How well does sense detect various Heat Pumps?

Thanks for the idea. I don’t see sufficient need to bother trying this, but it’s nice to know there might be a way.

Ruth

I thought I was special because my Mitsubishi ducted mini split - installed for second floor heating and cooling - was ID’d by Sense after only a month, whereas my 1st floor heat pump runs 3 minisplits and has never broken out of “Other”. the 2nd floor zone is now retreated to Other. frustrating!! i’ve read every post I could find in the forum and from what I gather, the types of motors in these heat pumps aren’t descernable by Sense and probably never will be. Has anyone installed (or considered installing) the Lutron panels and beakers so that everything is being monitored at distribution instead of reverse engineering the draw after the fact? that seems to be a more sound approach to the problem, no?

Never heard of Lutron, but looking at them I’d certainly investigate if I’m ever crazy enough to build again. As I read their marketing, Lutron monitors (and controls) at the circuit level. So, if your minisplits are on separate circuits, you could monitor each one. If they are lumped on one circuit, you’d get one reading for all. Still much better than “other”.

I keep hoping (and lobbying) that Sense or a partner would bring out a 240v “wire in” sensor, like the HS110 but not using outlets/plugs and rated for 240v here in the US. Basically, it would be a minor re-packaging of the European HS device…plus approvals. That would allow a simple insert of the sensor for each 240 v device you wanted to monitor, a bit costly (and NOT what Sense marketing promised), but would reduce the dreaded other.

We use a welserver http://www.welserver.com), which does a great job of monitoring circuits. Unlike Sense, which is supposed to be able to detect devices (but doesn’t for many of us and for many types of devices…particularly modern ones), welserver monitors circuits. The reason I bought Sense was to get down another level to individual consumers on circuits…apparently that works for some, but following these threads clearly it doesn’t for all.

If you don’t have solar, then adding a second set of Flex Sensors (Sense CTs) might be a better choice for circuits monitoring of those heat pumps / mini splits, than a whole new panel. More info here:

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I do have solar, monitored by bot Sense and my welserver…and they agree pretty closely And, one more 240 v circuit wouldn’t help much, with more than a dozen 240v circuits in my all electric (geothermal heating/cooling) home. Since Sense can’t detect such devices very well, what’s needed is a solution that connects to many such devices.

Sorry @andy ! I know your situation and understand that DCM wouldn’t work for you. But it might be a good option for @jim5.

ps: I don’t know how much or a DIYer you are, but the Shelly EM and SenseLink is essentially the a 240V wired smartplug. Would be nice to see something like this productized.

for the record, I would not expect for Sense or Lutron to be able to monitor an individual mini split unit since these are coupled
to the exterior units via low voltage - but yes, each heat pump (the outdoor unit) is on its own AC disconnect (by code) so naturally you would expect for these to be ‘Sensed’. I’ve got solar and it’s nice to be able to monitor it with such great detail. but I find it extraordinarily difficult to understand why, if Sense can’t address this quite large share of their target market, they don’t provide a hybrid solution of physical senors that would monitor any isolated circuits, and then subtract and recalculate the loads so that it could do a better job of what’s left. yes, it’s hard, but it’s not as much of a moon shot as what is being attempted today.

Just a clarification so people don’t go down a rabbit hole trying to find a product that may not exist.

Lutron - makes light switches and control systems for lighting / shading etc… with several different product lines (Caseta, RadioRA, HomeWorksQS etc…) Via a third party plugin that another community member built, it is possible in some circumstances to bring Lutron data into Sense by emulating smart plugs.

Leviton makes a smart load center (breaker panel) that has the ability to monitor at a per circuit breaker level when smart circuit breakers are installed. It does look like you can trip a breaker remotely, but I would assume for safety reasons, you can’t reset them remotely.

I think one or two members have installed these smart load centers and may be able to share more info.

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I’d never heard of Shelly until seeing it in your thread below. At first glance, it looks EXACTLY like what I’ve been seeking, except that Sense doesn’t seem to have an interface to it. WHY NOT?

HUGE thanks, and I will definitely do some further investigation.

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You’re welcome. I haven’t dabbled with SenseLink yet because it requires some kind of hub, and I haven’t had the time to put into setting that up, though I do have two Intel NUCs that I’m converting to Linux for that kind of stuff. Someday…

If you have any questions let me know. Senselink and MQTT are both very easy to run on any raspberrypi.

If your mini-splits are like mine, the inside unit operates on its own power and the outside on its own power. The control between them is indeed low voltage, but that doesn’t really matter. Since Sense has the ability to combine detected devices, I’d think you could use that to create one “device” out of the two components, if only you could get them detected in the first place.

I just saw the reference to Shelly smart relays with monitoring, looks like a possible solution, and their interface is thru WIFI. Haven’t located the API yet (also has a webserver http), but I’d think the smart engineers at Sense could develop an interface to this in their sleep. That would provide a solution for the hundreds (thousands) of Sense customers who have 240v devices that Sense is unable to detect and/or monitor accurately.

The Shelly 1PM is only $17 on Amazon and it gets very good marks (except for their manual…which I agree is awful).

@Ben my bad. yes, i meant to reference Leviton Leviton Load Center and as you picked up on I got the names backwards (again).

Right, I can never expect sense to detect my ground source heat pump system, because it has so many moving motors, and speeds of operation of each motor. As this is a big component of my usage, winter and summer, this basically cripples Sense for ever as far as I can tell.

Note that you can repurpose the second set of Sense monitoring plugs using a feature called “Dedicated Circuit Monitoring”. I do this for my heat pump (a very efficient unit that has entirely unpredictable behavior from a Sense perspective). This monitoring works excellently for me.

See this forum post that gives some explanation of this feature.

Before they introduced this feature, I had essentially all of my “always on” devices on smart plugs (thereby tracking their usage), and all of my other commonly used devices were well detected by Sense… leaving the “other” category almost exclusively this one device. So, I could track it as essentially “Other”… I know this won’t work for many people, but it’s something to keep in mind if you are able to get most of your other usage tracked (though the dedicated circuit monitoring is far superior).

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Now all Sense needs to do is to provide a solution (or workaround) for all of us who partially bought Sense because we DO have solar and need to monitor one or more 240v systems also. This is still missing after multiple years.

There are workarounds. But they all cost as much or more than an additional Sense unit.

I’ve been at this for several years now and I haven’t seen any alternatives other than using the Sense solar system probes, so I’m very curious about other options. A second Sense still doesn’t detect more than two 240 circuits (I need at least 5 and could use 9) and AFIK doesn’t report thru the primary Sense, leaving scattered data.

For my impossible to detect 120v loads, I’ve used the Kasa HS110 (around $20), KP 115 ($10-$20), etc with great success. And while these do become costly if you need lots of them, they certainly don’t “cost as much or more than an additional Sense unit”.

What’s needed is a 240v module, suitable for “wiring in” (terminals or wires for connect) that communicates like the Kasa plugs. That shouldn’t be all that expensive (European versions…240v…of the Kasa plugs sold for not that much more than the US versions), but of course should have higher current ratings for the kinds of devices we here in the US need to monitor.

If you have solutions, that work with Sense and are legal here in the US, PLEASE share that or point us to the right threads/web sites.

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I feel your pain - been trying to work through the same issues as you. What I have done today for a workaround has been to make Home Assistant my top-level energy monitoring system. I still use some natural gas (furnaces and hot water), so I really need some place other than Sense to bring it all together. With Home Assistant, you could pull Sense data for aggregate usage and device usage, plus add something like Shelly energy monitors with MQTT for watching those nine 240V loads. And if you really wanted it all in Sense, you could send the data back to Sense via the interface. Right now, I don’t use Shellys, but do blend in data from my 2 240V EV chargers, and use the Ecobee integration to make sure Sense is detecting my AC compressors reliably.

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Huge thanks, now I have some places to look. I really appreciate your info.

When I built my geothermal solar home about a dozen years ago, I installed WELserver throughout, which monitors just about every on/off, temperatures throughout the house and in about 20 points in the geothermal, house power consumption, and solar generation…pretty complete but lacking any monitoring for device by device power drain.

So, when I saw Sense on This Old House (I fussed at Ross for his severe oversell), I went out and bought it. Big mistake. Of my 177 devices, I get some results on about a dozen and those not very reliably, plus a bunch monitored thru KASA. Sense engineering did provide some assistance but eventually gave up and said “your constant pressure deep well pump (key art of the geothermal and provides domestic water) is non-detectable by Sense’s algorithms, and is so noisy that it interferes with Sense working properly with other devices it might normally find”.

So, after all that I still do not have the device by device monitoring I was seeking. What I do have is two systems (three including the power company meters) that monitor utility draw and solar generation, plus a very few other devices.