Detecting Electric Vehicle (EV) devices

Hey @david1 - thanks for this.

Please know that we are most definitely listening, and are working hard to make improvements to our EV detection all the time. As I mentioned above, and as @kevin1 mentioned below, the nature of many of the chargers, and the variety of charging modes presents a particularly unique challenge for us, but we’re committed to finding ways to do this, and grateful for your patience in the meantime.

Sorry for the frustration!
-Brad

Hi @ljordan, and welcome to the community!

What kind of EV do you have? There are some that we don’t yet have models built for, but many others that we do, and we’re working on building out new ways of detecting more types of EVs as we speak.

Thanks,
Brad

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Which charger do you use for the Bolt? I have a Bolt I use the Tesla HPWC and its been 3 months and Sense gives no indication of discovery.

I use an EV Duty charger : https://www.elmec.ca/evduty-2/

I have a 2013 Tesla Model S with dual chargers (80 amps max) and a Tesla Model 3. I usual don’t charge the Model S at 80 amps. That is my I was curious if charging at various rates make the device detection more difficult.

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I can’t wait for the 2018 Chevy Volt to get recognized by the Sense. Feel free to use my energy data for testing. Three months in and not detecting the Volt is a serious deficit. My EVSE is a Clipper Creek LCS-30P with a NEMA 14-30 plug.

When are you releasing nissan leaf charger in the sense app? I have been waiting for a year now.

Hi Matt, I have a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid being charged with a Siemens Level 2 Charger, i have Sense for a month now and the charger for 3 weeks, still it has not detected the device, do you have this device in your list of devices?

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Hi Matt - I also have a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (along with a BMW i3). We got the Pacifica exactly a week ago and we plug it in very often since it’s the car my wife uses for short neighborhood trips several times a day so we should be providing a good sample set of data over the coming weeks. BTW we use a ChargePoint Level 2 Charger if that helps.

Looking to join this group of EV users. Counting on Sense to track energy consumption on my EV. I have a '16 Ford Fusion Energi with a Clipper Creek Level 2 charger. With Sense, I also have noticed that the charger/EV has a stepped start up over ~10 secs, maintains a load and has a stepped shutdown. I’m looking forward to Sense identifying this specific load. Excel will be implementing TOD Rates which will more than double the cost 2pm - 6pm.

Currently I have been a Sense user for one month. Sense has identified 20% of my specific loads by count & 5% of my load.

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@BenAtSense Any update on the Ford Fusion / CMax detection algorithm? Is it one currently being built or in the pipeline?

Thanks, eager Fusion Energi owner. :slight_smile:

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@tboettcher,
2nd that - I have a Fusion Energi as well. Do you use the standard mobile charger or a third party ? I use a Leviton 110V charger for home use. The charger itself might have some bearing on detectability.

I have a Clipper Creek level 2. (HCS-40, hardwired). My understanding of the level 2 is that they are just an “outlet” and the charging equipment is part of the car. I see the same type of step up over the 1st 10 seconds or so and the same type of step down as other have posted, which is a challenge for the Sense detection algorithms. I’ve never plugged in my car at home with the 110 factory adapter, I’m curious if it has the sames steps, just not as many watts. I now have a fun experiment to do tomorrow. :slight_smile:

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That’s true. There’s a bit o’ handshaking that goes on between charge hardware and car in level 1 and 2, but it’s mostly about the charger telling the car what it is capable of. Would be interested to hear about the results of your experiment. I also have a couple of Tesla’s but each car has a different capacity internal charger (80A vs. 72A). Sense recognizes the 80A charge regardless of which high power charger I connect it to (both are programmed for 80A max). But Sense doesn’t detect the 72A.

Sense found part of my L1 Voltec charger

I didn’t realize that the car was drawing 175W for 30 seconds at a time while waiting for the “Delayed Based on Electric Rates” time to reach 9:00 when our rates drop.

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I have been waiting for more than a year now for my Nissan leaf to be detected by sense, how long do we still have to wait ?

I have a 2018 Mini Countryman Plug-in Hybrid, that charges with a 220v 32amp Chargepoint Charger, still waiting to be detected.


I am puzzled that sense hasn’t recognized my BMW i3 charging by now. It’s been good at recognizing quite obscure signatures - like my furnace, coffee machine.
The car charging profile, at least to my human eye, looks very distinctive. i.e. rapid step up to 7kW. After 10 minutes exactly a momentary drop of 1.4kW, then a distinctive tapper after some variable time.
I am quite curious about how the recognition actually works.

Hey @dickensbill - thanks for posting this!

This gives a great illustration of one of the challenges we run into with different EV chargers: that very slow (>1 hr) taper of the charger that you noted. Some other EV chargers exhibit similarly slow ramp up times. While it’s quite easy for us to all see it here in the image, it’s quite difficult to detect in real-time.

For a real-time model to be generated, it needs to identify with strong confidence when the device turns on and off. When we think about furnaces and coffee machines, they have fairly distinct “on” and “off” transients which occur across just a few seconds. Most of our model architecture is built around looking for these short transients, so we’re doing a lot of core infrastructure work to support substantially larger detection windows that can recognize these types of “on” and “off” signals that occur across this big chunk of time.

We’re also looking at ways we might be able to report usage statistics for devices like these historically in the meantime, so even if we don’t immediately have a model that can provide real-time device detection for your i3, you could still have data that reports “my EV used X kWh and cost $Y to charge this month”.

I hope that’s helpful! Thanks again for posting this.

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Brad. Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.
As a workaround - ability to report on car charging usage historically rather than live would actually meet my needs.
If that looked like it might take some time to happen then I’ll consider re-positioning the sensor clamps onto the car charging circuit and just report on the car charging and not the whole house. (My main idea in purchasing Sense was to track my car charging usage.)
One alternative suggestion I have would be for Sense to allow the solar data collector lead to be re-purposed for measuring some other specific circuit. (I’m assuming the additional solar sensor consists of the same clamp data collection leads.) Then allow the “solar” data to be given a name that matches the circuit use. e.g. “Car Charging” or “Heat Pump”. (If I did purchase the solar leads and clamp them onto my car charging circuit - would this actually give me any useful information with the existing software?)

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