Shouldn’t Sense detect itself and add it to the device list? I understand Sense is such a humble pal that he doesn’t like to talk about himself but hey! he is one of the (good) guys in the Aways On and adding it would mean a few W less in that list!
Sense only uses about 4W, so it’s a pretty measly draw. That number does get calculated as part of your Always On however.
1 Like
You made me curious, so I put a kill-a-watt on my sense, and it measures a bit less than 5 watts. So, that’s 32.72 KWH/year and at our (relative high) power costs up here in New England that’s a whopping $ 7.69 annually.
So, with thousands and thousands of KWH being missed, I have to admit this doesn’t loom very big in my priority list.
You’ve got us curious…how did you hook a Kill-a-Watt up to your Sense?
Oh I don’t mean for the money though, but rather for the “sense” of control over my home’s energy consumption and for completion of my collection of devices!
It’s actually more like a question ‘Why Sense doesn’t detect itself?’
I used 110/220v transformer to hook to the Sense legs. It jittered around for a bit then settled down. Actually, still hooked up that way.
1 Like
My hookup to measure Sense’s power consumption clearly has confused it. The unit is running, reporting to the network, etc, but the values are really messed up by my Kill-a-Watt and transformer being in between.
I’ll put it back later this evening when I get back home.
Send pics of your operation get-up
Yeah why is that? It should be the easiest device to detect 
It’s like Google not show when you google Google! (or show in the second page) 
Or if Twitter didn’t tweet or even had an account.
Sorry, I’d already reverted the hookup to standard by the time I saw your e-mail, so got no pictures.
Nothing fancy about what I did. Just a power plug hooked to a spare 110v/220v transformer, then to the two Sense voltage leads. Plug went into kill-a-watt which was plugged in by the panel. Sense was operating, taking readings and sending to the wireless.
Readings, of course, were bogus, but I was able to measure Sense’s own power draw…kill-a-watt jumped back and forth between 4 and 5 watts, so I chose 5 for the annual calculation. Sense support got triggered that the readings were flakey and reached out to me for permission to debug, but I suggested they hold off until I hooked back up properly.
It’s running normally now, as well as it ever has, and reporting reasonably correct total consumption and solar readings when compared to my welserver system (which is calibrated to the power company meters).
Support likely flagged it because the polarities got flipped when changing the power cord, which then trigger the automated check on our end. You should check with them to make sure it’s all running 100%.
Seems to be working as it had previously.
Thanks
Andy
I would think the first device Sense recognizes would be itself, but not so. Does it ever or does it fall within random always on?
Already answered here:
Sense undoubtedly draws a very small and steady trickle. So unless it were being cycling on and off (and why would anyone deliberately do that?) it would not be detected - and even so, it could only then be detected if there were a second sense unit “upstream” of it remaining steadily on as the sense unit in question was cycled to register these transitions.
Absolutely. When I monitored it (I’m an electrical engineer with lots of lab gear), I observed a fairly steady 3.7-3.9 watts draw. In my part of the country, that turns out to be about $7 of power annually and with (hopefully) zero on/off cycles.
I can’t help wondering why anyone would care about this?
1 Like
Well if Sense “knows” that it is using 3.7-3.9 Watts then it can just account for that within the internal calculations and subtract that amount from the “Other” category and put a “Sense” bubble in there with a usage of 4W (and of course add a “Sense” device to account for trends, etc) 
It’s not so much that I “care” about the $7 annually, I do care that (hopefully eventually) all my devices are shown w/ their usage as that’s the whole point of Sense. It’s currently even showing my steady 1W usage on my robot vac charger (thanks to a TP Link smart plug) so why shouldn’t it show the 4W for the Sense monitor itself?
1 Like
I will gently disagree because it would be “dishonest” for sense to report itself as it is incapable of sensing itself. It would reporting something that is merely assumed rather than calculated or measured. Better to leave it lumped in with the other always on devices such as routers and cable modems.