I installed a few more TP-Link outlets yesterday on key items. One of which is a UPS that powers a bunch of network gear, alarm panel, and home automation equipment. It has a constant draw of ~50W.
My Always On has not yet dropped which I know can take 24 hours to recalculate so no concerns there. I then thought maybe the constant draw would be pulled out of the Other category. I went to look for a 50W drop around the time I installed the outlet, yet there seems to be no power meter for Other. I donât think Iâve ever looked for it before so I assume it has always been this way.
I donât think you are going to see the drop come out of Other, since Other is dependent on the Always On calculation. Other = Total Usage - all identified devices - Always On. Thatâs why you might see bubbles occasionally add up to more than Total Usage, and Other disappear (actually it goes negative) when Always On hasnât yet adjusted to a new lower level. Not sure a power meter for Other would be helpful since it is a derived number.
BTW - The best place to see the Always On drop after adding smartplugs is via the hourly or daily data export, once you get a few more days of smartplug use under your belt.
I suppose I was just trying to find a way to validate Iâm not double-counting the wattage, and a visual shift from Always On (or Other) to the new device is what I was trying to find. Iâll check later tonight if Always On has dropped.
Heh⊠my always on has gone up 100W even though I cannot account for why. Now I see Always On also has no power meter. Itâd be nice to see historical representations of it without going through the data export process.
I can understand your motivation for an Always On history at a resolution finer than exported (hourly), but I can also understand why Sense left out a Power Meter like display of Always On.
@h3steinhauer, the concept of a Power Meter implies instantaneous data history, but Always On (and by fiat Other) are partially based on power reading low points that could have happened just then, 10 minutes earlier and even a day earlier. So you couldnât use a Power Meter-like display of Always On (or Other), to look for direct time correlations like you can with all the devices with real Power Meters.
If Sense added a Power Meter-like display for those two, it would probably need to come in a different color with a different name, and proper caveats, to avoid confusion, because the displayed data wouldnât behave like normal Power Meter data.
This isnât my desire, or at least I didnât mean to suggest it was.
I agree a very fine resolution for Always On wouldnât provide much added value. I want to be able to see trends across the periods it is recalculated without having to go into super user mode of exporting/analyzing data.
In this case, did Always On generally go down ~50W in the days after adding this particular smart plug that is connected to a bunch of devices Sense will never learn? I think the business case I would be presenting this as would be; âHow do we provide the end user evidence their act of spending money and adding the smart plug to these non-learnable devices resulted in a positive outcome for Sense?â
Always On being refactored on a periodic basis is fine. Iâd expect a Power Meter for it to essentially look like a bar chart over time where each ~24 hour segment is higher/lower/equal than the segment before or after it.
The Usage area for Always On isnât directly helpful as it is based on cumulative usage rather than the extrapolated wattage. Other devices have the âStatsâ area which is closer as it shows average wattage, but it doesnât show this value over time.
The only reason I want to see a power meter chart is to see if I can look through that graph and make sense of what may have turned on or off during a time period.
Now I understand that the âOtherâ is really just the left over after the known devices / workloads - thus - trying to get a finer view is not possible.
Ahhh. I understand. I originally used the Always On device summary (Usage area) to try to understand Always On movements with smartplugs until I ran into three shortcomings:
There wasnât always enough relief to see whether a bar was higher, lower of equal to the previous one
The data in the mouseover box is daily kWh, rather than power in watts. I, like you, am used to thinking about devices in terms of power (W), instead of daily energy (kWh).
1 month limit - Once we entered Dec., I couldnât see the data all togetherâŠ
We have power meters for detected devices.
Whatâs Iâd like to see is a power meter for âotherâ that we can also use like a timeline view and see wattage consumption at any given time.
âOtherâ has the usage box that shows use down to the hour so this information is already being tracked.
In that case, Personally I wouldnât mind the ability to turn off the âalways onâ feature. it is pretty meaningless given its method of calculation.
Well I mean, the âOtherâ calculation is much more useful for figuring out whatâs on and so forth. I feel like Always On should be available, but I donât think it should be part of the calculations of Other and so forth.
If my Router is Always on and consuming x watt-hours, it should still be in the Other category until it is identified.
And maybe, for those of us who donât have smart plugs, but we have a device like Kill-A-Watt, we could punch in the numbers for Always On devices with constant usage if we really wanted to remove them from the Other category.
Iâm surprised this suggestion never gained more traction. Iâd also like to be able to see the power meter minus some or all of the âknownâ devices. This would be helpful for looking at the unknown devices without the noise from those that have already been learned. The learned devices tend to be those with the largest power demands and/or very characterizable on/off behavior, which as a result makes them relatively ânoisyâ on the power meter plot.
As an example, assume I want to use the power meter to reduce unexpected/irregular power usage or to lower power usage in general. When looking at the combined power meter plot itâs dominated by the cycling of the A/C compressor and clothes dryer usage - not much to be done about these unless we want to be uncomfortable or have wet clothes. It would be nice if we could subtract out these necessity devices from the total power curve to make spotting other potentially non-essential devices that draw more power than expected or are unknowingly turning on when not in use.
I first had this desire after seeing a few odd voltage dips and spikes (~ ±60-80 W) over a 1-2 hr period of laying in bed watching TV. Given that I hadnât turned anything on/off (or even moved for that matter), I got curious as to what these could be. I tried looking for a pattern of this behavior over a larger time scale but quickly realized that identifying such patterns wasnât going to be possible while overlayed with larger devices like my A/C.
A nice way to implement this may be to add a âFilterâ button to the power meter that would allow the user to select which devices are being shown in the power curve. Taking this approach would also incorporate the benefits mentioned in the previous suggestion below, which would also be helpful in solving the problem I encountered with trying to ID the individual source of the behavior I was seeing. For example, we could then uncheck all known devices other than âRefrigeratorâ and see if the pattern of behavior from an unknown source correlates with the refrigerator running. If it did, we may be able to conclude that the unknown source is a defrost cycle, evaporator fan, etc.
