Are you a current Sense Solar user? Or planning to be?
We’re working on the next iteration of how we present solar data in the Sense app and would love to get your thoughts and ideas on how it can provide the most utility, and in the most intuitive manner. We’d appreciate if you would take this brief, one-page survey.
I completed the survey, but what exactly is meant by v2 here? Are you talking about a hardware revision? My Sense Solar has been installed for about 2 weeks, but my solar array hasn’t been turned on yet; still waiting for interconnect and PTO, which supposedly should happen this week. Or are you talking more of an overhaul on the software side of how solar information is presented to the user?
This would be software related. I’ll make that clearer in the original post. Thanks for completing it.
I think I filled it out wrong. If you are re-doing Solar I REALLY want to have an alert when there is extra solar so I can run something with that power. And if I am running something, I need it to alert me when there is no longer enough production available.
It would especially be great if it could be run via an API or some feature like IFTTT
I think that’s an important idea for the UI/integration. Let me know via IFFTTT if I am pushing energy to the grid, because I have better uses for it. The challenge is that a short term surplus could dissipate quickly.
I already took the survey, but now that my solar is actually turned on, something I’d like to see is a stats bubble in the solar tab similar to what you see for an individual device. Or maybe just expand what shows under usage. Some stats I’d like see per a given time frame are:
I think it would be pretty cool if in the Now tab, with the bubbles, if devices consuming electricity could sit inside the solar bubble proportionate to the amount of energy they are using compared to what you are producing.
Also, the power meter in the solar tab is the same as the normal power meter in the trends tab. Why not have it default to just show the current day, with the start time being the first time production was detected and the end time being when production drops to 0w (and of course adjusting in case this happens in the middle of the day), or the current time obviously if it’s still producing.
As a side note, is the solar graph supposed to show up in the power meter on the web? Because mine isn’t. It shows the production number up in the top right, but only a graph for consumption.
@RyanAtSense Should I take the survey again and add any of this?
Took the survey. I used to have Sungevity who went out of business. Another company took over my lease but they provide no online interface. Only way to get info is to email them and they send me a lame-o email.
Installed Sense and the solar add-on last week. Help from tech support and all working well now.
The interface that Sungevity had was great. All the data you are asking about in the survey was in there as well as the environmental impact.
Cost savings is great but really I got solar to help the planet and support tech. I didn’t care if the cost was equal for both, at least I would be trying to help the planet.
The Sungevity interface had all the electrical stats, but “number of trees planted” “number of cars removed from the road” “CO2 comparative reduction” with text and graphics as well.
It also showed regional and national overall output via their system over time and you could see them adding Gigawatts of solar power each year.
I guess their overall business model didnt work out in the end, but still great info for the homeowner.
Seems fairly straightforward to do, and I am highly annoyed that the new company that took over the tech part of my system has said for 2.5 years “we are working on a UI”… um what?
Anyway, it would be great to see how all other Sense customers are contributing to solar output regardless of who’s system it is.
Thanks for reading.
Jim
Love the idea for an API to Sense to get the solar production measurements so I can add it to my DAKboard display in the kitchen! Currently it displays photos, weather, stocks, our calendars - AND - I’m using the Tesla API to get the charge state of our Model S and Model 3. Would LOVE solar to be displayed too!
There’s a working informal Python-based Sense API out on GitHub. All user-supported, but useful for your type of needs.
There are also a couple of other access methods outlined in topics here:
Thanks so much for taking the time to complete this survey! Your feedback is much appreciated and will help to inform the next iteration of solar in the app. 
I just completed the Solar Survey. I’ll keep this brief. Based on the Qs I’d like to suggest that what you might be trying to do is already done by the Tesla (for example) app. Please do not waste valuable engineering time duplicating existing solutions; make detection better 
That is Sense’s differentiator. Make it great (BTW I’m on my 3rd BMW i3 lease and none of them have been identified).
Probably sound move this post to the original survey posting
I think device detection is a given at the top of the list of priorities.
We see a lot of new features with each version update but I believe they are secondary to device detection.
We just don’t hear about what happens behind the scenes for detection and it makes it appear that it’s not being addressed as much as we’d like. I can tell that it is though, based on my detections in the time I’ve had it and especially based on reading posts from a year or more ago and the things other users have had detected at that time compared to my current detections.
I believe detection is always number 1
