Sense New User Resources & Guides

[JuliaAtSense]

@JuliaAtSense If you’re a new community member, this is the place to get started. We’ve collected together useful information that will help you get the most from Sense. After checking into the New User thread, you can start to browse existing resources and Community threads that are among the most popular/useful with users. We have broken out the resources by category, and continue to add more as new resources and guides are available.

Getting started

• 10 Steps to Getting Started with Sense: If you haven’t familiarized yourself with the features in Sense, this is a great resource for a step-by-step breakdown of how you can get the most out of Sense including how to set your electricity rate and how to track progress and set goals.

• The Top 5 Most Powerful Sense Features: Sense is full of powerful features, but understanding these five can help you understand what’s going on inside your home.

• Sense Found a New Device: Device detection begins within days of installing your Sense monitor – but how do you go about naming the devices Sense finds?

• How Do I Know if Sense is Really Working?: Community moderator @kevin1 shares a deep analysis along with some common causes of discrepancies between Sense and your utility bill.

• Sense with Time of Use Plans: You can now use Sense with Time of Use billing plans, allowing greater billing accuracy and notifications as the cost of electricity is changing throughout the day.

Connected devices and integrations
Connected devices (400A split-service, generators, solar, and dedicated circuit monitoring) and integrations (smart plugs, Philips Hue, Alexa) can immediately improve the Sense experience for new users. Check the links below for more information.

• From Solar Insights to Solar Savings: Find out how Sense Solar can help you understand your solar efficiency and ultimately, your savings.

• How to use Sense with Philips Hue: Philips Hue smart bulbs can integrate directly with Sense, giving you more insight and control over your Hue bulbs directly from the Sense app. Learn more about the integration here.

• Using Sense with Smart Plugs: Our smart plug integration allows for instant detection for devices. I currently use several Kasa HS-300’s to monitor my entertainment center and office. With the smart plugs we integrate with, you can name the device plugged into each individual outlet and that information (and data) will be visible within Sense. Learn more about the types of Smart Plugs that Sense supports here. @kevin1 published a great response that highlights the different status of a smart plug in Sense here.
  Note: The number of smart plugs is limited primarily by Wi-Fi network bandwidth. Typical Sense users can use about 20 smart plugs without issue. Note that each plug of the TP-Link HS300 smart strip counts as 1 smart plug, regardless of status.

• Sense gets flexible with Flex Add-on Sensors: With Flex Add-on Sensors, you can choose from several different connected devices including Generators, 400A split-service monitoring, solar or dedicated circuit monitoring.

About the Company

• Sense Team Leadership & Investors: Built by the same team that brought speech recognition technology to market. Now, we’re making it possible for people to talk to their homes.

• The Story Behind Sense: Sense CEO Mike Phillips shares how the Sense home energy monitor came into existence.

Delving into How Sense works

• How the Sense Energy Monitor Works: How does the small, orange box in your electrical panel let you know what’s on inside your house? We take a look behind-the-scenes at how Sense really works.

• Solving Hardware Problems: We sat down with our Hardware team lead to discuss some of the many challenges involved in building hardware designed to live inside the home’s electric panel.

• Data Science at Work: Join data scientist Etienne as he traces example electrical signals to show how they’re identified as devices by Sense
  Community FAQs
  Have a question about Sense? Check here for threads that have discussed something similar before asking the Community!

• "Why can’t I train Sense?"
  We’ve thought very deeply about this (and even had a training mode in some prior app versions). It’s been researched and tested extensively our engineering and data science teams. If we felt it was doable, we’d do it.
  → Why can't you train Sense?
  → Why can't I tell Sense what's on?
  → Discussion: Why can't I train my Sense?

• "What types of devices does Sense have a hard time detecting?"
  We’re always working on improving device detection. With thousands of different electronics available in the market, there are a few types of devices that Sense may have trouble detecting in your home without dedicated circuit monitoring or available integrations, like Philips Hue and smart plugs.
  → What devices are likely for Sense to detect? Which are unlikely?
  → Why isn’t Sense recognizing my heat pump/AC?
  → Why can’t Sense detect DC motors?
  → Discussion: High Energy Items Undetected by Sense

Sense FAQs

• “I can’t find a mystery device”
  “What’s that Unnamed Device?” is a deep look at some of the potential mystery devices in a home that could be part of a larger appliance (like a motor and a heating element). If you’re still having trouble figuring out a mystery device, you can post detailed information to the Device Detection category so community members can help!

• “Can I merge two devices?”
  If Sense has detected multiple subcomponents of a larger appliance or device, you can merge devices simply in Sense.

• “Can Sense tell the difference between similar devices?”
  We take a deep look at how Sense identifies unique devices in this blog post where we look at the various factors that impact device detection.

Understanding your home
Have questions about what you’re seeing in the app? Curious about how you can lower that Always On bubble? These are some of the key resources to help you understand (and improve) your home energy efficiency.

• Dive Deeper into Your Always On Load: Have a big Always On bubble? This blog looks at ways you can dive deeper into your Always On bubble to isolate and reduce your vampire loads. Learn more about Always On power here.

• Sense Labs: If you haven’t already checked out Sense Labs, there are several early feature preview projects available for users including Power Quality, Motor Stalls, and AC Energy Comparison.

• How Does Sense Compare to Your Utility?: Wondering how Sense compares to your utility monitoring? Community moderator @kevin1 put together a great analysis showing how they compare.

Understanding your appliances
These deep-dives into appliances come from our blog and focus on specific appliances and their energy usage, with energy-efficiency comparisons and tips on reducing usage.

• Air conditioner: Celebrating the amazing air conditioner.

• Clothes dryer: Squeezing more savings from your clothes dryer.

• Electric vehicles: How sense recognizes the electric vehicle in your driveway.

• Refrigerators: How much energy does your refrigerator really use?

• Pool pumps: Diving into the deep end on pool savings.

• Water heater: How Americans got into hot water

• Water heater: Tune up your water heater for bigger savings

• Washing machine: How laundry day disappeared

Community resources
Categories or threads within the community that have helped users solve issues or track down their energy hogs.

• Community Device Library: Users have shared detailed views of specific appliances that have been detected via smart plug, dedicated load or through native device detection in a library of appliances available for community members to browse.

• Technical Questions: Have questions for the Sense community about something inside your home? This is the best place to ask!

• Sense Labs: Sense Labs is a space in the Community where you can share insights on our latest projects, ask questions to the community about your home and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them.

Advanced community resources
Not for the faint of heart, these are resources created by our extremely knowledgeable community members that have received a lot of positive feedback from existing community members. A big thank you to @cbpowell and @kevin1 for their time and effort on these. Be sure to thank them

Tariff Trade-off Analyzer using Sense Data

I’m gonna try to build an R-based calculator that reads in a few key things, including Sense export files and produces a bill-by-bill comparison for all active, residential tariffs from any given power company. Inputs The OpenEI US Utilities Rates Database U.S. Utility Rate Database Sense hourly export for one or more years A billing cycle table for one’s specific billing cycle A holiday table that lists holiday dates that correspond to weekend rate scheduled for one’s utility Other data th…

SenseLink - TP-Link Smart Plug Emulation

Hi everyone - I’ve written a Python tool/program that allows you to emulate (multiple) TP-Link HS110 plugs, and define power usage data to send to Sense via these emulated plugs. You can find it here: You can define two types of plugs: Static: These have a constant reported power Dynamic: These types report a power based on some other parameter, through integrations Edit: Some quick examples: You have an always-on porch light, that you know consumes 60W constantly, and just disappears in…

[Mark_Caruso]

How do I read the system to see what my bill should be.

[JustinAtSense]

Hi @Mark_Caruso.
You’re probably looking for information on the “Usage” feature, which you can learn more about here:

If you’re looking for other popular features, I recommend checking out the post above with a list of resources for new users, especially the one below.

@JustinAtSense

The Top 5 Most Powerful Sense Features : Sense is full of powerful features, but understanding these five can help you understand what’s going on inside your home.

[Lundwall_Paul]

I have had sense for a year now. My predicted monthly bill is $20, my real bill averages $140/mo. Good luck.

[JustinAtSense]

Hi @Lundwall_Paul - are you on a time of use plan with your utility? If your cost of electricity is static, your predicted monthly bill should be a lot closer to the actual.

[huiulili47751]

Can my Sense account recognize a power outage and send me a push notification? That would be a nice feature for those of us with storm water sump pumps

[ben]

Unfortunately no. If there is a power outage, the Sense also goes offline, so it can’t send any kind of notice.
That said, if it is offline for a certain amount of time, you will get an e-mail from Sense telling you your monitor has been offline. I can’t find the thread now with the exact time of how long your monitor has to be offline before the alert is sent, but I think it can be up to either an hour or two hours before the notice is sent because the alerts are based on set “check in” times vs time since last update.

Meaning, if the system checks in at the top of every hour and your device goes offline at 11:58 and Sense checks at 12;00, you’ll get an alert that your monitor is offline. But if you go offline at 11:01, and Sense doesn’t check again until 12, you’ll have been off for 59 minutes before the alert is sent.

[JustinAtSense]

@ben

can’t find the thread now with the exact time of how long your monitor has to be offline before the alert is sent, but I think it can be up to either an hour or two hours before the notice is sent because the alerts are based on set “check in” times vs time since last update.

We send out an email notification once a monitor has been offline for 30 minutes and I believe the monitor is checked once every hour.

[michael_rothenberg]

I’ve had sense for over a year now and I’ve had the “other” device detection on and it tacks exactly to the solar power generating. It’s not tethered to any device - I checked by turning off and on the fuse box. The “other” is by far the most energy usage-intensive in the house. It mirrors the energy generation to a tee. Could it be an install error? or something else?!

[kevin1]

“Other” is not a detected device. It is
A calculated value:
Other = Total Usage - detected devices - Always On

So it will track with Total Usage.

[ben]

If your other bubble is matching your solar production, then I would say that you have an install error.
Are you using Solar Monitoring as part of the Sense (a second set of CT’s plugged to the middle port on the sense). In any case of yes or no, I would reach out to support@sense.com and include a photo of your install if you can showing your CT locations etc… They should be able to straighten you out. Or you can post pictures here (start a new thread) and the community may be able to guide you a bit.

[michael_rothenberg]

That sounds right. The graph precisely mirrors the energy generation right to the exact minute, so I presume it must be some install error. I.e., one morning it was completely cloudy and the “other” indicator matched the limited production, and on other days it mimics to a tee. I’ll look into it and post some picts.

[joegar]

I am new to sense I just had it installed last week, What I can not understand is it is telling me my stove was on today 22 times and I never used the stove today? Can you tell me what is happening.

joe
joegar@tampabay.rr.com