I am not new here and I actually had Sense installed in my home in Williamsburg, Va when i lived in the US but i retired from the Coast Guard after 22 years of service and I moved to the Philippines last year. The weather is a lot hotter here and electricity cost is much higher here than it is in the US so last year I purchased another Sense monitor to use in my house here. When i first received the device I went to install it just like I did in the US but was unsuccessful and couldnt get it to work so i put it away until today. Until today I was using the Emporia meter and it worked but it wasnt like Sense and I didnt like the way the app functioned compared to Sense. The Emporia could have been so much better because it monitored each circuit with individual CT clamps but again the app was terrible and today I ran across a thread here that showed how to install Sense on a single phase 240V circuit just like what I have here in the Philippines. It took me less than 20 minutes to install the Sense meter and to get it up and running and I am so happy to be using this meter again. Right now I am waiting to see if the Signal check will finish and once that happens the device detection should start and I should be good to go. If the signal check completes then I see a lot of potential using a sense meter on a singal phase 240V circuit. One advantage I see is that you only need to use one CT clamp to monitor a circuit so if you use the optional CT clamps you can monitor two circuits instead of one and becuase you only need to use one CT clamp to monitor the mains then it might be possible to use the second unused CT clamp to monitor a circuit as well which would give you a total of three circuits that could have dedicated monitoring. Anyways that is enough for now and I am just happy to be back on the Sense forum which I couldnt use after I sold my house last year and left my original Sense monitor for the new owners.
@mike_gessner, great to hear from you again ! Good luck with Signal Check.
It’s great to be back on here and to be using Sense again. When i got out here to the Philippines and realized how expensive electricity is I ordered another Sense meter but when I tried to install it last year I ran into the issue that the power out here is single phase 240V BUT luckily I was still getting emails from Sense and yesterday there was a link to the community forum and I did a quick search and saw another user in Chile was able to install their Sense on a 220V single phase system so i quickly dug out my Sense meter from my storage area and was able to use his photos of his install and got mine up and running in less than 20 minutes. I would have been a faster install because this is the second Sense meter and install that I have done BUT i had to uninstall a different meter that I was using which doesnt even compair to the Sense meter in my opinion. The Sense App and GUI it runs is by far in my opinion one of the best and extremely well laid out user interfaces that i’ve come across which is why I am so excited to be using Sense again. When I lived in Williamsburg, Va I used Sense for about two years and was able to get my power bill down from a monthly average of $350 down to a $35 monthly average prior to me selling my house and retiring to the Philippines. When I got out here to the Philippines I knew I needed one again so i ordered it through Amazon but because of shipping and international taxes and other fees I paid almost $600 for my second Sense meter BUT becasue of the support that I got from the company previously and how much I love this product I decided to go ahead and order this second Sense meter and I am happy that I did even if it took me 10 months to get it up and running. I know that Sense is meant for North America and a two phase 120V system I can say that Sense works flawlessly on a 240V single phase system as long as you install it correctly. Honestly I would say that there is actually more potential on a single phase system because of the need for only one CT clamp for the Mains and and single CT clamp for dedicated circuits. I will post more about this in the product wishlist and hopefully/maybe Sense can use me as a bata tester for 240V single phase systems.
I moved to another area in the Philippines and Sense has been a HUGE help with some power issues that I am experiencing in this new house that I am renting. The voltage in the Philippines is 220Vac and is single phase and the Sense meter works perfectly here and gives me great detail into what the grid power is doing. The only drawback is that I cannot tell Sense that it is connected to a 220Vac single phase system which would be awesome and also so that Sense labs will show a scale for those who use this on a 220Vac install. I had the electric company out here to check my power because I filed a complaint about low votage because I am seeing an average voltage of 194Vac and a min sustained of 146Vac with a max sustained of 222Vac. The techs already did their own measurements and also got a reading of 180Vac while they were here and they are going to inform the engineer for this area so they can either add another transformer or see if the existing transformer is failing. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again, Sense is by far the most valuable tool that I have and I can’t immagine having a house without one.
@mike_gessner , good to hear from you as well. It think there is is some good news and some bad news for international users of Sense. The good news is that they are developing product for international markets, including 240V. The challenging part is that most of that development is on next generation Sense-enabled electric meters (AMI 2.0), not user-owned monitor boxes. So their marketing target and primary discussions are with utilities globally. You can get a hint of this from their outreach through their blog for Utilities
plus their LinkedIn newsletter.
I am not a fan of the utility side for monitoring because they already have an idea of how much each house uses. I am more a fan of the original Sense meter for those of us who want to know how much power we’re using and what exactly is using this power. I also like having my own meter that I can move with me which I am also using to compare how much power I am using in these different style houses to see which design is more efficient. I plan to build my own house here in a few years, so my wife and I are looking at different styles of building and different materials being used. We also have friends here who have built their own houses and I have gone through with my FLIR camera to show them what parts of their builds are good and what parts they might have issues with heat penetration and a few of them have already fixed some of the issues and have already seen improvements in their electric bills as well as their houses being more comfortable here where it is always hot. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t look at my Sense app on my phone to see what my house is doing and it’s still my favorite device that I own.
Hi Mike. Can I ask if this is still working okay for you? I live in PH also (Pampanga) and want to get a Sense for here too.
I have one for a rental house in the US (formerly the house I lived in there) and it’s great. I can tell when the cleaners forgot to turn off the air conditioner between tenants, for example, and send a friend over to check on it.
I’d feel a lot better if the 240V installation was not out of the specification range for the Sense. I’m guessing their designer(s) spec’d it for the US but designed it with international use in mind. Not that much harder to do. Being an electronic engineer and software engineer (retired) myself, that’s how I would have done it.
Thanks, Bill
It is still working great but because we have 220VAC here, Sense won’t be able to complete the signal checks and will need to be completed on the other end which Kevin was able to help me with. I don’t have solar and I wanted to use the solar CT clamps to monitor other devices so I made sure to have those installed in the beginning when I first got the system running so I didn’t have issues later. When installing the system you only use one mains CT clamp to measure the main power coming in and the second CT I tucked it in a corner away from any lines. We are also running single phase here in the Philippines so you will need to connect both of those (black and red) wires to the same 220V load on a breaker and the white to the neutral side of the breaker. I moved to Bacolod a few months ago and I was able to remove and reinstall the Sense meter with zero issues and we are moving back to the house we were in before because of issues here so when I do I will take some pictures of the way I have it installed and I will post it here for reference.
Thanks for the update and I look forward to your pictures.
Once I install in the Philippines, I will have two Sense monitors to monitor. I guess I will use a different email for each so they are on different accounts and I can switch to see whichever I want. Or is there an easier way?
I have a generator, which isn’t working right now, but if I get it fixed, I wonder if I could use the second current clamp to monitor it when the main power goes out.
You’ll need a different account / email for each Sense. Added Flex Sensors can be added for a generator, but search this forum for info on the constraints and limitations. The combo of non-standard grid use plus Flex Sensor might be stretching the fixed Sense configurations supported too far.