I noticed flickering lights occasionally but I have had that off and on for years. I will certainly pay more attention to this in the future. It seemed to be getting worse and increased in frequency earlier this week.
I looked in Sense and found a few occasions in January and nothing until Feb 2 where there were 18 and Feb 3 was 104. I had FirstEnergy out and the found no issues but replaced the 60 year old line to the street. That did not help. The issue turned out to be a water leak in the breaker panel from I don’t know how long ago. It corroded the bus bar where the main breaker connected and you could hear arcing. Had the panel replaced yesterday afternoon and the flickering light issue is resolved. Waiting for the Voltage graph to catch up as it is currently only showing to noon yesterday before the panel was replaced.
I would like to request as others have adding an alert for this type of situation as well as more realtime graphs like the wattage graphs.
Glad to have the problem solved and to have the data to identify how frequently it was happening.
Pulled the CSV data and summarized.
Did FirstEnergy place a Power Quality meter at your meter? I worked for a Power Company and when customers complain about Power Quality, they would place this recording meter and then review the data. I installed many of these devices on Customers services.
It looks like you may have bad power coming from the Lines or substation. Insist on them to install a meter.
Another route you may go if FirstEnergy gives you a run around, is to go to your Public Service Commission, and file a Compliant. Mention that your electronic devices (high cost items TV, Microwave, DVR, …) are erratically resetting.
No they did not. They mentioned possibly putting one on if the problem continued. When the issue did not go away I investigated further and found the issue with the main circuit breaker. Things seem fine now and when my earlier post and this one gets approved you will be able to see the new graph. My guess with the small power drops I am having now are a device causing an issue but not sure. I am not seeing device data right now to further troubleshoot.
I am running clean now but I am having an issue with device data in Sense since the panel was replaced. Most devices are not showing coming on on the Now screen and if you look at the device detail page (see below for example) the tracking stops at the time the power was shutoff to replace the panel and has not resumed.
From what i can tell the Meter graph is fine.
Is it possible that there has been an underlying problem and devices on the phase that was having issues are now longer able to be identified without the “noise”? I am going to check some working and non working devices to see which phase they were connected to on the old panel.
if your whole panel got replaced, good bet that things are going to look different to Sense now.
Some things that will make a difference.
did your CT’s go back to the same position they were before the replacement.
even if the CT’s went back on the same leg (left or right), did the 2 legs from the power company go back to the same side of the panel.
Did breakers move positions in the new panel, or even if they didn’t, does the panel use the same leg layout as the old
Sense relies on lots of different aspects to detect devices. If your fridge used to be on L1 and is now on L2, Sense is going to have to re learn it, or realize its the same device, but its moved. Or in your case, less corrosion meaning less resistance which could change the way devices look to Sense.
Depending on how much changed in the panel may vary if Sense does indeed realize devices are the same, or if it will find “new” versions of your old device, and then you can merge them with the old so keep all the data in the same place.
it may be worth reaching out to support to ask them to take a look and see if they make any recommendations. I know in some cases, with a whole panel change, they have recommended resetting data.
Thanks Ben. I have been reading a lot of posts and ran across one about a panel replacement and mentioned almost exactly what you said. I highly doubt things are even close to the same between the panels. Old panel had a number of double breakers in one panel slot and now those are separated. I will send a note to support and wait until it starts finding devices.
