So I have had sense installed since Nov 2021. I also own a Wallbox Pulsar Plus Charger on a 60A circuit. So far sense has not (yet?) detected the EV it charges (Tesla MY). Yet I am charging and a few things are happening that I don’t like and think could be avoided:
On days where I charge and consume a lot (say 50+ kWh) I get reports about an unusual usage level the day before. The very nature of EV charging is that this will happen from time to time
On trends pages where I am compared to “similar homes” I have moved into the highest category. I do not believe this takes into account that my home has an EV which places me in a different category of home (conceptually, but clearly not within the sense eco system).
It seems to me that there could easily be an option to identify the number of EV in a household (even if not yet detected). That could then be used to detect high usage days and possibly to subtract a certain amount or compare to the last 7 day average or something to adjust usage before we look into “similar” households, or, better yet, only compare with other households that are similar based on everything currently looked at, but with the same number of EVs charging at home.
The same setting/approach could also be used to avoid the “unusual usage” notification.
A good suggestion, though as @dannyterhaar has pointed out, there are several other previous request for this on the forum, including at least one Wishlist item. The best thing for you to do would be to Like the wishlist item here - that’s like casting a vote for it.
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You can add Sense to your home inventory, under Setting > My Home. I don’t think Sense uses that today for much beyond surveying the devices in the user base, but I know there is more in their future plans for the inventory.
Sense has found my Model S that charges at 48A on my Tesla HPWC. Not sure if the Wallbox would make a charge session look any different from the HPWC, which is basically a connector (with interlock) between the Model 3 built-in charger and 100A 240V circuit (no real charging smarts in the HPWC).
I’m a bit leery about whether the home comparison will ever be useful, because there are so many factors that drive electric energy usage that are orthogonal to efficiency (how much natural gas do you use, do you have an EV and how much do you need to drive)
I’ve been pondering how that would work in the absence of either native detection or DCMs (Flex sensors):
Create a virtual DCM and assign it to your EV.
[Please excuse the rhetoric here]
Why does that work, at all?
Because then Sense knows you own an EV, “for sure”. i.e. The EV lab comes with the caveat that if you check off the “EV(s) in the house” box then you may screw up your detections if you don’t actually have one.
Why can’t this work in general for any device?
Because Sense would then have to rely on the accuracy of, say, the home inventory and do a lot of work to change heuristics and biases or whatever magic is going on in the algo related to specific devices.
So why is a virtual DCM for an EV any different, wouldn’t it be a serious pain to implement?
Sure would (I suspect) be a difficult build but containing the implementation in a Lab would allow for some failed attempts and not pollute the simplicity of the main app.
I can imagine being able to tell Sense precisely which EVs you have.
If nothing else it would give Sense a more reliable source of EV ownership data.
And finally, and most importantly, Sense can license @kevin1’s epic work on this ()
I don’t have an EV (yet), but that doesn’t mean i can’t have an opinion! I’ve got to believe than almost every charger would have Wi-Fi. If both Sense AND the chargers could support a common communication standard (similar to Kasa or Wemo, perhaps even an industry standard like Matter) then the detection issue just goes away.
I am using openevse(.com) to charge my EV which open sourced both the hardware & software design.
Should be easy to write software for that, in fact it already uploads data into a MQTT based system.
I would be very interested in that for sure.
After reading this I (re)discovered that you can “equip” your home with an EV. I had actually done that, but not remembered. It does not seem that sense does much with this information, if anything at all.
That said, I, having > 0 EV is a surefire recipe for having “unusual spikes” that don’t really need reporting. At the very least I would like an option to turn this off.
I also very much doubt it is taken into account for the purpose of “similar homes”. That is harder to prove though, but a simple answer from sense would provide some transparency.
Yes indeed - I have been advocating on the community forum for Sense to use EV detections as exception events for any kind of anomaly detection they try to do. Most of us want to see the real “spikes” and “usage anomalies”, but charging an EV or running a dryer is a deliberate power usage (at least most of the time).
I have asked for years why Sense is not able to detect my Tesla S model charging, after all, it uses about 12000 watts and is always in the “other” bubble category. Why is this so hard to detect an EV Charger? It’s the one thing that falls short with Sense:man_facepalming:
I have a very solid Sense Model S detection for 80A charging (20kW), and a reasonably reliable Sense detection for Model 3 at 48A (12kW). Are you using a HPWC ?
@kevin1 technically it shouldn’t matter what kind of EVSE you have.
It is nothing more than a glorified extension cord with the ability to tell the EV how much power maximum is allowed to draw from it.
So imo it doesn’t matter if it is a HPWC or any other kind of EVSE except that the maximum power might be different.
I had set my EVSE to 28amp (in the beginning) while the EV can do 32 amps max.
Sense now detects my Chevy Bolt even when I set it down to 22 Amps up to the 32 amps range.
It clearly looks for the start signature.
Pretty smart
Since @robert.towe mentions 12kW I assume 48 amp charging. Doesn’t that automatically make it a HPWC?
I think I remember reading somewhere (blog?) that some 25 charging sessions are required before sense will possibly detect an EV. If that is true I got some way to go because since installing my Wallbox Pulsar Plus I have only charged eleven times in four months (I don’t drive a lot these days)…
I agree with you to some degree, but I think some chargers are more than glorified connectors - I see that Wallbox enables Eco-Smart charging where the charger runs 100% off solar. I assume this means that the max charge rate continuously varies to stay in line with solar production.
Two modes for greater control
Eco-Smart lets you charge with 100% solar energy or a mix of solar and grid energy. Set your preferred mode right from the myWallbox app and let your charger do the rest.
I think you are right - @robert.towe 's situation sounds like a HPWC.
Well, waddayaknow? My next charging after the post started 5 minutes ago and sense said "Electric Vehicle Detected? Hooray! Clearly did not have have to wait for 25 charges. Now we’ll see how reliable to detection is.
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