I am a new Sense monitor owner and have just had multiple monitors installed. Now I am eager and excited to get them to do their work.
I am having some challenges that I am hoping that someone in this community can assist me with, and for that I would like to thank you all in advance.
I am trying to get multiple (four) sense monitors attached to my account for monitoring. The high level question is if this can be done and if not, what have others done to resolve such a situation.
Next is a problem I have potentially created and now need help undoing.
I detected a Sense monitor (#1), connected it to my Wifi and then created my account to set it up.Then I logged off from my account, detected the next Sense monitor (#2) connected it to Wifi and created an account with SAME email id and password used for the monitor#1. Ironically the Sense system allowed a second account (supposedly) to be created with the same email id. I thought now both monitors will be in my account. Well the account only has monitor #2 and monitor #1 is missing!
Then I log off again, detect monitor#1 and try to connect to it and it claims that this is already connected to an account and so cannot be connected to! Well now I have monitor#1 connected to an account that only has monitor#2 and so I cannot seem to ever access. Need help in trying to figure out how to resolve this situation.
Thanks again for any help I can get for this issue.
Apologies if I am posting this incorrectly, will try to learn and get it right with time.
Background: This is a large estate home with a 800 Amp service with a guest house. Since it was difficult to add the Sense monitor to the main panel, we decided to place it on (presently) 4 of the 8 sub-panels in this estate.
Since I will need to have separate accounts, I will reach out to the support team to figure out how to get my monitor#1 reset and then attached to a different account.
I must say that after reading the blogs, it is surprising that Sense has not as yet figured out after 3 years how to get multiple devices on a single account. This is a major issue to resolve before I can reccomend Sense to all my friends in this very expensive (top 5 zip codes in the country) neighborhood where most homes will need multiple meters and people would be happy to install!
We do note on our compatibility specs that Sense is only compatible with homes up to 200A at this time.
400A (and greater) is indeed a future need but itâs still a very small subset of users and, perhaps suprisingly, a significant amount of work to implement. I would encourage you to âlikeâ the relevant thread in Product Wishlist to show your support: https://community.sense.com/t/multiple-monitor-and-400a-support/566
I would like to add a rationale for the Sense team to expedite developing a feature to add multiple sense monitors on ONE account. This should not be rocket science for a company that prides itself in cutting edge Machine Learning software for sensing power.
Entering 2020, the adoption of Electric cars is going to explode. In CA and (Silicon Valley) where I live, it is already a popular option. With this comes need for additional power in your home. All CA home starts (other than small apartments/condos) today are starting OFF with 400Amp service and the larger homes in my area have 600A service with some going to an 800A level!
So needing more than ONE Sense Monitors becomes table stakes and adoption of these monitors will not grow until there is a convenient way for a customer to have them on a single account. Look at the benefit:
You sell more meters (some of course will not like this, but will need to for their Amp higher service)
Customer with need of multiple meters start adopting Sense if the account issue is resolved and marketed well by the company.
I hope your marketing team and CEO realizes the lost potential in not having this feature.
Thanks,
-Rajiv
I am a new Sense owner. Just bought 4 units and now am in a dilemma since I require 4 accounts!!
I have a Silicon Valley 400A service with two 200A subpanels, and 3 EVs. I have been able to sidestep the issue by putting CTs on the pre-meter mains. But if I wasnât able to do this, I would use two units, two separate accounts and simply combine them via data export for now⌠Too much good info not to do it immediately.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have a 800A service for an estate home with a guest house and an emergency sub-panel for the home fed by 4 Tesla Power Walls. Overall the design has 7 sub-panels of which I plan right now to only monitor 4. A rather large set up that obviously is not too common. So now that I know the limitations of Sense, I will be setting up separate accounts to take care of this set up.
Quick question: How do I reach out to someone in Support at Sense?
Do you have solar with the PowerWalls ? And do you have Sense solar ? The extra CT monitoring that comes with the solar option might also be useful for monitoring PowerWall contribution, even though the Tesla app gives some insight, too. Look on this forum for recommendations of some of the PowerWall users.
I have Tesla/SolarCity solar, but no PowerWall yet, but the recent PG&E outages have pushed me to consider one.
@RajivP, do the CT clamps fit and close around your 800A main before branches? The house would likely rarely, if ever, pull more than 200A at a time, and Sense would just clip during those times, which wouldnât be the end of the world.
Or, if the Sense CTs donât fit, find a CT that does with the same winding count and hook it up instead. Or, wire CTs in parallel, 1 for each sub panel, with their common point being as close to the Sense unit as possible, making sure each CT is orientated the same way.
Anyway, I agree that Sense should support multiple units, both for cases like yours with large house with multiple panels, and for people with multiple independent properties. Seems like this would drive extra unit sales.
I am just in the process of finishing my new large home that has a 800Amp main feed. The home is in Los Altos Hills, CA. Recently I bought 4 Sense units and installed them on my sub-panels since PG&E would not allow anything in the main panel and anyway it was larger than what Sense can support.
During the inspections, the city inspector asked us to remove the units as he believes they are not allowed. This was a surprise to me and my electrical contractor, however rather than argue unfortunately we had to remove them. However I wanted to know if you have heard of such an incident with other places.
The only frustration I have is that I will have to go thru the entire install again ($$) and probably will have lost some of the devices that Sense had started to find.
I still am frustrated about the absense of multiple monitors being available on a single account. Can your team do so in a simple manner by having multiple selections of the different tabs on the app even if they have NOT figured out how to merge the data. I just would be happy initially if I do not need to log in to 4 email accounts.
Hi @RajivP! Do you happen to know the specific violation the city inspector cited during your inspection? For future reference, we are UL61010 approved and certified in the U.S. This shouldnât be an issue and we can help with this if you run into more difficulty moving forward.
@RajivP, so sorry to hear your challenges with the inspection, but not surprised. My sister and brother-in-law live in Los Altos Hills. Heâs a commercial builder and personally led the team that finished their new house in LAH about 12 years ago. He decided to make the house a low energy showpiece with things like geothermal heating/cooling, plus solar. The city inspectors decided they didnât like about 40 items in the house over the course 4 or 5 inspections. Most of the issues were related to hardware and systems the inspector had never seen before. My brother-in-law personally challenged each inspector to identify, in the books, the specific code violation they were specifying. In 37 out of the 40 cases, my brother-in-law prevailed either because the code wasnât applicable (or maybe didnât even exist) or there were alternate code alternatives that the inspectors werenât familiar with.
There is a lot of back-and-forth potential with code compliance and inspections that a Sense device, in a new construction, is just screaming to the inspector: âHad a bad day?â. Sometimes (often) the easiest thing for an inspector is to, when in doubt, say they donât like it.
Are there some things Sense could do to make the inspection process more guaranteed? Thoughts:
Having an external outlet for Sense as the default for new construction. i.e. An engineer/architect specâing the electrical system will incorporate that. I suspect the most common violation would be having the Sense monitor breaker also feeding other circuits. The orange brick tweaks the inspectors nerves whereas the clamps look like Fluke meters they are all familiar with.
For multiple Senses in a single panel or clustered, a hint to the engineer to spec that they could be housed in a separate panel?
A big UL61010 approved tag/sticker/printable booklet?
I admittedly know a little less about the different inspection codes that might be flagged throughout this process. Iâm going to ask a couple questions around here to see what i have for a follow-up.
