Some information about your home/apartment would be helpful. What’s the sq footage? What major appliances do you have? How do you heat and cool your home and your water? Do you have an electric clothes dryer?
If you’ve added up the wattage of all your appliances and you know that you’re using more than you possible could, then something/someone is stealing power through your meter. Your historical usage does not show a sudden spike in usage, so you’ve had this vampire load for a while.
HI:
My apt is about a 2 bedroom 2.4 bath duplex in a row house built in 1920. It has natural gas heat, hot water and cooking, and a gas clothes dryer. All of the lights are LED.
When I say spike what I am referring to is moments when sense shows usage jumps to 8,000, 10,000 and I think the highest was 11000 watts. I don’t know how to easily show them here on the forum. I set the timeline scale to hourly and then scan back to find them. I can’t find a consistent pattern of when, and whatever is doing it has not been detected by sense i guess since these are not labeled like the ups and downs from known devices.
I have asked but haven’t gotten an answer about accessing the raw data from sense so I can analyze it and look at it other than scrolling back and forth on the sense power meter in the app. Is there any way to download the actual data?
These usage spikes are very brief, but I finally figured out that enough of them happen to raise the bill. The bill has always been high, but I could handle it. it’s the last couple months it has almost doubled. I have changed nothing recently (pretty much not for the 6 years I have lived here. I also have not been able to identify a person or firm who can come try and track this down. Con Ed says “hire an electrician”. This outside of the scope of most electricians that is why I have been reaching out. The response from sense support was “reset the sense device and let it start learning again”.
I am open to any suggestions.,
Thanks
Two thoughts:
You’re using an incredible amount of power for space of that size that uses gas for heat, water, and clothes dryer. Are you mining crypto or growing plants or something? Do you share a meter with the other unit in the duplex, or do you have separate meters?
If you want to get better screenshots and export data, use the web interface at sense.com from a PC, rather than the mobile app. From the Trends tab, you can export data by the hour.
I’d follow the recommendation mentioned previously, which is to turn all your breakers off and then see if you still see the spikes. If you still see spikes, then you’ve got another panel upstream that is using the power. If no spikes, then turn on the circuits one by one until you see the spike. Once you know which circuit is producing the spikes, you can look at the devices on that circuit to see if one is haywire.
It could also help for you to post a picture showing your sense installation.
That’s wildly higher than my all electric home up in the mountains of NH, and something is seriously wrong. I can’t even imagine what you could have that is drawing all that power, since the typical large draws aren’t even electric in your apt. Have you tried shutting things down and seeing if this continues? It may not even be in your apartment.
This isn’t about Sense, although it’s alerted you to the issue, it’s about a crazy electric bill. In addition to costly, this could be very dangerous! In older buildings, weird things often have happened over the centuries.
I recommend you immediately contact your provider and/or an expert electrician to determine what your electric usage (including the weird spiking) is all about. Unless you are pretty expert in electrical systems, you need professional help.
Hi @jn1 - sorry to join this thread a little bit late. Suggestions so far in this thread have been on the mark.
It might also be helpful to see a list like the one at the bottom of the screen that breaks out your large devices by either Gas or Electric would be a great start.
@kevin1 recommendation is spot on - switching breakers off with the Sense power meter open is the best way to isolate the source of this down to a breaker.
Gas:
Electric:
Holy crap those 28¢ kWH tariff rates ?? really add up fast.
@jn,
Absolutely believe that your energy usage/bill is too high for what you describe. A couple thoughts:
Given this amount of current, this would almost certainly have to be spread across multiple breakers, and probably at least one 240v.
With gas as your primary fuel, I’m really suspicious of you paying for someone else’s loads…as mentioned below. This is WAY too high!
While I agree this seems very high for a 2 bedroom apartment, if you look at Sept 2000 on your bill, it doesn’t seem out of line with last September, which had lower average temps from what I’m reading.
So your focus on spikes i believe is misdirected.
As you live in the basement (if bill is correct), one certainly wonders if you are paying for others at the same address.
Can you find out the bill amount of others 3 units above you in the building?
And are you operating a commercial business in your “studios”?
Finally, where are the building meters and circuit panel located?
Do you have access to your circuit panel and meter? Apparently you have the basement and 1st floor.
Turn off everything in your panel and go to your meter. Is it stopped or still showing usage?
If not switch on 1 by one and make sure every circuit is going to your units.
Your bill is 5x-6x the unit on the 2nd floor averaging $150-$175 in the Summer and less than that in other Seasons. The 3rd floor is even lower than that.
ConEd Managers looking at the billing when I asked for average unsafe of the 2nd floor unit agree something is very wrong with your bill and suspect someone is using your electricity in violation of NY State Law.
They are sending out a team to investigate and track this down. They will be there on Oct 21st between 8A and 3P.
If you need to change the date or time, call their general number that is listed on your bill and it’s noted on your account.
Partly due to the costs involved, it’s VERY important that you follow-up with the power company investigators. The even more important reason is that this could be an indication of wiring problems that can be dangerous, and sometimes fatal.
Your power bill should have been shouting at you that something bad was going on, and Sense’s indications (not just the spikes, but the loads themselves) confirm a serious problem. If it were me, I’d NOT be waiting another 10 days, but getting this looked at immediately!
October 21st was first available appointment.
Call ConEd now and try to speak to someone.
You’ll hear because of the mass of severe outages/emergencies, all representatives are handling the emergency calls that are overwhelming them.
According to their outage map, that means 10 customers are without electricity power in the entire service area.
I would note that there are 68 without power in my County right now with a population a fraction of New York City. And no emergency declared.
Imagine that.
So much for customer service…sigh
What happened after Edison Inspected 
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