I’m Nikkolai and I’m new to Sense!
Just had it installed a month now and still figuring things out.
Happy to join the community to learn from you all and share my experiences with smart home devices.
I work in logistics and transportation in the Caribbean
Irie!
Hi, my name is Ken and we installed Sense in October of 2019. While I love the idea/concept of the device, it’s certainly taken a lot of patience to extract useful data.
Recently we started using smart plugs and discovered our TV was terribly inefficient in standby. So I configured IFTTT to turn off the switch when the TV disconnected from the network, saving us about $40/year! Now I’m looking for other devices to do the same and continuing to learn more about Sense.
I work in the insurance industry as a software developer. While we face many of the same challenges as other industries, the wide spread of data inputs, rule variations, and complex formulas, make for interesting problems to solve.
As for bbq, well I like to grill unique things like pizza and lobster, but I love a good pulled pork or brisket 
How do I create a topic?? The system does not seem to want to let me do so… ?
Welcome Ken!
I have a similarly shocking experience when i added an energy monitoring plug to my TV stand equipment.
Now i run a routine in Alexa to turn off the plug outside of watching hours.
Irie!
Hi @petzany - there’s a 24 hour hold on new users permissions to post a new thread while they learn about the breakdown of the community forums. I’ve adjusted your permissions and you should be good to go!
Hi @DigitalKen - welcome to the Community! Your story about your TV savings sounds perfect for sensesaves.sense.com!
Hi my name’s Jim - I’m a film editor/producer and own a post production company in LA. At home we do our best to steer towards carbon neutral - 6kw of solar panels, EV, use green power supplied by Edison, eat vegan/vegetarian about half the week (we call it ‘reducitarians’), composting at home (but buy way too much crap on Amazon…). Installed Sense for Solar about a month ago and just haven’t gotten it working right - it shows usage either tracking solar generation exactly or solar pushes usage below zero - it alternates back and forth. Been emailing with support for a while and hopefully will fix it? But I love the data. And while BBQ is nice I lean towards pizza these days… got an Ooni and love it.
Hi, my name is Dave. I am an engineering director at an automotive supplier making systems for EVs. I wanted to gain some 1st hand experience and bought an EV for personal use. Trying to understand the impact of charging on my older home brought me to Sense, most interest in the Sense Labs projects. We seem to have some kind of EV charger interaction happening at night. I can’t get it to reproduce during the day, and staying up all night to watch a battery charge → well, you can guess it was an easy decision to get a data logger. 24 hours in and one EV charge later, still no problems detected. Looking forward to support from this great community if/when something is detected.
Bought my Sense in July 2016… finally installed it this Monday. Happy to say install went flawlessly and it seems to be working. Have a few hue bulbs, Echo/Dots, and that’s about it. Right now looking at dishwasher hacking.
Curious how long it takes before big devices show up. Have 3 refrigerator/freezer combos, dishwasher, washer/dryer, and deep freeze - after 3 days only 1 motor detected.
Cheers
@squashy
Welcome ! There’s a question of time and also whether the devices to be discovered fit Sense’s current sent of detection paradigms. More on that here:
Just got my Sense installed, but not sure if I have the partial generator setup right. Came here to get some assistance with setup.
Try searching the forum with the keyword generator to become familiar with the different setups and constraints. Plenty has already been written. One example.
Hello to all in the forum, my name is Chris and I live in Kingwood which is a bit to the northeast of Houston, Texas. I had been seeing lots of pop up ads in my FaceBook and Instagram feeds and was intrigued with the idea of Sense. Then last month I bought a portable generator to use to power my home when the lights go off which does happen quite a bit in this area due to freezes in the winter and tropical storms and hurricanes in the summer. But I couldn’t see shelling out as much as they want for the whole house generators, the one I got puts out about 7500 watts, 9800 peak. I installed a 50 amp circuit and receptacle for back feeding the power into my electric panel and figured that having Sense made good sense since I would like to have an idea of which circuits and devices I can turn on when using the generator.
I have done basic electrical work before, running circuits, installing switches and outlets or new breakers so I felt ok with doing the work. I have a 200 amp service and had enough room for the generator breaker which acts more like a switch and also a space for the Sense breaker. Only problem is that the way my panel was wired it was a very tight fit to get Sense into the box (ours is outside on the back of the house so Sense had to be inside the breaker box) but I was able to move some wires so Sense could be installed.
It came right on and I checked it using the app on my phone and I also like that I can see Sense on my computer. It’s only been 5 days but it discovered my dryer right away (never realized how much an electric dryer pulls). It will be interesting to see what else the AI discovers. We have 3 fridges, an electric oven and also a high efficiency central AC unit; it has a multi speed compressor so it will be interesting to see what Sense thinks it is as it draws very little power for an AC.
So I am here to learn from others and also to share when I discover or learn something on my unit.
Have a nice day!
Hello. Just about finished remodeling a house - installed a lot of smart home devices, including a Sense. I also have solar panels. I like the data that the Sense provides, but have some issues after enabling the solar monitoring. Specifically, the power on the Mains frequently goes negative, and when I turn on a device (my oven, for example), the power on the Mains goes down. Prior to the Solar enabling, everything seemed to work as expected.
I look forward to getting some more insight into my energy consumption and what I can do to lower my carbon footprint.
Mark
Welcome @maander6, you probably need someone from support@sense.com to look at your monitor settings. Sometimes solar setup go as expected and you end up seeing negative power usage, etc. That should never happen - Total Usage is always non-negative.
Hello! I am new to Sense. I started using it because I have a split service with two meters (different rates). One is for our new Geothermal system and the other powers the rest of the house. I am excited to be able to monitor both of these with Sense.
Hello!
I am the proud new owner of a Sense, freshly installed yesterday evening. It is still calibrating, but I’m already having a lot of fun with the live meter. I feel like a kid who just got a shiny new toy!
I live in the province of Quebec (Canada), where our electricity comes from hydro and is relatively cheap compared to many other locations. But I was still curious to get a better grasp of where my energy is being spent and identify saving opportunities. I believe that knowledge is power, and am hopeful that Sense will show me the data I need to build that knowledge.
I am very eager to see how device detection will perform in my house, but my expectations are realistic after reading many reviews and community posts. If I can get a good idea of how much my hot water and warm/cold air costs me, I’ll be happy.
Welcome to the Sense community!
Hi Everyone. I’m Denis from San Diego. Just bought my first house and want to make it energy efficient. Hope Sense can help me with this
