New Members/Old Members: Introduce yourself!

@torchme68, just pick the right Kasa plugs that work with Sense (today HS110 and HS300) and don’t use over 20 plugs.

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Greetings. JB here from the Chicago US area. I got a Sense about a month ago, but only installed it 3 days ago. The ‘long’ story is, I opened the electrical panel and found some corrosion in the box. Apparently when my house was built, it was not code/required to seal the openings to the outside, around the electrical box. We’ve had a couple of major snow storms over the past several years, and some of that snow made it into the basement, on top of the electrical panel (that’s the reason for the corrosion). In any event, it turned out to be a much more expensive project than I had anticipated (I had to replace the panel first …). All is good now. The Sense is installed and working as expected. Now, I want to add a couple of dedicated CT sensors to track usage of the Furnace/AC … my kids tend to turn those devices at will. My furnace/AC uses two breakers … does that mean I need to use both CTs for the furnace? I was hoping to use only one, and then the other for another circuit.

The Sense has been running for 3 days now, and it has already detected the fridge, oven, and sump pump. I also added a couple of HS300 for more ‘dedicated’ monitoring.

You can run multiple hot wires through a CT and you’ll simple get the sum of the current for those circuits. Current flow all needs to be in the same direction. There are several posts where this is discussed. Welcome to the fun!

I suppose I’ve never properly introduced myself.
I’m Ross. I live in Chesterfield Va and it seems like I have found my people here. My home was built in 1973 and it’s been fun bringing it into the current century.
This all started with two stupid wifi RGB bulbs so I could turn on a light in my master bedroom hallway. Now I have a dedicated network for all of my smart devices. From there I’m running towards a full smart home it seems. Sense was a logical next step. I think I’m a lost cause now.
I’m looking at building a cabin in the next few years, sense with solar power will be in my next chapter.

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Ah, the classic journey from upgraded lightbulbs to a complete IoT home. Welcome, @Rjenk0s. Happy to have you here. Reach out with any questions that come up.

A post was merged into an existing topic: Sense New User Resources & Guides

Brand new here from Massachusetts, where electric rates are high :wink:

About 5 years back or our old style electric meter was replaced by a new meter and ever since our electric bills have been exorbitant. We do have a large family (6 people), do our fair share of laundry and dishes, but we have no pool/spa, etc. and have always been wondering where the electricity is going. We have a Kill-a-Watt a couple smart plugs, etc. but have never been able to really find the electric drain. (We did replace our very old water heater about 2 years ago and replaced with a heat pump hybrid - that cut our electric bill by about $300 a month!)…but over the summer our bill shot up again (we were only running one AC unit at night in an upstairs bedroom).

A few weeks ago an ad for Sense popped up in my web browsing and I knew we needed to give this a shot. We are on Day Four with our Sense and I am loving the info we are getting…still don’t know where all the electricity is going, but we can see it and make changes. (Though our “trending to” for our bill is only a fraction of what our bills usually are) so I will be curious to see the trend as the month continues.

Glad to be here, I’ve already learned a bunch from reading through other community posts!

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Hi everyone, my name is Jesse. I recently purchased solar from Tesla and I guess they don’t supply the meter that tracks usage and production, so I wanted to use Sense to do it. I have some questions but I’ll post them in the main section hopefully! :smiley:

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@jessefk, I also have Tesla solar. Unless you get a PowerWall, Tesla doesn’t supply the hardware to measure the combined home usage and solar production data - just the production data. And don’t be surprised if the Sense Solar Production shoes up about 3-5% lower than the Tesla number. For me, the Tesla solar production number seems to include that power needed to operate the inverter, even though that never makes it into your house.

Thanks for the response! That’s good to know about the numbers being a little lower. I got the 8.16kw system (Of course I ordered it in July when my electric bill was the highest, and just got the system installed this month, so my solar production is pretty low haha). I’m hoping to get sense setup this weekend.

Good Evening, new sense user here. It is something I have wanted to use for quite awhile but time and finances never matched up. I’m located in Central Massachusettes in an older 1800’s home. I currently have a 6.66kWh system. I have everything hooked and have been getting good reading from the main panel. Now I’m waiting for a sufficient sunny day to set up the solar portion of the sense. Look forward to exploring and learning from this community.

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Jeff from just North of Pittsburgh. I am a new Sense user, coming from a TED5000 Energy Monitor beginning when it was first available. It started acting up (wouldn’t accept new utility rate updates) and I ran across Sense, so here I am. My home is primarily Insteon-based with a UDI ISY994i controller. I have a bit over 40 light controllers, temp sensing, smart displays,plugs,other controllers, etc. All currently interfaced with Google Home for voice commands (well, at least to the extent possible).

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Hello, Bruce here. Just installed Sense yesterday, hoping to get a handle on crazy electricity bills at our new home.

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Hi! Growing up, I built my dad a monitoring system for his home-grown solar-thermal hot water system, and I wired up LEDs as nightlights in our low-energy home back when super-brights were a few bucks a pop. When we recently bought a townhouse outside of Seattle, WA, I was thrilled to finally play around with Sense! It’s been a lot of fun understanding our home’s energy consumption, especially with 100% electric heat, a mini-split air conditioning (and heating) system, and a Chevy Bolt.

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Hello, new here, new user, just installed a few minutes ago. Should be interesting to learn more about our usage, instead of being baffled by our electric bills. I purchased the wiser with the extra clamps, but not sure what to use them on. I have a 240v panel, also with a off peak panel, ac, water heater, not sure what else. my bills are always about $200, sometimes closer to $300. I have 2 saltwater aquariums, so that definitely wont help with rock bottom electric bills.
Well, if I can figure out the extra 2 clamps, and where to put them, that would be great. looks like I have some reading and learning to do.

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Hey there Joel! Welcome to the community.
Feel free to reach out to me directly once you get a list of some of the electric appliances in your home - I’d focus on some of the things you use most frequently. It helps to also know what appliances in your home are gas and which are electric - for instance, in Cambridge, Massachusetts I have a gas range, oven, and furnace. I’m using the flex sensors to monitor my washer, which Sense had some trouble detecting initially. It’s great not having to check when a load of laundry is done, I just get a notification sent to my phone when the washer turns off!

I am here because I am a nerd for this kind of stuff (and an EE), so I installed Sense in November and integrated it into 9.57kW DC in rooftop PV last week. I am interested in furthering the community once I have more data to do so (and the time - I work in cyber security and the job can be demanding).

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Hello All. I came here because I got a Sense device for Christmas. I am self-employed as a distributor and dealer of connectivity products such as cables and electronics. My company is Cable Solutions and I built the website at https://www.cs1.net

The products I sell are related to stereo, home theater, school and house of worship applications, so I spend a fair amount of time working with that technology. I’m also the I.T. guy here, so I’m responsible for the network infrastructure and all the connected computers and mobile devices. Recently became a dealer for security products, so I’ve been having some fun installing and learning about IP cameras.

I have YouTube, Twitter and Facebook accounts, but don’t post much…you’d be more likely to find me in some tech forum. For example, I first saw the Discourse forum software used in the Tablo Community forum.

I’m a web developer, network administrator, audiophile, videophile, technology buff, electrician, carpenter, woodworker, plumber, painter, mechanic, cyclist and aspiring pianist…all of which might give the impression that I know everything, but in reality, the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.

-Mark

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Hi Mark! Welcome.

I think you’re going to fit in just fine here :slight_smile:

Ha! Thanks.