While I have been very pleased with Sense for the day I have had it installed so far, I actually bought it for the power quality features rather than the core power usage functionality.
Our utility actually provides hourly usage data, so I had at least a decent feel for that, but we frequently have 5-20 second periods where our LED lights will flicker throughout the house with no cause that I’ve been able to determine yet. It doesn’t seem to coincide with HVAC starting up and there are no other major loads that seem like they would be causing significant fluctuations in the house, so I wanted to investigate if it is possibly a utility power quality problem.
However, when I go to the Labs > Power Quality on either the web interface or iOS app, it seems to be arbitrarily stuck on Dec 31/Jan 1 (Year unknown). I also do not have the Previous or Next buttons that I have seen in other people’s screenshots.
Is there a minimum waiting period before the data will show up or am I missing a setting or permission somewhere? As you can see in the screenshot, the “realtime” voltage shows up for each leg, and I can sit and watch it change, but the graph itself never populates.
Thank you @kevin1!
Knowing that it typically lags a day or two behind tracks with having just installed it yesterday morning. It took ~12 hours for the labs to even show up for my account.
I guess I will just have to learn some patience knowing I have something to look forward to.
If you have a neighbor who is connected to the same transformer that you pull power from, these voltage drops could be due to their HVAC or some other device (i.e. electric welding machine) suddenly starting up.
My neighbor (who is on the same transformer taps as myself) has a problem with his HVAC. I have mentioned it to him, but he has not made any repairs. I suspect his HVAC run/start capacitor has gone bad.
The voltage reading you see or voltage drop you are experiencing on your SENSE unit is actually reading the voltage for everyone who is connected to that ‘transformer tap’.
Thank you @Dcdyer. That was a good point.
In my circumstances, we are in a rural area, so while we can see our neighbors, each house has its own transformer.
For better or worse, that means it’s my problem (or the whole neighborhood if it’s on the medium voltage side)
No, they have not. I have had this “Request Failed” message at the top of my screen when I go into Dashboard all weekend long. I’ve waited, I’ve tapped, all to no avail. It’s obviously communicating because the usage graph is continually updated and I can watch the live voltage numbers, so I just assumed that it must be on the Sense server side and someone would show up to work on Monday and fix it.
Hmmm, Generally that’s a sign that your Sense monitor isn’t communicating with the mothership (WiFi issue, internet issue), though sometimes it can be sporadic. If your Power Meter is being updated, that’s a sign that the network connectivity is there.
Don’t get too excited about seeing the Power Meter, because mine updates to 9/7-9/8 a couple days ago, but is still stuck there. Not sure when the next refresh is coming - they have been a little more sporadic recently.
Mine has started populating and appears to be tracking at the typical ~2 days behind present.
Given that I bought Sense specifically to try and dig into power quality so that I could investigate our blinking LEDs and their short lifespans, I am actually pleasantly surprised by the consistency of our rural electrical service. It definitely lurks at the upper limit of the +/- 5% bounds, but only 2 sags in the ~week of recording data so far was unexpected. For some reason the software only identified 1 sag, but the graph seems to distinctly show two.
How long does it take once first enabling labs and/or a new account before the power quality should start working? L1 and L2 both show voltages and system has been running for a few hours but it says no data.
