New Members/Old Members: Introduce yourself!

Welcome Alfonso,
And Thank You for being a pioneer and bringing Sense to an entirely new market.
I’m glad to hear your first month is going well and hope you continue to enjoy and appreciate Sense as much as the rest of us.
BTW, I think the wives harbor a little jealousy.

Lots of new folks! Welcome @gregg.holscher, @rieraraul, @jwpiersol, and @aleont. :partying_face:

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Hello. I just installed Sense on Saturday. I’ve been looking into it for some time and finally bought it during the last special that ran. Besides Sense, I have 3 echo dots that are used mainly to control lights in my living room, dining room, and kitchen. I also have an EcoBee smart thermostat.

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Hey new member here. Sense has been online for a few hours, I’ve probably turned on and off everything in my house to watch the watts fluctuate :grin:.

Recently bought a new house with a pool electric bill is a little high $250-300. I want to learn where I can make improvements, and I’ve always wanted a Sense, so my wife finally let me get one.

Have a Google home & mini, no smart devices yet, we both work from home so it’s not that important. Want to bring the energy use down so I can put less solar panels on the roof. Average none summer heat day has been 68kws a day in Sunny FL.

Really excited to start using this.

Thanks

Ryan

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Hello! My name is Paul. I’m a retired father of 5 boys. I’ve been using Sense for about a year and a half.

I am purposing Sense mainly to track solar energy and detect production issues. My home was generally very energy efficient prior to Sense. With everthing cycled on in my home at around 13,000w a power factor correction was only able to achieve a 25w reduction.

Most my Sense home data is from smart plug integration because efficient devices are difficult to identify and I didn’t want to wait any longer for detection to occur.

I have an obsession with light bulbs.

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Welcome @OrangeIsMyFavorite, another Florida Sense user here. I’ve had Sense for a little over 8 months now. With the help of Sense, I changed my 1.5 HP single speed pool pump to a variable speed pump. Went from 1,600 watts to 190 watts running for 8 hours a day. Haven’t had the new pump long enough to see a full power bill yet but have high hopes.

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Welcome everybody! The early days with Sense are endlessly fascinating. I wish iOS had the screen time functionality available when I installed mine. I definitely spent an excessive amount of hours in the app over the first few weeks. But even still, I’m checking multiple times a day. Just wait until you start playing around with Data Export…:grinning:

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Hi, My name is John, I retired from an Electric Utility in Ohio, and I retired as A Field Engineer for GE in Las Vegas. I stumbled on to SENSE while watching some U-Tube videos and Knew I had to have one. I’ve had Sense almost a month now and am still trying to work out some bumps in the road. My wife also thinks I’m a little wacky turning things off and on or staring at my iPad waiting for something to happen. I love collecting data and seeing where the power is going. I also like collecting Frog things.!

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I am Mark. I had a 34 panel solar panel array installed in April 2019. Went live 4/26/19. Sense was installed by my contractor 5/5/19. I still work too much too be as attentive as others and I am slow at learning programming. My location is Georgetown, TX. Since permission to operate (PTO), 4/26/19 or week +, I am about 180 Kw Hrs banked with my electric supplier. My challenge right now is I have two refrigerators. Both are different make, model, and size. Sense has identified one, but may be combining them as visual signature is very similar. I am a Instrument rated Private Pilot for fun, rest and relaxation, and a little business. My airplane and I live on a residential air park. My education and soon to be retired work is as a Professional Mechanical Engineer.

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Well, you’ve piqued my curiosity… Like, frog-related collectibles?

And welcome @stefanovm! I think you’re, at least, our second pilot on here. @oshawapilot immediately comes to mind, but there may be others.

Sense really draws in a fun variety of folks.

Hi, I’m Terri from Charlottesville, VA. My Sense monitor was included with my solar installation. I’ve had the panels since late August last year, and the monitor was installed (correctly) and connected around April 21. It found 4 devices pretty quickly – coffee maker (of course!) fridge, water heater, and a space heater. But nothing since, and I’m wondering how long it will take.
I don’t have anything particularly smart or high-tech in my house. The solar company replaced almost all the light bulbs with LEDs, and I’m assuming Sense doesn’t look for things with that small of a draw. We don’t use the toaster or dishwasher every day, but we’ve been doing laundry for a couple of days and there’s been no reaction from Sense. I do wish it would ask me what just happened, or let me tell it when I turn something on or off.
I’ve never felt less like the “smartest person in the room” since I started reading these posts. I guess I have a lot more to learn!

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Welcome, Terri! Sense does need to see a lot of data to detect devices, so it doesn’t sound too abnormal that you haven’t seen anything since the end of last month.

Sense does look for devices with small draws and can detect down to a .5W difference. However, LEDs are very tough to track, as they don’t usually show a pattern in their device signature.

Hey, I felt the same when I started working here! But this Community is a wonderful, endlessly helpful group of people. You’ll learn that — and more about Sense! — fast. :+1:

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For my refrigerator and TV groups I added a few TP-Link HS110 (not HS100) Smart Plugs for some 120v loads. Sense will pair and instantly recognize whatever is plugged in. Walmart has best price at about $16. (Only the HS110works). It’s a quick way to get lots of devices.

Sorry @jwpiersol, think you may have had a typo in the last reply. It’s the HS110 and not the HS100 he would need to use. But you are correct that they are $16 at Walmart.
It’s the HS110 that has monitoring.
Just didn’t want to see someone waste time and money.

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Absolutely correct. Thank you. I edited to show as Hs110. I did make that mistake the first time I ordered them because the look almost identical- so the “100” is still stuck in my head.

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OK, well I was here once but had to return my Sense as it wasn’t compatible with my breaker panel. That caused my account to vanish mysteriously. After more than a year I finally broke down and bought a used unit (not very cheap, $220). I tested that it worked by hooking it to my hot tub’s subpanel. After it finally identified my tub I figured it was time to try again with the busbar panel.

One advantage of actually owning the equipment and not still having the opportunity to return it, is you can force it to fit. I broke the panel’s plastic shield that separates the hots from the neutral and scraped the CTs hard getting them around the busbars, and bent the WiFi antenna cable badly stuffing everything into the panel. But I actually managed to do it and am enjoying the 24hr Signal Check period. Is there a way I could have hooked the CTs up backward?

-Randy

The CT’s go on either of the hot legs. If you put one on neutral then that would t work properly.
I don’t quite understand the modifications you made as the Sense will work in any panel configuration I’ve seen. Maybe not getting to measure the full use due to having 400 amp or more service but I haven’t seen a 200amp box sense wouldn’t work in.

Well then, let me introduce you to the Square D Series M01:

If you notice those plastic separators, I had to remove them, but the only tools I had were metal, so that was pretty dangerous. The cubes of metal with the giant screw going thru is too close to the top of the box to fit the CT so I had to force it, with plastic scrapings falling off.

-Randy

Rather impressed with how cocky that comment was. “Never seen a box that won’t work”?

I have been complaining to Sense about this for years. Trying to get them to acknowledge the issue. My original attempted install was in 2017. My strategy, if this failed, was to buy the new thin CTs from Neurio and see if that worked.

-Randy

Wasn’t meant as cocky, just fact.

I can’t help but wonder if it could have been installed in the meter side or even upstream of the meter on actual wires. It appears the flat bars that extend to the bottom of the meter itself would have room but would have had to have the electric company come out.
They don’t sell anything like that where I live.