Hi. I’ve been using Sense for years at my house in Tucson. I just added solar to my roof and it’s been on for about a week. The solar was put in after my last visit. I do have the solar CTs but they are not installed. They are locked in a closet in the house and I am away from home until maybe November or worst case July next year.
As you might guess, when my panels are producing, the excess goes out backwards through the main CTs and so I get negative total current and power being drawn. On both the web and phone apps I can see negative power at the cursor. The web app also shows a circle where the graph would be. But it seems that the graph doesn’t want to show negative values on either the web or the phone app. Is there a way to enable this? I’m looking for a temporary fix so I can see at least something while waiting for my chance to get back to Tucson and install the solar CTs.
Here’s what I’m seeing on the web app. The tall spikes are my AC and the short spikes are my fridge but during the day I can’t see them when the solar produces enough to run them.
@sense9150 , nope. No magic switch in the app to show negative energy in the Power Meter or the Detailed Dashboard graphs. But the data is there, so I think you can export an hourly aggregation of it from the Export in the Detailed Dashboard of the web app.
I’m thinking now too that this is going to make it be unable to recognize existing devices and maybe also identify new devices, right? Probably when I get the solar CT clamps installed, I’ll have to delete all the detected devices and let it start over???
If only the app could show absolute value on the chart and maybe show negative values in another color. That would solve issues about how to scale the chart and where to put the origin.
@sense9150 We recently launched a beta for Sense monitors on homes with solar that isn’t being monitored via CT. It probably won’t give you perfect tracking, but our intention is to detect your solar, and in so doing, correct the mains wattage and begin detecting devices with approximately correct wattages as well. Happy to have you join if you’re interested - sign up form is here!
It would be a firmware update - our team can add your monitor to the beta firmware version and remove you at a later date if you prefer to not have beta firmware once you’re able to install the CTs. If you’re happy with the solar detection, you could also use those same CTs instead to track another circuit via Dedicated Circuit Monitoring. No problem if it’s not something you’re comfortable with, just thought I’d mention it as an option since the timing is perfect (for us at least!)
My travel schedule is really up in the air now. Once it settles down, if I find it makes sense to join the beta then I’ll fill out the form and comment here. Thanks for the opportunity!
@sense9150 , my take is that it can’t hurt. The beta is for exactly what you want your Sense to do right now, and you’re not likely to see new detections until solar or solar estimation gets brought into the data. And you won’t have to do anything to update the firmware - Sense does it remotely and complications on restart after update are quite rare AFAIK.
I agree with Kevin—his approach could definitely help you get better reporting data while you’re away, and it’s a solid answer to your question.
Of course, the choice is yours, but we’d love to have you participate! We can also provide extra support and answers to any questions you have about solar generation.
