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Get some Sense... [sense monitoring solution]

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It's going to be a headache to make that setup look like it was installed by a professional. Were it me, I would drop in an Intermatic ET8415CR for about $220, wire both the circuits through it, then write FED FROM TWO CIRCUITS on the front of the box. It will look professional and not take much time to install or set up.

Thanks. That's nice, but it's really handy to have an app to turn the aux tank on and off during unscheduled periods.
 
Ohh!! That looks great. thanks.
That will work if the water heater is 120V single phase, since it doesn't have enough poles to do a single pole pump and a two pole heater. If that's the case, the same warning as earlier applies, write FED FROM TWO CIRCUITS on the box so people know you have to turn off two circuits to make it dead.
 
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I don’t have a sense monitor, but I did very seriously consider purchasing one and I did a lot of research on them. The big reason that I didn’t eventually purchase one is that it really seems to be hit or miss as to what it can discover. It might find your air conditioner after a few weeks, or it might not. It might find your refrigerator, or it might not. It might think your dishwasher and coffee maker are one device. It might find your washing machine, and then lose it a few weeks later. It might find a random light in your closet and be able to track it really accurately, but who cares about a random light in the closet?

When it does work people seem pretty happy with it, but for me there were just too many reviews from people where it didn’t discover everything or where the detections weren’t super reliable.

Instead I use a meter that has multiple channels so I can install CT’s on different circuits. I can put one on my heat pump circuit, one on my fridge, one on my range, one on my washer, one on my drier, one on my water heater, one on my car charger, etc. It’s definitely a more complicated install, but this way I know that I will be able to reliably monitor the devices that consume the vast majority of my power.

Like I said, I don’t own a sense device, so take this with a grain of salt. There are definitely some people that are really happy with them, but in the end I was afraid that it might not reliably detect all of the devices that I really want to monitor.
 
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I agree fully with @BrettS above, but I do own a Sense. I was really looking forward to it, and it was kinda neat the first few weeks. Side note: It can take up to a month to learn most of your devices, I assumed (wrongly so) that it would be very quick. But now I hardly check it unless it pings me that it found a new device.

But as Brett said, it's just not as accurate as it needs to be. It never learned my Tesla UMC -- although I was only charging at 120v.

If I knew this all now, I wouldn't have spent the $300 for one. I also have a regular energy monitor with 4 CTs that I can move around to different circuits, which is pretty useful. I use home - Efergy products, but there are lots of different options out there.
 
I spent the money on a Sense with the optional solar monitoring. After having it installed now for about 3 years, I can say that it functions as a real-time power monitor (house load so much and solar generation so much). The "discovery" feature doesn't really provide any value whatsoever for me and it hasn't discovered anything of any significance in the three years I've had it (except maybe the garage door opener). No car charging, no large appliances, no TVs, etc. So based on that, I wouldn't recommend spending the money on it...
 
I have it too (and my name is also RandyS) and have been happy with it, perhaps because I read the reviews of those that went before me. My expectations were that it wouldn't find everything but it is the most competent energy monitor you can buy. I like that it works on all my devices, even an old iPhone 5, it smartly downloaded an old version of the app and I can leave it plugged in and it will display the output of my energy monitor. I can watch the solar build during the day and see when devices come on.

It's true that it won't identify items that rarely come on, or that are always on, but the truth is those aren't that interesting anyway. I wanna see the things that I use all the time and this shows me. It's also true that it has problems with things like Plasma TVs or inverter-based appliances as they change their power use and don't just turn on or off. Sense allows you to use outlet energy monitors to track those, so I plug my fridge into a TPLink HS110 and the power the fridge uses is displayed and recorded by Sense.

I recently purchased another power monitor for my cabin as I couldn't get the power clamps around the busbars in that breaker panel. I went with Emporía Energy's Vue. After trying their clamps I ended up with their Utility communicating product, talks directly to the meter, updates every second. It works OK, for showing that the house is using power or not, but it doesn't really allow me to break down all the usage the way the Sense does. Even if I had a clamp on each circuit it wouldn't show the coffee machine different than the microwave. The Sense does, and I can click on each item it finds and see all the times it was on and how much that cost me. Same with solar production. The Enphase inverters don't seem to wake up until they have a certain amount of sun, but the Sense can see them starting to generate power beginning right at dawn. Between the two I get the best info for what's being generated (Sense) and where (Enphase).

I have yet to get it to recognize the Tesla, but I do most of my charging on 120v as that limits my charge speed to something the solar can cover and still provide free power to the rest of the house. So I put an HS110 on it too to track my usage. I could charge quickly at 48 amps pulling from the grid, but that costs money. As big a battery as my Tesla has in it I rarely need to go further than the car already has battery to cover, and when the sun comes up there is always more battery to charge. I think Sense is looking for the taper as the battery fills to find the Tesla as a device, but I have only charged to 100% ONCE, I prefer to stop at 80% to preserve the battery, so I don't get a taper, WAP!, just shuts off when it hits 80% when charging from 120v.
 
My Instagram is bombarded with ads for the Sense. Does anyone use it, is there a benefits in addition to Tesla app? if you went with it - please share the thoughts..


I have two 200 watt electrical panels. One is protected by my Powerwalls, and therefore monitored by the Tesla App, and the other is unprotected, and monitored by Sense.

I like the Sense. I don't need it to pinpoint individual devices. I know my usage well. I mostly use it to monitor and record my daily usage, and it is very accurate at that, so I can combine my monthly Sense data to my Tesla data, and it very accurately matches my Dominion Energy bill. They recently added the ability to monitor multiple electrical panels, and I purchased the additional clamps to do that, but I never installed them. It just doesn't matter because I simply combine the data that I am already getting.

I have a Model S, but I rarely charge it at home because I have a Supercharger relatively close, and I get free Supercharging.

My only complaint is that the app only supports one address, so if you have multiple homes, you have to have separate accounts for each. I would expect this to change at some point.
 
I had a sense for a month, but returned it as it was a 350 dollar (had the solar one) power meter. It didn't detect my devices properly.

I'd it wasn't 350 bucks I would have kept it.. iotawatt is the one I'm looking at now, co-worker has it and he likes it over the sense unit he had..
 
I couldn't resist the gadget siren. Ordered yesterday, shipped same day from stock. Will install later tonight/tomorrow.
Well, after 5 years of playing with this thing, I gave up and bought an IotaWatt. Today's Sense outage only confirms my decision. Remind me again why my usage data can't live locally and has to go to the cloud? Oh, right: "machine learning"

My conclusion: the much hyped device detection/machine learning still isn't ready for prime time, after 5 years.
  • I have a bunch of unidentified devices that it never learned. In 5 years.
  • It regularly misses turn on/turn off events for devices it supposedly already "knows," so usage data for those items is not reliable. Too bad it's the things that use the most power and are the most interesting to measure (Tesla).
  • It keeps re-detecting various heating elements it has already seen, misreporting heating element A as heating element B.
  • It gets all confused when the Tesla gets near full and starts to ramp down its charge current, reporting the EV has turned off when it hasn't. The only way to get accurate EV power usage was to give up on solar monitoring and move the solar CT's to the charging circuit.
So has anyone actually got this silly thing to work well? It feels like it's still in beta. It forgets devices it already found, finds new devices that are just duplicates of things it already found, etc.

It used to track car charging well (after spending a month plus to find the car). Now it sometimes sees the car turn on, sometimes not. When it does, it eventually "forgets" that it's the car and re-classifies the load in the middle of a charging session as "Unknown"
Measuring car charging never worked well. As mentioned above, the only way to get reliable car charging data was to move the CT's from solar feed to the Tesla breaker and reconfigure the Sense.

I had a sense for a month, but returned it as it was a 350 dollar (had the solar one) power meter. It didn't detect my devices properly.

I'd it wasn't 350 bucks I would have kept it.. iotawatt is the one I'm looking at now, co-worker has it and he likes it over the sense unit he had..
This. Too bad I'm well past my return period for what is, essentially, an overpriced, 2 circuit IotaWatt with a fancy app.
 
IotaWatt looks cool. I purchased the 8 plug Emporia just to help track down a couple of remaining devices that Sense was confusing. I can't even put the cover on with the Emporia in my breaker panel. How do you get 14 CTs in there, and even more important, how do you monitor 32 circuits with 14 CTs? I'll stick with Sense and my TP-Link Smart Plugs (when Sense comes back online)


I finally gave up begging everyone associated with Tesla and with Sense to add the ability to control the charging of my car and started pouring over the Github pages for their APIs. Sense API was pretty simple. Put in the password, request the solar and grid values. The TeslaPY API was very intense, but also came with THREE full blown apps that I used as example code and started making changes.

Now I haven't programmed since I was learning Pascal in college in the early 80's and I knew nothing about Xcode editing or Python Modules, but because you don't really need much to make a Python script:

print("Hello, World!")

I just put one foot in front of another. I started about two months ago, and Tim (of TeslaPY) and Charles (of SenseLink) were really helpful. By the end of the first week I had posted a sorta working version of TesSense on GitHub, it's an app to have the Tesla turn on charging when there is free solar and turn if off if there isn't.

In the many weeks since I have made if very bug free, and added features from the TP-Link API so I can control smart plugs around the house in addition to the Tesla, and I have gotten the Tesla to change the rate it charges at in response to the amount of free solar. Even figured out when Sunrise and Sunset are to turn the whole thing off at night. Now when my Hot Tub kicks in the Tesla, the Mitsubishi, and several space heaters all turn off as needed, to maximize the usage of solar over the grid.

As summer arrives I won't worry about free solar much and will work on my next project, building a home battery to drive the TV and lights and fridge at night when there is no sun.
 
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As summer arrives I won't worry about free solar much and will work on my next project, building a home battery to drive the TV and lights and fridge at night when there is no sun.
Do you not get paid for exported solar? My exports during critical peak (3-8pm M-F) pay me 3-4x what I pay for grid electricity at night. The more I can export, the better.
 
@tga Are you in a grandfathered plan? Eversource in NH pays me a fraction of the $/kW for export vs import, with no TOU.
I'm with Liberty. Initially I was grandfathered under net metering 1 (kWh credits) without TOU, but I signed up with their battery pilot program, which gives me 2 powerwalls under a 10-year lease at $50/month. Additionally, program participants are required to switch to a 3-tier time of use rate (rate "D-11") and switch to the new net metering plan ($ credits), but we can switch back to kWh credits if we withdraw from the program.

Under their standard fixed rate, power is currently $0.215/kWh (inc default service generation). Currently D-11 is $0.16/kWh offpeak, $0.20/kWh mid-peak, and $0.46/kWh critical peak. But every kWh I export in critical peak pays me (25% distribution +100% of other charges), so that's ~$0.39/kWh for every kWh I export.

Once summer rates kick in, off- and mid-peak drop. Mid by ~25%, offpeak around 50%.

Eversource goes out of their way to make the domestic TOU rate (R-OTOD) completely un-economic, then they whine at PUC hearings that "We offer TOU, but nobody wants it"
 
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