My new sense monitor detected the dryer accurately but when it turns on it shows a dryer bubble with about 750W and Other as 5,000W… When Dryer goes off both Dryer bubble and Other disappear. Will this correct over time?
Welcome to the forum, @treznik . I would wait several months because Sense may well correct this. If that doesn’t happen, then you should delete and will likely get a better detection.
Clothes dryers use about 5,500W so you would think that they should be easy for Sense to identify. The fact that Sense found yours in the first couple weeks as a new user lends support to this idea. Yet the fact that it found only part of it gives a hint that Sense’s job is not so easy. These appliances have several parts:
- Resistance elements to heat air
- A motor to turn the drum
- A fan to blow air
- Electronics to direct the above elements
The first item is resistance elements, plural, because there are two. One connects to L1 of your wiring and the other to L2. This is why your dryer has a special plug and a special breaker. Items 2 through 4 are single phase components that are wired to L1 only. Thus when your dryer is in operation, L1 sees a slightly higher current draw than L2 because of these other items.
Sense measures L1 and L2 separately, so it has to combine measurements to for total dryer usage. It can do this, because the image below shows what I see when my dryer runs. You will notice that the heating elements cycle on and off, as directed by a thermostat inside which keeps the temperature in the right range, while the motor provides a baseline load. The gap in the center is me opening the door to pull out dry items before putting damp ones back in for a little more time.
Some dryers have more complex signatures, as discussed in this article.
Sense accurately captures the usage of my dryer, but I had to try several times. That is, I’ve deleted definitions and Sense has re-detected. The first definition had just the heating elements and no baseline load for the drum motor & fan. I was satisfied with that since it captured most of the energy, but I replaced the appliance so had to start over in Sense. The second definition had only L1, but included the baseline load of the drum motor & fan. Then came a separate detection of L2. After a month, Sense notified me that it had combined those two into one device, which is what I have now.
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