I have an inverter instant hot water heater that draws about 8KW. I plan to replace my A/Cs with Inverter mini-splits. The load on these is variable by nature yet the largest power consumers. Is Sense capable but just really poor at detecting inverter devices? Does anyone have inverters detected?
Several people have inverter mini-splits detected by Sense. I’ve never heard of an inveter-based on demand water heater. I would assume that this will be undetectable due to a continuously varying load profile and a unity power factor.
Hot water heater looks like this:
It of course changes if you change the temp of your shower, change the water pressure and heater has to work more/less to maintain the set temp.
Can you take a look at the electrical usage with other water usage patterns? I’m inclined to keep my initial statement, unless there are only a few different power levels that can be used, and the heater switches between them.
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Usually once you choose your water temp be it a sink or shower, you leave it there until you’re done. I’ll do some erratic water pressure changes to get more data.
Here’s an example - first half is slowly opening and closing the valves - basically the heater tries to apply just enough power to keep the outgoing water temp to a set temp I have configured. As you open cold water on the shower the water going thru the heater goes down so less water = less power draw to keep outbound temp the same - while the water temp at the shower drops as cold water is mixed in.
Second half I was just shutting the hot water and cold water on / off more aggressively which is a more common usage I think. The heater responds pretty much instantly to changes in water pressure demand. I’m guessing this usage is pretty close to what would be near impossible for Sense to discern?
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it has not found ANY of my devices with Inverter’s in them
I think our LG dishwasher’s motor is inverter based. I’m not 100% on that. Regardless, whatever the motor is Sense hasn’t found it and Sense was install 11 months ago.
That looks like a tricky pattern. I wouldn’t have high hopes for it being detected.
@pswired does this look like inverter based wash cycle?
I did confirm that my washer is does use an inverter. It was very reliable about being detected and tagged until two days ago.
Sense power meter for the device is actually helping to diagnose whee the problem is.
So sense does detect inverter devices.
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Thanks for the input everyone!
My house is a brand new, all electric house with two mini-split systems (zones). Sense has not been able to get a read on them in over a year. Tech support replies on this issue have been “we’re working on it”. My Sense finds new devices all the time and then loses them…only to find them again and give them new names. Recently it lost my coffee make that it found a year ago. Suddenly it’s been renamed to Heat XY or Z. The only value I get from my Sense is the overall power consumption or solar power generation of my house. Sense has not proven to be a worthwhile investment as a monitoring system for any kind of energy monitoring on a device level.
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I agree to an extent.
I have detections lost for whatever reason and it is very disappointing.
But I can also say that while the device was detected and was providing information about use, I was able to learn. We have been able to use that information mainly to change our habits and how we use certain devices. My space heater that was removed a couple days ago is a good example. It was detected and reporting long enough for my to see what it costs when I leave it on while out of the room. I’m now not wasting that 60-80 KWH anymore.
So it’s not useless for device monitoring, just not as reliable as we would like it to be.
Not yet anyway.
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