Sense found one of my Electric vehicles, or so it said…
Last Saturday the 12th. So i set it up. I decided to be patient and haven’t looked at for a while. I went to see how it’s been logging, since it doesn’t kick on till late at 11pm on super off peak hours.
It hasn’t found one charge, either car…all week, have a complete flat line.
What can i do?
Two recommendations - lots of patience and some reading of Sense blogs. Good blog post here that gives insight into most likely scenarios for Sense detecting your EV reliably, plus why detection is had.
Sense has focused on seven electric vehicle models that are the most popular among our customers. They include:
- Tesla Model X, Model S, Model 3;
- Chevrolet Volt and Bolt;
- Nissan Leaf; and
- BMW i3.
We’ve learned from customer surveys that three-quarters of Sense EV owners have one of these vehicles currently. We’ve focused on the more efficient 240V chargers, which automakers like Tesla and BMW have started to include with their cars.
Yes, I have two Chevy Bolts. One I charge at 240v with a Chargepoint brand WiFi charger (was hoping SENSE could partner on an api for that one), the other, (my wife drives very little, so at 120v). Both charge at super off peak (after 11PM) I have em on staggered charge start times hoping it helps with “seeing” two different charge activities.
After the first time it “SENSE’d” my EV, it has shown ZERO charges, and I charge nightly.
Just based on my experience, the 240V charge sessions will eventually be detected. Don’t get caught up in the reporting details of the possible initial detections - patience, patience. The 120V charging seems less likely. I actually put my Ford Fusion Energi 120V charger on an HS110 and it worked well because the charging power was well below the HS110 current and power max.
Thanks, I thought about a smart plug for the 120…Are their any homekit compatible smart plugs…I have a wemo on it now that’s on an automation for scheduling purposes.
Unfortunately, neither of the two available Sense-compatible single socket smartplugs work with HomeKit. Some WeMo smartplugs do work with HomeKit, but not the power-metering Insight model. And neither does the TP-Link Kasa KP115 (HS110 replacement) but both have their own apps for setting scheduled on and offs. I used that feature with my Ford charger.
Kevin, what’s amperage are you charging with on the hs110? Does it get hot while charging for hours? Since they introduced the ability to manually categorize always on, I’m thinking about moving my hs110 from my network rack since it’s a constant wattage to my new Bolt. My commute is fairly small so the level 1 charging should be enough and in a pinch there are free level 2 chargers close by.
I just wish I could reset the history of a single smart plug.
My Ford charges at 1440 Watts. The HS110 get a little warm, but it is rated up to 1800W. And the internal relay is rated for even higher.
@waterboysh Charging at 240 volt is more efficient than at 120volt.
Eg: charging a chevy Volt (hybrid) the onboard charger has 14.4% loss at 120 Volt vs 12.2% at 240 volt.
Depending on how much you drive/charge it might end up a significant amount of kWh over a year that you are wasting.
Thanks for the info. This is something I had wondered about and was planning on researching. The OEM charger supports 240v so I could always get a 240v line run and just use an adapter for the OEM charger.
I have one Model S and one Model X, and sense does not seem to recognize either. It’s been well over a year… Am I missing something? Is there some way to help it know? A way to say they exist and “it’s plugged in now?”
Hey @gil - do you also have solar or are you using Sense with a generator? If not, I’d recommend Dedicated Circuit Monitoring via a pair of flex add-on sensors, which allow you to detect up to 2 120V or 240V devices immediately.
New Tesa 220v Charger invisible to Sense. (3gauge wire 45 feet from panel with 60amp 230v breaker with sense unit installed) for two weeks and it’s still sense-less. Model Y.
Oh, and wired access point/wi-fi router 6 feet from panel & sense unit, 15 feet from car.
Based on others experience with EV detection, although it is improving, two weeks is probably not enough time for Sense to detect your EV. If you would like immediate detection of your EV (without waiting on device detection), I recommend Flex Add-on Sensors to monitor the circuits directly with Dedicated Circuit Monitoring. You can find out more here: Install Guide : Sense with Dedicated Circuit Monitoring – Sense.com
We have a Model 3 LR and a Honda Clarity PHEV and sense detected them both within a month or two. It doesn’t often recognize them immediately upon plug in, but usually after a minute it switches from “Other” to whichever car it is.
Seems like this thread has been abandoned, wondering if Sense’s efforts to detect Electric Vehicles have as well?
My VW e-Golf has been charging with my Sense installed for several months but still puts the EV charging load in the “Other” category and still has no idea that I have an EV installed. To be fair, there are plenty of other undetected loads but none as significant as this.
Given the timing of the EV charging it would seem relatively simply to see the pattern – is it just too hard to put this into code?
Hi @rudijh - we have not abandoned EV detection. We wrote a blog with our Data Science team that overviews the complexity of detecting EV’s that you can read here:
If you’re not using Sense Solar (or other middle port features), I’d recommend a pair of Flex Add-on sensors with Dedicated Circuit Monitoring to immediately detect your EV. You can learn more here: Sense gets flexible with Flex Add-on Sensors - Sense Blog
At the moment, VW EV’s are not listed in the EVSE’s that Sense currently detects/
Given the complexity of the EV charging universe, Sense has focused on seven electric vehicle models that are the most popular among our customers. They include:
With each car/charging system behaving differently, Sense apparently needing coding for each one (Sense’s basic edge detection doesn’t work for things like EV charging), and new electric car models expanding almost by the day, I expect this is going to take a long time. Still, with the very large amount of power each vehicle demands, tracking EV power is one of the important uses of Sense.
Looking at market studies, it appears that VW has significant EV market share, at least world-wide if not in the US, so I’d think they would be a priority for Sense.
Hey Justin,
If the data science team wants to look at my Flex Add-Ons and evaluate my charging, or if they want any more detailed information, I’m heavily involved in the Mustang Mach-E with data logging of the HVB and charge curve. I swapped my previous EV for an MME GT Performance (last October) and Ford has sold over 70k in the last year, which beats out all the non-Tesla cars that you guys are focusing on.