funny that one!

I think they bit off more than they can chew, or perhaps were just faced with physics.

 

[mspohr]

If I could only double-funny that one!

I think they bit off more than they can chew, or perhaps were just faced with physics.

It is a much more complicated problem. They were either naive or hoping people wouldn't notice.

 

[bsf29]

Yup. I ditched Sense.

Even though their CTs detect forward and reverse flow (i.e. net metering), they refused to report the net metering as power flowing back to the grid and just reports it as 0kw. I contacted support and they just said to turn the CTs around. No, you dunce, that doesn't solve the problem. What's strange is on the settings monitoring page, it actually showed negative kW flowing, but on the main tracking page, it reports that as 0kW.

So I dumped Sense and instead installed an Emporia Energy system: In-Panel Energy Monitors

It doesn't do automatic sensing, but it's a lot cheaper and you can put up to 16 individual CTs on different circuits.

So if anyone wants to buy a sense with the two extra CTs, PM me.

My Sense system tracks power flowing to the grid. Maybe the difference is I don't have net metering configuration. I get a flat rate for the power I put on the grid.
I'm more disappointed with Sense's lack of detection, and things that are detected sometimes get confused with other loads even after 2 years. Support keeps telling me that I have to delete the device and see if it associates the load with a new model. This has never solved the issue for me. They also doesn't calculate my bill correctly. It knows the flow/cost but they only calculate based on the home usage and not where the power is coming from. Carbon Intensity is also bogus info with how they are calculating things. They are not using my providers carbon footprint and lumped me into a RTO (electrical wholesaler) that my co-op isn't a member of.

 

[HankLloydRight]

My Sense system tracks power flowing to the grid. Maybe the difference is I don't have net metering configuration. I get a flat rate for the power I put on the grid.

Do you mean solar production? Please post a screenshot of the main monitoring page showing a net negative flow backwards into the grid.

Unless they very recently enabled that, it doesn't do that, despite me (and many many others) asking them to do it. The hardware allows it, and it even shows a net negative flow on the settings...home..devices page, but it only shows real-time net negative flow, not accumulated or over time.

 

[israndy]

The problem with Emporia is their terrible graphics representing power use, Sense does such a better job allowing you to pinch and zoom and scroll w/o losing your place. They also archive the info in an easily accessible method. Open the individual devices and you can see their power use individually.

I do own an 8 channel Emporia that I have used to try to track down power usage but it's not good for regular power tracking the way Sense and a few smart plugs give you.

 

[HankLloydRight]

The problem with Emporia is their terrible graphics representing power use, Sense does such a better job allowing you to pinch and zoom and scroll w/o losing your place. They also archive the info in an easily accessible method. Open the individual devices and you can see their power use individually.

I do own an 8 channel Emporia that I have used to try to track down power usage but it's not good for regular power tracking the way Sense and a few smart plugs give you.

That doesn’t make Sense suck less. I like the Emporia interface. Sure not the same as Sense, but it gives me the ACCURATE information I require where Sense completely fails.

 

[bsf29]

Do you mean solar production? Please post a screenshot of the main monitoring page showing a net negative flow backwards into the grid.

Unless they very recently enabled that, it doesn't do that, despite me (and many many others) asking them to do it. The hardware allows it, and it even shows a net negative flow on the settings...home..devices page, but it only shows real-time net negative flow, not accumulated or over time.

Sorry, I just saw your post and I’m out of solar production for the day. Cloudy/rain the next few and probably won’t have excess power. Here’s what I put on the grid today and the current trickle to sync with the grid. If you mean the “now” bubbles, I don’t use that view because I like details, and bubbles changing size is useless.