Power Usage of Sense Device Itself

Technical Questions
#1

Does anyone know what the usage (in watts) of the Sense device itself is? The installation instructions say less than 0.1 A, which at 240 V would be less than 24 W. I haven’t had any luck searching for the answer on the community forums or Google. I have my WiFi/cable modem on a UPS, so I suppose I could turn all the breakers off except for the Sense device and have Sense measure itself, but thought someone else in the community might already know and/or be able to point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

#2

It doesn’t register on my clamp meter, so one might assume that it is less than 0.01 amp, which would be less than 2.4 watts. Not sure if my meter rounds up when it’s more than .005 amp, but if it does, then one might assume the wattage to be less than 1.2. That’s all I’ve got at the moment, but I might go ahead and measure it directly, if no one else chimes in.

#3

Less than 5W, 0.1A is the spec.

#4

Also, just worth mentioning as it has come up a few times recently. The Sense itself is not a 240v powered device. Its 120v and the second wire is just used for sensing voltage for the various maths it has to do, but not actually powering the device.

#5

@ben that’s interesting but FWIW, I didn’t get any reading on any of the three wires, so probably safe to say that it is using considerably less than 5 watts. I hope so, because I’ve spent a lot of time chasing down 5 watt loads!

#6

This post from the Sense blog has the answer you are looking for. It says, “The monitor itself only uses about 4 watts, but the 240V breaker allows it to measure voltage on both phases or ‘legs’ of your homes power.”

The posts above had already answered the opening question quite well. It is nice to be part of such a community.

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