@MattL, you ask a good question - what causes the big YMMV (your mileage may vary) effect with Sense ? In my mind it is 3 things:
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Device Type Detectability - There’s no getting around the fact that Sense is good at detecting some types of devices and poor with others, just because of way it does detection based on transitions (mostly). Many devices kick out clear, consistent on and off transitions, while many others don’t. I have tried to put together a very incomplete list here.
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Device Type Noise - But even if most of your house is producing crisp and clear transitions, a single large usage device that is continuously kicking out lots of random transitions of different sizes has the potential to obfuscate all the other transitions. I think one of @andy 's pumps has been identified as “noisy” which has to be horribly frustrating. In a similar way, a house with too many transitions from actual on off cycles may also reduce native detection because it is too difficult to isolate individual devices. More on native detection requirements here.
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Expectations - I’m an electrical engineer so I entered my Sense experience with a reasonably good idea of how Sense operated and what it’s limitations might be, regardless of Sense’s early marketing. I didn’t expect Sense to detect consumer electronics and was willing to put undetected large-usage devices onto smartplugs.
So far I’m seeing reasonable and useful results, especially with the smart plug integration, though I can understand why others are not as satisfied.