I have a ticket open with Sense Support on this. The last correspondence was back on June 25…
"Hi John,
Thanks for sending along all of this information. I have been able to take a look into all of your AC units and noticed a few things.
I do see a number of the things that you mentioned occurring in the data in terms of periodic inaccuracies with the detection of each of these appliances. I do see instances where ‘on’ or ‘off’ events for one of your ACs are missed by Sense, causing these inaccurate wattage reporting that you had brought up. We do apologize for the inconvenience here. However, there are a few bigger picture items that I wanted to point out. First, is the fact that, since you recently reset the data associated with your monitor, the device detection process is still in the very early stages. In addition, each of these AC units are often overlapping in terms of operation and, in certain places have similar electrical signatures. All of these factors are contributing to the difficulties that Sense is currently having with the detection of the ACs.
With all of this in mind, there is a suggestion I would like to make in terms of the best way for you to proceed here. Namely, I would recommend that you continue using each of your AC units and allowing Sense a bit more time to learn about their unique patterns within the context of your home. Given the complexity of this situation, a bit of time may be required before Sense can nail this down in a more accurate way. With this time, however, I would expect to see some improvements here in the coming 1-2 weeks. I would suggest keeping an eye on it over this time and, if you are still noticing issues, feel free to get back in touch and we can certainly take another look
I hope this all makes sense. Please let me know if I can clear anything up!
I think the response of waiting several weeks is a common one. It’s hard to be patient but it’s actually good advice if you’re dedicated to achieving whatever your end goal is. What is that goal for you? Oftentimes I’ve been able to gain enough insight from Sense to achieve my goals even without proper device identification. For example, at my sister’s place it’s useful to know what the power usage was from the resistance water heater, the electric dryer, and the dishwasher. Sense still hasn’t detected the dishwasher but I’ve been able to manually see it on the real-time usage chart. I’ve used this plus solar generation info to schedule the water heater, the dishwasher, and the dryer to optimize usage of generated power to maximize savings from HECO. I’m resigned to the fact that Sense may never detect her mini-split AC, but I can estimate that usage subtractively, however inconvenient that is.
I’d definitely contact Sense again about your issue, the only question is when is the ideal time to maximize the value of the support time and thus the probability that it’s going to be most helpful to you. It’s certainly helpful to give them the most relevant information possible. You’ve given the models of the condenser units. I assume there’s an air handler for each of the compressors, right?
I’d be interested to see if Sense will be able to separately detect the two individual LR/MBR condenser units or whether it will stay in its current confused state. Has the MBR condenser been detected yet?
Do you know what the major power hogs are for the pool system. Is it just the pool pump? Do you know whether it is a single-speed, dual speed, or variable speed? Can you manually identify it running in the real-time chart/graph view? One thing I’ve learned here is that the experts here are currently better than the AI in many cases.
Absolutely agree with you about false advertising of the Sense product.
The device has never figured out my identical air conditioning units even when they run at different times!
The company has made provable false and misleading claims about the product.
The power companies are finally using the smart meters to give some use data to customers.
This will make the Sense product useless.
The sizable advantage that Utility Smart Metering has over Sense is the typical scale of the deployment.
The (much more) sizeable disadvantage they have is also the scale of the deployment:
Device disaggregation requires long-term high-resolution data that bridges a particular Utility.
The required data storage and processing is significant and not easily absorbed by a Utility on an unproven technology. This also applies to the hardware.
The best proving ground for disaggregation tech seems to be in fast-moving deployments (the technology itself is iterative) that are carefully integrated with other existing and future tech.
You will find this thread enlightening:
The takeaway there, if nothing else, is: Don’t expect your smart metered Utility to be able to separate out your two identical air conditioners anytime soon.
Utilities have no incentive to separate out identical AC units. Their only goal is to get a relatively good long term estimate for each category in each house.
I’ve complained about their marketing too many times to count but don’t agree on the above statement. Not completely anyway. I do believe they are very misleading but don’t about “provable false claims”.
I don’t think they are trying to mislead anyone but think it’s more an issue if putting forth a “best case scenario” idea of what to expect.
I’ve commented and given suggestions about how I feel they could better represent the product, hopefully others will do the same.
