I purchased my Sense meter and installed it last month and the only issue that I had was Sense wont complete the signal checks because the grid voltage here is 220V so it cant complete the signal check. When I first installed it last month I waited the 48 hours and put in a trouble ticket and they pushed the signal check through for me and my meter was working great. I ordered the add on CT clamps for DCM and was having issues and set them up as solar and had to factory reset my sense meter and its stuck in signal check again and this time they keep telling me I am outside the US and Canada and they cannot help me and wont push the signal check for me. I used this when I was still in the United States and loved the Sense meter so much I was helping bata test features three years ago and helped by uploading data using my smart meters and now Sense refuses to help me because I am not in the US or Canada.
I retired a year ago and sold my house in Virginia and I even left my original Sense meter installed in the hopes that the new owners would get as much use out of it as i did and hopefully use it and since then I moved to the Philippines where I am living with my wife and daughter. Last year when I got here I ordered another Sense meter through Amazon because I saw they ship them here to the Philippines and with my experience with Sense I was excited to get it. Unfortunatly when it first arrived I tried to install it but the panel here is different so I wasnt able to get it to work. Without being able to install the Sense meter I couldnt recreate my account here in the forum because you need to have a meter setup to have an account here and I was having troubles figuring out how to find the forum again. I was still receiving the emails from Sense and about a month ago I saw something in the email that brought me to the forum and sure enough I found the solution to my install issues and I was able to quickly get my Sense meter installed and running. If you look back through my posts all the way back to 2019 you can see I was pretty active on this forum and I even spent a bunch of money on Wemo and TP-Link smart plugs and used those to help capture date for Sense to try and help make this product that much better so this is why I feel so let down by Sense now. It feels like my best friend betrayed me and let me down because I was so excited last month when I was finally able to use this device again but now I just feel let down.
I reached out to Sense and got some help and now my Sense monitor is working perfectly and reading my power and usage accurately.
Thanks for the update. From what I can tell Sense is beginning to look at international expansion, though probably not via the DTC (direct to consumer) route that you and I took in buying our monitors. On a few of my international trips over the past couple years, I noticed the international version of the Sense website diverge from the US / North American website in terms of content. There might even be additional localization based on some countries by now. I’m betting the website you see there in the Philippines highlights Sense benefits for utilities and utility customers ?
Yeah when I go to the Sense website it first brings me to the US site and after a second or two it switches to the International site. The International site talks about the Sense monitor itself as well as talking about Sense enabled smart meters and smart consumer panels from Schneider which I signed up for more info over a month ago but havent gotten anything yet. I also get prompted to sign up for the Sense newsletter every time I login here to the forum. As of now I am renting a house from one of my friends that lives in California and only visits here once a year for a month for vacation. Eventually my plan is to build a house here with solar because electricity cost here in some areas can be as high 36cents kWh and mine is at 27cents per kWh but a few months ago it was at 31 cents kWh when it was cooler and energy usage was down. One of the weird things that they don’t usually do here is put insulation in their attics and the house that I am renting has a metal roof and this causes the house to get very hot during sunny days which are quite often being that this is a tropical island. Even though this isnt my house I will be living in this house for at least two more years, if not more and I want to be comfortable so I plan to add some insulation to the attic but nothing fancy. I also have a FLIR meter and took some reading of the ceilings in this house the other day and in my living room and kitchen I was reading temperatures at 115F and that was at 11am and wasn’t the hottest part of the day yet. I did the same things for my own house when I was still living in Virginia and I was able to track the temperatures and power usage before and after making any changes in my house like changing insulation and adding a radiant barrier in my attic which showed me how much of an affect it had. A few years ago I was able to do all the work myself so i knew what was done and how well it was done but since then I was injured and retired from the Coast Guard so now I’ll have to have someone else do the work for me and hopefully its half as decent as what I would do.
Glad to hear Sense in house support got it going for you.
This is the US version of Schneiders “smart panel” that comes with a basic green Sense and standard CT’s.
Just wanted to give another update. My Sense meter has been up and running on my 220V single phase panel for two weeks now with the flex add-on cables connected to two of my split type air conditioners as well as having 1 TP-link plug and my Philips Hue bulbs all reporting to Sense with zero issues. I am only renting this house here but talking to the owners who are also friends of mine, they agreed to let me install insulation into the attic on this side of the duplex and my goal is to show them the savings that the insulation will provide. I know it must sound weird but it turns out that its rare for people to put insulation in their attics here in the Philippines and with the hot climate here it makes it unbarable for me to go in parts of the house during the day because of the radiating heat from the ceilings. I used my FLIR camera the other week and I was seeing temperatures on the ceiling in my kitchen hitting 120F so it makes it hard for the air conditioners to keep up and cost of electricity is 4x here in the philippines. My wife on the other hand is from here and the heat in the house doesnt seem to bother here at all and she thinks that cooling a house is a waste of money. anyways that is my update for now.