Hello community. I just installed my Sense Solar two days ago. I was having pretty good success with it. It would show everything. Turn on a light - 20w shows up. Mircowave? Theres 1200w. But I noticed that it wasn’t showing me power usage from my pool equipment. Upon investigation, I found that my Sense clamps were installed under my pool equipment breakers. Ah Ha! A little digging on the Sense website and I found that I could just move the clamps to the busbar above the breakers. I did it, reset my Sense monitor and everything reconnected just fine - with one problem. My usage now shows 0w in my power meter. But usage shows up in the usage bar graph - weird huh? To make things even more strange, when I popped last nights spaghetti into the microwave for lunch, I saw my power meter go up by 1200w. hmmm…I then took out my spaghetti, put a bowl of water in there, and set it for 5 minutes. As it was on, I walked around the house and turned on and off different things. They were showing up! But here’s a strange twist…I happened to have my shopvac out on the pool deck. What would you expect to happen? Well it didn’t, my usage actually went down 800w. What in the…
Can someone please explain to me what is going on? Should I move the clamps back to where they were and not monitor my pool equipment? Should I move the clamps above the 200A breaker?
I guess it’s worth mentioning that my pool and solar system are set up outside in sub panels. How should I be setting this up so that I can see my pool equipment. Also, the Sense app registers about 25% lower solar generation than my Enphase IQ micro inverters do…but id rather get this power usage stuff figured out before trying to tackle that issue. Thank you very much for your insight.
Start by looking at Settings > Sense Monitor > Signals and check each leg wattage on the Mains. You probably have a CT flipped. If a leg shows negative watts, flip a CT around.
They are the same. But I received an email from support saying that they corrected polarity and now I have power usage that is more than double usual use and still have wattage decreasing as appliances turn on and in crease as they turn off.
Definitely something going on with this clamp positioning. Usage trend is following solar generation trend. Still getting decreases in wattage when things turn on and increases when they turn off.
Sense really measures your Net Usage using the main CTs, then adds the Solar Production from the solar CTs back on to produce the Total Usage power meter waveform. So problems with your solar CTs could leak back into your Total Usage readings. Can’t see the positioning of your solar CTs
If you have devices on in your house and the power meter is reading zero, then a few things could be going wrong. You might have a second parallel sub panel to the one you have the CTs on. My CTs are in the meter box on the other side, on the incoming pre-meter busses since I have a second sub panel. Or maybe issues with your solar CTs might be giving too small a reading on one of the two feeders to the mains.
Definitely contact support.
Been going back and forth with support. I think I’m making it harder by moving stuff. I wish they would just call me instead of this email convo that takes ages. I’m beginning to think that I can’t monitor my pool equipment with this setup
Check and see if one of the CT’s is turned the wrong direction
Sounds like you have that’s canceled the other out
I would also take the clamp on the right and move it above the 200 amp breaker. I personally like some separation between the clamps. And also make sure they are completely closed. Son people have resorted to using zip ties to help keep them shut tightly.
The clamps are the correct direction. I tried putting the right clamp above the 200A main. It was successful in detecting my pool equipment, but I got the crazy wattages where something turns on and lowers use while something turning off raises use. Very bazaar
The two lines at the very top of the box come from the meter. CTs should be there or on the bus bar below the main breaker. The solar CTs should go to the two line side taps at the bottom. My boxes are very similar to your setup.
Thanks Ken, that is what I was thinking as well (in regards to the lines at the top of the meter). However, I’m not sure I follow you on where to place my solar. The lines on the bottom where my Sense clamps currently are go into my garage to my main circuit breaker. Box #1 in the picture below is my sub panel that houses all of my Enphase IQ micro inverter breakers. It is also where my Sense monitor is physically placed (you can see the antenna at the bottom). The solar clamps are wrapped around the lines coming in from the roof (which are going up from the box). The solar production seems to be working just fine in the Sense app. It’s about 20kW off from daily production, but I will figure out that reason later (Enphase says I produced 96kWh yesterday as opposed to 71kWh in the Sense app). I’m not sure that placing the solar clamps on the lines feeding my house breaker panel (again inside my garage) would improve my solar production numbers in the app. Are you seeing anything different?
In box 2 there are two taps that the solar connects to your house power. It’s the two red circles I marked below. The two blocks that connect two small wires to the largest service wires. The two small wires should be your solar. Put the solar CTs around those two and see what happens.
Box #1 has two lines going out of it that go to box 2 and connect to your house service, the two red circles shown below. You might get better numbers if you put the Sense solar CTs over the two wires either in box #1 or in box #2 instead of all the lines coming from the roof.
Okay. I will try that and see what happens. The clamps on the busbar didn’t work correctly (giving me opposite effects from devices). I’ll set it up how you recommended and try. Problem I have is the left wire coming from the meter has too small of a gap to get the clamp around. I’ll try and report back. Thanks!
It’s not working with the new setup. The usage follows my solar production curve and when things are turned on wattage goes down and it goes up when they are turned off. I also cannot get the clamp around the left wire. The solar production is now almost twice as much as my reported production from Enphase. The detected A/C is now running as “Other” in this new configuration. I’m really not sure what to do now. I think setting it up on the busbars and keeping the solar ones on the cables like you recommended with a factory reset is worth a try. Waiting for support to help
I can see in the second image that you have the CTs opposing one another … “sun” should face the same way relative to current direction … unless the polarity is auto-mod’ing.
