My system is about 2 weeks in and just found my second device. A fridge. It spikes at 745w and then runs intermittently throughout the day at 46w. I can’t find what device this is. I physically have a freezer, fridge, and a bar fridge. While the unit is running in the app, I have turned off the breakers for each but can’t find this mysterious device. Any ideas?
The community repeatedly tries to crack these kinds of mystery devices and your first impulse was right I think … to try and switch things off and see what happens. Remember though that just because you switch something off doesn’t mean that the Found Device waveform is guaranteed to change if it is that device! It’s anti-intuitive … the device waveforms are still generated using the Sense algorithm. Look at the overall power change, not just the Device, in the Power Meter and see what happens.
That said, 46W intermittent with spikes does seem like a fridge … thought 745W spikes seem pretty high.
I’ve been trying to troubleshooting my fridge and I just realized that even though manufacturers don’t publish nice waveform graphs, although you can find more and more of them here on the Sense forum (!), you can probably find the Energy Star label for your fridges/freezers, unless they are really old.
My fridge, for example, is “475kWh/yr” according to the Energy Star label = 475/365 = ~1.3kWh/day = equivalent of a constant ~54W. I would expect it to use significantly less than that because it’s only being used by 2 people vs what I guess would be the standard nuclear family.
When I look at my fridge waveforms I see things hovering around 35-40W with 150W spikes. These readings are not interpolated by the Sense algorithm because the fridge is on a dedicated Wemo Insight that feeds data to the Sense. Meaning: this is my fridges’ energy signature. Sense is clocking the annual usage at about 220kWh. Worst case, you could get a Smart Plug (Wemo or Kasa) and try troubleshooting using that.
What the Wemo + Sense has revealed is that my fridge seems to be running within the manufacturers spec.
Thanks, I’ve classified it as the freezer for now. The 745w spike is just the initial start up lasting a second. They are commercial grade frigidaire units. Sometimes I can hear the freezer running and don’t see sense noticing the new device running. Maybe it has only found the defrost feature of the unit? Sometimes it’s tracking for an hour and sometimes for 5 minutes
Quite likely … that Sense has found components and not the whole Fridge.
“Unfortunately” (for everybody) this is the downside of the Smart Plugs: they track the whole fridge perfectly but you don’t have the “advantage” of Sense seeing and logging the separate components as separate Devices.
@samwooly1 I believe is clocking the number of times his fridge door is opened, for example, because Sense sees that as a separate device!
Eventually we may have the best of both worlds.
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Something you can do if you want to track the fridge as a whole.
I had:
Compressor
Door light
Defrost
Door dispenser
I keep them separate but if I want to see the whole fridge then I merge them. After the merge, view or download the data. After you’ve done that, just unmerge them and have individual data again.
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