VW reports selling 762,400 EV’s in 2021, which is a bit higher than 70k.
Andy,
I’m not attempting to negate your comment. I’m only offering up what I can provide data for. Since I have both the CT’s on a charger and have 3rd party collected data I can provide that to the team. As for VW, yes as a group they have sold a lot, but they are like 7 different brands. Additionally, only 23k or so went to the USA. That’s neither here or there, and personally I own an Audi as well, which is part of the VW Group. I hope that sense can eventually track all EV’s.
My comment is directed at the 7 vehicles that Sense is currently evaluating and that all of the non-Tesla brands are going to have diminished sales with the release of the ID series, Fords EVs, Rivian, Lucid and more. I think Sense wants to probably focus on the larger market share. If you have CTs on your charger then I would assume that the Sense team would be interested in looking at that data.
Are EV detection and charge control issues ultimately going to require Sense to interface with ISO15118 comms or will Sense sit behind an obfuscation layer and have to resort to always-less-than-perfect native detection models?
The charge throttling aspects of V2G also go way beyond household detection.
Sense DCM of charging is an obvious solution to the detection issues. It obviates the need to spend a lot of time and effort trying to build disaggregation models. Yes, Sense’s core advantage is its installation simplicity. DCMs and extra hardware certainly complicate things, but I would argue that when you add expensive + complex + fail-prone (including human fails) + watt-hungry devices to a household you are already breaking that simplicity to the point where another Sense or some extra cables is easy and cheap and highly value-added.
The question I have for Sense is: At what point do you decide that absolute ground-truth data is necessary for big-ticket devices like EVs, battery charging, and HVAC to enable the true power of what Sense can offer … which is more and more about load shifting to accommodate a renewables-based grid, let alone the optimization of a solar-based, battery-charged household.
There is a danger that the Sense game plan results in needing to become a do-everything domestic robot.
Sense … Sense Solar … Sense Flex … SensEV? (even if it’s only the Flex sensors that look like little tires)
I have been experimenting with the different detection methods for my two EVs.
- Sense EV detection (Model S and Model 3)
- Sense DCM detection (Model 3)
- In-car Charger-based Power calculation (Model S and Model 3)
The good news is that Sense is doing a pretty good job at present for the Model S and Model 3. Both the data from DCM and data from the charger correlate very well, except when I charge one of the cars at another level-2 charger outside my home (in red). It’s going to take a little more logic in Home Assistant to condition power usage on the car being at home.
@jimauger
FYI - the newish Kasa KP125 is HomeKit compatible and works with Sense.
My 2022 Nissan Leaf was detected in about 1-2 weeks of using the car. However, I noticed that the consumption seems to show 6.0-6.1 KW only and shows about 0.5KW as other. Also as the consumption tapers off, the device shows as OFF. In my chargepoint application, i was able to see 6.6 KW consumption and it taper of much better.
yea mine seems to have picked up BMW i3, Mitsubishi Outlander, chargers, but cant seem to find the BMW X5 charger, and it gets used the most… is what it is… I don’t rely on sense’s ability to identify devices any longer, was cool in the beginning… but not reliable. I pretty much use sense for its totals, consumed, generated etc… would be nice to have it reliably detect everything, but if they have not figured it out yet, its not a matter of “learning” and getting better over the years… If it cant figure things out in 4 years, its never going to keep up with the new stuff going in homes year after year, and getting replaced year after year. Until sense can ID a device in a week or less, or let us ID the device manually, it will never be 100% useful IMO.
I’ve been using Sense for seven months now with a Honda Clarity PHEV and a 240V 16A circuit with a Lectron EVSE cable. Sense has still not detected the car. Anything I can do? I’m about to switch to a 32A EVSE which I assume will reset the clock on Sense learning the car, but hopefully make it more likely to detect. I assume Sense doesn’t have a lot of 240V 16A patterns to review.
My EV detection took 8 months but Sense finally sees my Rivian R1T
EVSE is nothing more than a slightly more intelligent extension cord with a special plug.
120 or 240 Volt from the wall goes in and comes out at the special plug.
There is some extra information for the EV how much amps it is allowed to pull from the wall/plug.
That is it.
So sense does not detect the EVSE. EVSE is just a pass through of energy.
What sense is able to detect is the built in charger in the EV.
Each charger has a certain pattern how it starts and ramps up the energy till it has reached the amps the EVSE has told it to go to.
When my friend comes to visit me and charges his Ford Focus EV (has done that at least a 100 times in the last year) the sense is not able to detect the charger.
But my chevy bolt is no problem being recognized.
Long story short: switchting from 16A EVSE to 32A EVSE will not matter in detecting for sense.
I limited my max amps on my EVSE to about 80% of what my EV is capable (26 amps out of 32)
Depending on how much solar is available I change the current while charging during the day.
At night I still go with the 80% of max for longevity.
Sense would fairly quickly stop recognizing my EV when the amps would go below eg 23/24 amps.
But recently i was able to go down to 8 amps and still being recognized
As I posted here: Improved EV detection? - #2 by dannyterhaar
Interesting, thanks for the explanation!
A post was split to a new topic: Continue To Improve EV Detection - Generic Detection?
my 500e charges on its LVL 1/2 charger but only level 1 because I’m using an outdoor 110V plug.
ramps up to a stable 1400W in about 5 seconds, with 3 intermediate intermediate power levels and maintains the same power until the car is full. I’m disapoointed that after more than 2 years my “other” is still over 40% and increasing…
sounds easy to recognize a lvl 1 charger
I don’t need sense to recognize the car or even the kind of device, just to detect an unknown device which I would be happy to name myself. I would even be happy if I could pinpoint 2-3 occurrences when I plugged it in or unplugged it if that could help
Three things,
- Welcome to the Community and thanks for your first post.
- Justin isn’t the Sense Community Manager - @JuliaAtSense is the newish manager.
- You are right, Sense might have been able to build a generic “slow ramp” detector for things like EVs, but there are a few reasons that that might not work.
- First off, realize that EVs and other “slow ramp” devices are currently spotted using Sense’s native detection which looks for short (1/2 second) on and off transitions. EV ramps tend to take seconds to minutes to reach full power.
- A generic slow-ramp detector works well if you have only one slow-ramp device in your house. But once you have two or more, you have to start dealing with discriminating between them on both the on and off sides. It’s no good to detect the generic ons/offs without being able to match them up, which means building a more sophisticated fingerprint or signature for each on and off. That eventually requires them to be able to tell the difference between ramps for a 4000W EV charge vs a ramps for 4000W heat pump.
- I’m guessing that Sense is revamping their framework so they can essentially use the same approach for slow-ramps as they do for the 1/2 second native detections, but I don’t know for sure.
Hey Justin - Just curious, does Sense have any update here? If sense has spent the last 3 years focusing on those 7 EV models, it would seem that things are a bit behind the ball. (I’m sure you’re aware of the explosion of different models available) The Bolt is the only non-Tesla in the top 10 for 2022 - it would be great to hear that there are efforts to actually capture charging curves for all EVs, given that this is a market that will continue to change quickly.
Edit: - I’ve been advised taht @JuliaAtSense is a better resource. Hi Julia!
12 months here charging my ID4 almost every night @ 9.6kW (initiated by my Grizzl-E smart at 9pm) - zero recognition.
@vogelboy , you should probably address that question to @JuliaAtSense, the new Sense Community Manager.
Hey @vogelboy! First off, welcome to the Community!
As of now, there are no major updates I can give regarding EVs. We’re only working with Chevy Bolt/Volt, BMW i3, and Tesla S/X/3 EVs at this time.
Currently, Sense will not detect your ID4 but we are working on improving EV detection. If you wish to monitor your EV now, you can by using Dedicated Circuit Monitoring (DCM). This is best for larger devices that are less likely to show up or be quickly recognized by Sense.
If interested in DCM, you can learn more from our Help Center here. As well, if you wish to purchase additional current sensors you can here.
You can’t use DCM if we have solar correct? Doesn’t it use those sensors?
How about coming up with a 220v sensor, similar to the TP link’s we can add. Even one that requires an electrician to wire in would be fine, we’re sorely missing significant sources of power monitoring….like my swim pool…been more than a year and never found
You’re right - you can’t have both Sense Solar and DCM today.
I use a pricey version of a Sense 240V monitor today, a second Sense unit I bought from a user who didn’t want his anymore. Today, I monitor 2x240V devices (my Tesla Model 3 and a floor heater subpanel) using the DCM Sense. Right now the DCM Sense mains CTs are on my mains, but I may try to transfer them to my dryer, because one of the floor heaters gets conflated with my dryer. Because DCM Sense is used in a completely different use model, I’m only able to use a few measurements (the DCM devices, and possible Total Usage-dryer in the future), and the rest of dashboards are predictably garbage. But it doesn’t matter much since I route the measurements to Home Assistant.
I don’t think the current Sense measurement hardware is well-suited for a smart plug application. It’s built for very rapid sampling and updates vs typical smartplugs. The hardware do that makes it much more expensive to build than a Kasa KP115, or the like. Sense might do better with EVs by offering a charger-side integration since many of those are connected today, be the connection and monitoring in the car (Tesla) or in the Charger (ChargePoint)