Detecting Electric Vehicle (EV) devices

Ryan

In case your data science folks have not seen the Tesla suggestions, I have included them below. Frequent full charging is not suggested. I have both a model 3 and S. The changes a few months ago have made the model 3 detection very reliable. So far after a year plus Sense doesn’t see my 2017 model S at all.

Quote below from ModelS user manual

Model S has one of the most sophisticated
battery systems in the world. The most
important way to preserve the Battery is to
LEAVE YOUR VEHICLE PLUGGED IN when
you are not using it. This is particularly
important if you are not planning to drive
Model S for several weeks. When plugged in,
Model S wakes up when needed to
automatically maintain a charge level that
maximizes the lifetime of the Battery.

Note: When left idle and unplugged, your
vehicle periodically uses energy from the
Battery for system tests and recharging the
12V battery when necessary.

There is no advantage to waiting until the
Battery’s level is low before charging. In fact,
the Battery performs best when charged
regularly.

My BMW i3 charge session was recognized by Sense for the first time a couple of days ago. Sense seems good at detecting start of charge; not so good at detecting the ramp-down, nor end of charge. So while last night’s charge consumed around 19 kWh, Sense only captures 1.6kWh of that.
It almost looks like Sense is unassuming length of charge rather than actually detecting end of charge. So Sense places the ramp-down start at 1:34am (ramp-down actually started at 3:52am) and the charge session end at 2:19am (it actually ended at 4:39am). I see no significant power usage changes at either 1:34 or 2:19 that would have caused Sense to use these times as ramp-down or end of session. Which makes me think it’s just applying a standard charge duration template rather than actually detecting anything.

  1. Sense graph of device usage
    EV-detection

  2. Overall Power Usage
    Overall%20power%20usage

And last night’s charge, it’s the same problem. Sense only reports 1.6kWh usage while the actual charging power usage was around 13.7 kWh. It gets the start time right but it’s wrong for the ramp-down (reports 9:12pm whereas it’s actually 10:38pm) and the finish (reports 9:57pm whereas it’s 11:23pm). There is no activity at 9:12pm that should cause Sense to think that a ramp-down has started. The usage is dead flat over that period.

  1. Sense report on EV Charging:

  2. Actual Power Usage

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Hi Edison!
Did your Volt get detected? I have the clipper creek 240v charger as well and the 2015 Chevy Volt. I’d really like to get this to detect?

Nope, Sense does not reliably detect my Volt charging. I have the car setup to only charge at night, so when I plug it in during the day, the car senses the 240v input, but then does not start charging until my set time. Sense will see this first inrush of voltage, and then the near immediate drop off (when the car says, no it’s not time yet). So I can see when I plugged my car in, but then at midnight when charging is set to start, NOTHING is detected. It’s been this way for months.

Hey I just charge my Chevy Volt 2013 with the wall outlet 120v. I couldn’t tell if sense would be able to discover it trying to read all the posts. So is sense only able to discover the Chevy Volt if its charging on a 240v circuit? Or can it detect 120v as well. If so should I empty my battery before I plug in and make sure it changes all the way? Or can I charge it every day with my 10 mile commute?

I charge my Volt with 120v and was told a few months back that will not be detected yet.

Ryan - would it help your team if we provided a log of charging session on our EVs so that you can zero in on salient characteristics in your data sets with higher confidence to then hopefully develop a more robust detector? We have Tesla S, X, 3, LEAF, Volt, Bolt EV, conversions, Toyota RAV4EV Gen 1 and 2, Kia Soul EV and others available from the members here - surely it would help too. Thoughts? WDYT?

We already have quite a few test houses with a wide variety of EVs. It’s useful, but not an absolute solution to the difficulty.

Ryan - Has the team considered communicating directly with the charger to get information about when an EV is charging, similar to how you communicate with a Wemo Insight? I have a Juicebox with wifi connectivity, and I imagine the wifi enabled Chargepoint charger is also popular. My EV is an e-Golf, so I don’t expect there to ever be enough vehicles out there for you to get enough training data.

It’s something we need to investigate further, but it is a potential option in the future. It all depends on what sort of information is being sent out by the EVSE. Integrating with those smart plugs was (relatively) easy because they communicate wattage information.

If the ChargePoint EV charger “works with Nest”, then it should be a no-brainer for sense to have an arrangement with ChargePoint. Unfortunately, I think the arrangement between Nest and ChargPoint was dropped some time ago. Certainly, after more than two years with my Chevy Bolt, it is easily recognizable by me in Sense’s “meter”, but has still not been recognized by Sense. Sense is confused by air conditioners and dehumidifiers and fridges, so its no surprise to me that it can’t detect an EV. I guess it is going to be years before Sense will really satisfactorily detect all devices, and they all add up to 100% electricity usage - if ever.

For starters, there is nothing for Sense to detect in always on stead power devices…it needs transitions…and there are lots of steady power devices in a typical home. Those will cont9inue to need something other than Sense to monitor them device by device. Fortunately, they do tend to be modest power in any case. So those will not happen but they don’t matter much to most of us.

It can sort of handle devices with simple transitions, so perhaps it will get some of the more complex transitions over time.

For many of us it’s the lack of ability to accurately detect and monitor 220v devices, mainly because those are by far the largest power consumers, that seriously detracts from Sense’s monitoring value. If that needs a different device (something Sense can talk to that installs in a 220v line, for example), they should be pursuing that. If Sense itself can ever handle such devices, that would be wonderful, but even after years we’ve not seen much 220v detection improvement.

That’s one way of looking at it. The other is:

(Mains Usage: “100% electrical usage”) minus (All the easy stuff) = [Impossible Device(s)]

Kinda like “You only have to run faster than your friend, not the bear”.

This is true in some absolute sense but in the realworld most AO devices are going to go ON at least once. With sufficient deltas there is also the binary state of the device to consider.

e.g. If everything is off and my OLED TV goes on first then good luck detecting the delta from the AppleTV going on BUT if the AppleTV is on first it can at least be assummed-to-be-on until the TV is off … at which time you could detect the AppleTV wattage … or not!

I am not sure that “always on” is very relevant. We know this is mostly electronics such as appletv, tv screens, network drives, TiVos etc, so putting them all in one basket is not a problem. In my case, more than 50% of my usage is unidentified, so the small amount assigned to “always on” is immaterial. I don’t even care that the individual devices within “always on” remain unidentified. I care more about the mishmash of unidentified A/Cs, dehumidifiers, dishwashers, dryers, and my EV, etc, that clearly use a great deal of energy., This after more than two years of “sense”.

It’s so strange @andy that our homes can be so much different from Senses angle.
All of my 240 devices are detected. Even after reset, they were the first to be detected the second time.
The only 240 Sense doesn’t have for me is fan motors. Sense is unable to detect motors of this type in my home at all, both 120 and 240

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I suspect that my noisy well pump is causing lots of 240v detection/monitoring issues, but reading these threads, lots of other folks are having problems with their 240v devices also, from pool pumps, to heaters, to HVAC components, to water heaters, to dryers, etc. I think you are lucky that your 240v devices, by far the largest consumers, are all detected reliably.

In my case, Sense has found a couple of the 240v devices, but doesn’t report them accurately, which isn’t any more useful than not detecting them at all…and many people do report such problems. And many of them aren’t detected at all.

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I couldn’t agree with you more about reliability.
For those that feel that Sense being 90% accurate with reporting, do they feel the same about their finances? If your bank only counted 9 of 10 deposits, would that be unacceptable or “good enough”? Not for me.
I’m very picky about detections and if they aren’t accurate, they get deleted.

@andy @samwooly1 Let’s leave this thread focused on general EV detections.

My Model 3 Long Range AWD was detected last night right as charging ended. brought home 6/30/2019. Keep the Faith!

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