Figuring out Heat 5

[waterboysh]

This device was only detected about a week ago, but Sense has data going back to around the beginning of Oct. It seems to come on roughly every 24 - 30 hours (meaning it runs almost every day but occasionally skips a day), consumes just under 500W, and runs for almost 10 minutes. Here’s a bunch of screenshots.

And

Here is the power meter for device 5 when it ran last night just before 5am.

Here is the full power meter for the same time period.

I noticed the spike at the beginning that didn’t show in the device specific power meter, which could indicate a motor of some kind, but I wasn’t convinced they were related. So I started looking at my other devices to see what else ran at that time. Turns out my chest freezer did. Here’s the power meter for it.

So I wanted to see if there is a correlation between the two. (hint: I don’t believe there is).

Here is a power meter graph of heat 5 on 12/15.

Here is the chest freezer during the same time period. No overlap.

Just in case, I checked another time. Here is heat 5 on 12/14.

And here is the chest freezer for the same time period. There is a bit of overlap at the end, but not at the beginning where the power spike is.

To head off some questions: I do not have a coffee maker of any kind whatsoever. The chest freezer does not have an auto-defrost. I have to manually defrost it every 6 months or so.

My personal theory is that this could be the auto-defrost of my normal freezer. But I don’t really know a way to test that. But I don’t have anything else that I can think of that would be a resistive heating element that comes on without user input other than my water heater, and I know it can’t be that.

[waterboysh]

Oh yeah, and here are the community suggested names.

[Edison517]

Looks like a refrigerator auto-defrost cycle to me. Mine runs about 488w at about the same time-cycle as yours.

[ixu]

I agree, almost surely a defrost element. Ways to verify:

• Correlate your graphs where it doesn’t come on with fridge/freezer usage … was the fridge/freezer not opened for those periods? (Remember also that Sense doesn’t necessarily catch the defrost element every time it activates – perhaps for those periods there was something else running that clouded Sense’s view)

• Check the specs on your fridges/freezers.

• Put a smartplug on the fridge/freezer.

[waterboysh]

It’s definitely the defroster on my freezer. I found this post from @samwooly1 that has a similar model to me. Both Figidaire. His is FGUS2642LF2 mine is FFHS2611PF0.

The dilemma I’m starting to face is whether to merge all these devices. I have

1. The compressor
2. A heating element for the ice maker
3. Something related to opening and closing a valve to let water back into the ice maker
4. The defrost for the freezer

Items 2 & 3 have already been merged into an “Ice Maker” device. I could merge everything into a single Fridge device to get a better picture of the overall consumption of the Fridge. On the other hand, I can easily see now if something is wrong with the compressor or the defroster. If the Fridge or Defroster didn’t turn on for a long time, or never turned off, or turned on and off rapidly, or whatever I’d be able to easily see that.

To bad once a device is merged, you can’t see any info about the “sub devices”. Would be neat if it was handled the same way as “always on” when you have smart plugs and displayed all the components when you view the device.

[ixu]

@waterboysh

To bad once a device is merged, you can’t see any info about the “sub devices”. Would be neat if it was handled the same way as “always on” when you have smart plugs and displayed all the components when you view the device.

Agreed. Though the UI might get a little long-winded without having the devices then collapsible … the same applying to Always On lists!

Meanwhile you could use consistent nomenclature so at least the device listing is readily readable and lends itself to some quick mental math.

e.g. Fridge compressor; Fridge ice heat; Fridge valve; Fridge freezer defrost