Disappointed in device discovery

Identifying Devices in Your Home
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The theoretical pure sinewave power that can come from a generator via a Utility is subject to all manner of corruption in delivery and distribution … not the least of which is the varying loads that are being supplied (i.e. the Devices on the customer end ultimately influence the purity of the distributed power).

The link you quote I believe is about RF interference (RF noise) created by power lines and is not specifically about the “line quality” referred to by @RyanAtSense, though technically there is some crossover.

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@andy
Out of curiosity, have you thought of separating your noisy pump by placing the Sense CT’s after the pumps power and before all other power?
I’m thinking that if that pump was upstream, the rest of your home may be detected

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There is also a potential method where you could loop the pump feed wires back through the CT clamps along with the mains [“in reverse”], though it would be tricky if the panel wiring is too short to allow that.

Real electricians would need to speak to the efficacy of such a method. I’m just guessing.

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Interesting thought.

I haven’t, partially because that would require a major re-wire in what’s already a moderately complex (main box, auxiliary box, generator box, solar box, etc) configuration. Sense has already cost me hundreds of dollars in electrician fees, and I hate to make it even worse.

It also would remove one of the primary reasons I bought Sense in the first place, e.g. monitoring my geo-thermal system…by FAR the largest draw…which uses the constant pressure deep well pump.

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I was afraid that pump was a main reason for monitoring. I also understand the added cost involved in making such a change. For those of us able to do our own electrical work, the cost is t that bad. It’s the labor that’s so expensive when hiring it done.
I know you’ve had problems with this pump from day one and it seems you’ve had more problems with this type of noise than anyone else. I hate it for you and would like to see something to help you you out with it. With more and more geothermal systems being installed these days, Sense is going to have to put more into this issue.

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I see this was suggested before:

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I don’t think this would work to cancel the “noise”. I can’t say that for sure or based on experience though.

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I agree with @pswired that it “should work well” but of course the problem is not only rerouting the feed wires … if it works it will remove the pump signature and energy usage from the Sense so you won’t get a true picture of your consumption.

On a note to the higher ups, @RyanAtSense: For arguments sake, let’s say there was a second Sense monitoring the pump … is there any realtime backend magic that can be done to use the SIGNATURE from Sense2 (= the noisy pump) to “clean” the SIGNATURE from Sense1 (=panel mains)?

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Sorry for my garbled response…cell phone sometimes sends on its own ((-;).

The choice of constant pressure (with variable frequency and variable power draw) pump actually had little to do with the geothermal, even though our 5ton heat pump does like a constant 15 GPM. We chose it because having constant water pressure in our home has lots of other benefits…showers that don’t go from dribble to blast, sprinkler system with constant area coverage, constant flow in faucets, etc. We’ve had conventional water pumps in past homes and hated them. Our well dealer says they are selling constant pressure (despite the higher cost) more than 2/3 of the time in new and replacement wells and that’s been increasing steadily since these became widely available.

So, there are lots of these out there and more all the time. Unfortunately Sense seems sensitive to this particular phenomena.

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@RyanAtSense Thank you for the clarification. Always appreciate the insight.

I was hoping you were referring to issues with frequent line voltage fluctuations. I can appreciate that that would cause difficulties from Sense’s ability to discover devices.

This is another justification for Sense to add the feature of showing users the historical voltage load profile and data export. That kind of display + data will assist users with identifying voltage issues and bringing them to the utility’s attention (with time stamped data and evidence). If the utility can resolve the voltage fluctuation issues, then Sense’s device discovery ability will improve at that specific location.

Win, win!

Kind of a case of “help us help you.”

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I am not a data scientist, but I’d certainly imagine it’d be possible to build such functionality in. However. it’s not present at the moment and is not planned.

You’re definitely not wrong in the potential utility (hehe…pun) in this use case. But keep in mind that we have a pretty large userbase, and only a small amount post here on Community. I’d expect that most of you would take advantage of such a feature (as would I), but the majority (or at least a large percentage) would not. We’re working to prioritize features that would benefit as many customers as possible at the moment. And before anyone asks, it’s not a simple add. We treat current differently than voltage in the backend, so building out voltage logging in data export would require engineering work.

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How about something as simple as being able to lightly train sense? I’ve got 4 refrigerators, not the 7 sense thinks I have, I have 1 well pump, not 3 that sense has come up with. I can’t figure out which ones to merge. Why can’t I ‘pre-stage’ and tell the system up front: I have 1 ac unit, 4 fridges, 1 dishwasher, etc. This is driving me almost to the point of pulling the system out entirely as it’s completely useless in its reporting.

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Why the hurry to combine them ? I’m guessing Sense is doing a pretty good job classifying the components of your devices. My take is that Sense represents usage at a more fundamental level than the device level, which should be useful in and amongst itself.

I spent a ton of time trying to combine my multiple AC detections, only to discover that my 2 AC systems has multiple signatures depending on the seasons.

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Your experiencing frustrations most of us have also dealt with. Be very happy that you have so many individual components to track down and identify.
We all look at the timeline and and think we can see it, why can’t Sense. There are many very long discussions here about why there are difficulties and the everything else that goes into detection.
Even at the very beginning stage where the monitor has been setup and has not detected a single device, it is still very useful. Being able to view total consumption and go around the house and view in near real time the cycling of devices and how much electricity each uses, can provide a lot of insight.
It can be really tough to have patience in the beginning when we are expecting perfection right away, that’s not what Is going to happen. Even years into it there will be many devices that are not detected and never will be.
The only way to “train” Sense is to properly identify each device it gets wrong. If it thinks it has detected another HVAC unit and it happens to be something else, find it and update the data. Then they will have that for a future device. They get enough and then Sense will get it right more consistently.

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I’ve done a little research into these pumps and it does appear they don’t always save money. The upfront cost is hard to make up for.
The cycle stop valves, I think, are a better way to go. I don’t know from experience but it seems they provide a nearly identical experience at a much lower cost upfront and overall operating.

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Local guy says they put those in about 10% of the time. Perhaps because they are much less profitable? I’ve not researched the comparison. We do really like the constant pressure home well though.

One major reason I bought Sense was to be able to accurately monitor this pump, as well as the rest of our geothermal (probably most of our power consumption), so I’d have some data about our choices. Unfortunately, that’s not happening. At this point, if I could get something like the Tp-Link HS110, but for 220v and wired in-line, I’d do that in a heart beat. But I’ve not found such a solution.

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@andy and I share the same open loop geothermal system. I agree that constant speed / pressure well water pressure is great, but I don’t believe Sense will ever be accurate enough to depend on for serious needs (prove me wrong.) My turn off from Sense came with direct contact with their tech and team fully admitting they lump devices together with similar runtimes and didn’t care to listen to my ‘one off’ case. I truly understand why they do it, but I don’t agree with the blind implementation.

Sense still is neat and has it’s value, but I’ve reverted to CT’s for ‘ground truth’.

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I’m wondering if there is some type of device or filter for this type of noise? I’m a HAM operator and radio and other electronics ha e things for this purpose. Even DSL (which is actually ADSL) has filters.
I’m not an electronics expert so please excuse my ignorance.

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The noise is the change in wattage among other things. ‘Noise’ to Sense is erratic / constant changes in wattage and line readings.

I’ve tried line filters / separate dedicated grounds, ect. To me it comes down to a device the masks wattage changes (which Sense needs as main criteria) when it runs because of it’s variability. In the case of open loop geothermal that can be quite often and disturbs Sense’s lengthily ‘normal’ use run cycle listening.

Anything variable likely poses the same issues at the moment.

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Absolutely. And when I look at the waveforms (I still have things like a Philips oscilloscope, left over from my electronic engineer days), I see both constantly changing amplitude AND constantly changing frequency of the amplitude changes…it’s a three phase synchronous motor…that’s how these devices are designed to work. Visually, it’s VERY distinctive (Sense engineering spotted it within minutes when I filed a support ticket and requested it be escalated), but apparently because of the way Sense analyzes power waveforms, it can’t handle such “noise”. And, since our geothermal provides heat, hot water, and A/C, it runs pretty frequently year round.

It doesn’t make it impossible for Sense to find other devices, but definitely interferes with the accuracy/repeatability of those it does find and makes it difficult to find most of our devices. It also apparently makes it impossible for Sense to detect the pump itself, despite it being a fairly large portion of my peak consumption.

So, my only hope now is finding a device that can monitor the 220v line into the pump controller and provide data on the power consumption…like an HS110, but for in-line 220v wiring, or like a Kill-a-watt with a data interface. If anyone knows of such a device, I’d love to hear about it.

I installed a whole house monitoring system, for on/off, temperatures, and some power consumption (www.welserver.com) when we built and I can monitor much of the house from anywhere in the world. I added solar monitoring to that when we installed the panels four years ago. Sense was supposed to fill in the device by device monitoring, particular for large consumers, but it hasn’t fulfilled that. I have 158 power consumers at last count, and frankly don’t care about things like lights (100% LED anyway), cell chargers, shavers, garage door openers, etc. I was hoping to be able to get accurate data on things like the geothermal, mini-ducting, ERV, well, washer/dryer, cooktop/ovens, etc.

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