Track Use by Phase

I would like to be able to track watts used by each phase. It would narrow down searches of new devices. It would be nice to see the “Now” view by each phase.

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Good thought - w’ll make sure to pass this along!!

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Agreed. I often to into the Home > Sense Monitor page to see the load on each phase. I’m hoping to switch loads around a bit to get them better balanced.

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@davidjolau

Why do you want the loads balanced across both legs? Is your primary power source a generator?

No, but I figure there’s a tiny bit less voltage drop if each leg is carrying say 20 amps compared to one carrying all 40. That, and my Germanic sense of symmetry :wink:

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Add me to list of people hoping for this. I’d like to rebalance my circuits to get things more evened out, but I can only see live views for this data.

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I’d also appreciate this if nothing more than kind of being a data geek.

Granted most of us in US residential only have a single phase as we’re on split-phase power. Well… unless you’re running a grow/bitcoin farm and went 3-phase with some much bigger incoming power. :smiley: What we’re probably really be looking for is A-bus vs. B-bus in most cases.

For example getting an alert of “Sense found new device ‘Heat 1’ on A-Bus” would be a bit more helpful. If it saw the device on both buses then we know it’s a 240V device, but if it only sees it on A or B then we know what circuits it should be on.

This also means at least two other things have to take place…

  1. We somehow have to be able to tell Sense what bus each CT clamp is on. Maybe it turns into some kind of installation step were Sense says “Ready to learn A-bus, please remove CT clamp from A-Bus for five seconds and replace clamp.” Sense would see a bus drop to 0 W and somehow store that clamp as A-Bus and automatically set the other as B-Bus.

  2. The user has to understand the relation of the breaker positions within their panel to the buses. Usually this is pretty simple, but probably not something every homeowner knows.

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@scorp508,
When Sense had their user conference call a month ago, they showed their data science viewing environment, and it did have waveforms for each split-phase leg separately. So detection already includes phase info back at the mothership.

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Nice, it’d be great if they shared which leg each device is on in the app if that info is already being stored.

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[quote=“scorp508, post:9, topic:1896”]
Nice, it’d be great if they shared which leg each device is on in the app if that info is already being stored.[/quote]

I second that. As I know each device in my house and it’s phase, knowing the phase side for each device would allow me to track new devices faster.

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This feature would have given me more confidence to merge two devices without getting support involved.

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Honestly this feature seems like it would be very easy to implement, and very helpful for figuring out new devices when found. In addition, my sense seems to consistently only find 1/2 of my 240V devices (dryer, AC, etc.), and it would be interesting to know if it is only learning devices on one leg of my panel - perhaps there is an issue on my other leg, or with the clamp installation, etc.

1 Like

Popping this up again. I just opened the following ticket with support which I could have probably avoided if we knew what phase detected devices are on. I hate wasting human-hours for nothing. :slight_smile:

"A second device that seems to correlate with our 1st floor AC fan turns was recently discovered. It is currently marked as a guess in our current device list. I’ve always thought the existing 1st floor AC device seemed a bit low on wattage when running.

The actual AC fan is a 220V device. Can you see on your side if these two devices are on opposite phases and should be merged? "

Right now the stats of a device show how long it has been off, avg consumption, and avg run time. It would be helpful to add information on whether it is drawing from one or both legs of the main (left, right, or both). Seeing if it’s a 240V (e.g. dryer, cooktop, water heater, etc) or a 120V device would be helpful in identifying/naming new devices.

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[quote=“martin.scheyhing, post:1, topic:328”]
It would be helpful to add information on whether it is drawing from one or both legs of the main (left, right, or both)[/quote]

This was actually on my wish list that I haven’t submitted yet.
By knowing which legs the devices are coming from (and this includes always on and unknown), it allows us to better identify which device it really is (by halving the possible breakers associated with the device) assuming it is not correct. E.g. a Fridge device was my oil furnace.

Also, I don’t know if Sense can identify whether All and Unknowns, which are a conglomeration of many devices, are from the left, right or both, but if they could, separate ones for All and Unknowns for all 3 types would help identify vampire loads as well as what devices it might be sensing.

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While the solar and mains graphs are useful, it would be useful (maybe as a toggleble display selection to see the solar, total for the mains, as well as the two separate portions of the mains.

I can see better when devices on the alternate 120v breakers on the power panel switch on and off, as well as which leg they are associated with for always on devices.

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I think this is a great idea. Not only could it help with device identification, it would make the power plot easier to understand and more interesting. Right now you see everything talking at once. With it split across two graphs, or plotted as two lines on the same graph, it would be less of a jumble. Of course 240 volt items will be in both graphs but that helps you know an item is 240 V so it’s not a bad thing.

In the “Now” section there’s a button to show bubbles and a button to show the graph. Maybe there could be a third button to show the graph split by leg.

At one point Sense said to “Like” suggestions as a way to vote for them. I’m campaining for you to “vote” for miracj’s original suggestion!

1 Like

I’ll also add, it might be good to have the raw left & right sides of the current, and more importantly, the voltages displayed.

The voltages would show us possible brownout or unstable power conditions. It would also be good to be able to set alerts when voltage falls outside a range, or drops to zero (when Sense stops reporting) and an alert when voltage goes back into the range.

For the voltage graph, it would be best to show it zoomed in, e.g. if voltage varies from 110v to 130v, show us that range and ignore any values close to zero (showing power loss from the grid)

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Agreed. Put in a feature suggestion for this a while back:

http://community.sense.com/t/power-meter-for-voltage

Our breaker boxes are supposed to be configured with roughly equal consumption on each side. In the US there are usually 2 phases coming in, 1 on each main.

Sense has a CT on each. It seems like it would be easy and useful to expose the consumption reported by each of them separately in addition to the total.

This data seems to already be transmitted, but not displayed, in the real time data. A few spot checks against Curb show that it is credible.

Come to think of it. Do we have a shot at reporting how much each recognized device is drawing from each side?