Hi guys. Been using sense for a couple of months now and this month i compared what Sense said i used kw wise to what the electric company said i used and is was off by about 3000 kwhs. Before i make the call to my electric supplier i thought id ask you good people how accuurate you guys have found the Sense compared to your actual bill. Inquiring mind need to know.
What was your overall usage from the utility company and from Sense? That sounds abnormally off. I’m usually within 1-2% and for most people we tend to over around a +/-2% deviation.
My setup is within a few percent of my electric bill.
Some of the different could relate to the time of the meter reading. Sense likely goes by the day ending at midnight local time. The meter is rarely read at this time.
There could also be losses due to power outages or the long duration loss of WiFi.
3000Kwh would be double my largest bill. That is a lot to be off by.
I’m always Reyes close. We use about 2300 a month and Sense might be off by 10KWH
I did some hour by hour comparisons here, since my electric company lets me see my usage by down to 15 min periods.
You should be within 2% on overall bills unless:
- You have lots and lots of data dropouts - they will be visible on your Power Meter waveform - waveforms from to zero.
- You have your Sense connected to a sub panel rather than your main panel feeds (several folks on the forum have mistakingly done this, even with an electrician leading the show).
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Btw very NEW to sense
Where in the app can you see what your bill will be or is. I haven’t received a bill yet - and if so sense wont be a full month yet. However, after this month I would like to see how close they are.
Thanks
Take a look at my post here:
That sounds like you may not have your Sense monitor connected at your main breaker panel.
Two things to know if you want to compare against your bills:
First set your billing date in the month via Settings>My Home. You can also put in your average per kWh cost. For some of us this is only an approximation since our billing cycle varies a little and our energy cost is also variable (tiers, time-of-use). But approximate it for a good starting point, even if you can’t get it exact:
Then go to Trends>Usage and tab to Bill:
You’ll get a running total within the current billing period, but you’ll also be able to go back in history once you have a history.
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I was there before. I just didn’t see the usage at the top - DOH!!!
Thanks
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I bought my house in December of 19, had solar installed in February of 20, and the power company swapped my meter and authorized my use in late March of 20.
As soon as the power company replaced my meter with a bidirectional digital meter, they stopped telling me how much power I use. I just have a bill showing 0 kWh, and a service fee of $8.33 per billing cycle.
My panels include equipment from Enphase that tells me how much power my panels are generating.
I had sense installed at the end of June, so the only full month of Sense data I have is July.
So far, my panels say I’ve generated 749.8kWh (29JUL20 1:47am) for July and Sense says I’ve generated 729 kWh.
That’s about 2-3% difference. Is that normal?
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Every solar user I have seen on this forum sees about a 2-5% power drop off between their inverter readings vs. Sense. I’m personally getting seeing my inverter being 3% above my Sense solar data on an hourly basis. But when I compare my Sense net usage to my meter net usage, I’m within 1%. In my mind, Sense is more accurate than the inverter since it is more consistent with my utility revenue meter.
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My Enphase system reports 3% higher at the inverters as well. It’s almost spot on at the production meter in the Enphase Combiner box. I have an Enlighten Manager account that has this data available in reports.
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