I searched and found some similar topics but non that just answers this basic question that being new to Sense I’m unclear on. If a device such as a spa or pool has both a heater and a pump, should it be expected that Sense will eventually be able to differentiate between the two?
It didn’t take long for sense to detect my spa heater and since both the heater and pump are fed from the same breaker in the main panel my assumption was that Sense would not be able to differentiate. However, today when the pump was on, Sense was showing the detected device as still off so it seems it wasn’t lumping the two modes into one device.
don’t think of it in terms of the single system/device on a breaker… think of it more like the parts of the device… sense looks for electric signatures made by the parts in your device or systems… for example, in your pool/spa, even if the heater and pump always cycle together (same exact times), the pump has a motor signature and the heater may have a resistance heat signature… that’s what sense would find…
so to directly answer your question, yes, sense should eventually find both… you can leave them separate, or merge them together…
sense also has the ability to pick up on cycles of the same device also… for example, my air conditioner is a single package unit on my roof… it has a furnace and the air conditioning… once detected, I have a furnace item with a separate blower detected (merged these two) and an air conditioner item with a separate blower detected (merged these two)… now, the blower in both of these models are exactly the same blower unit in my a/c pkg unit… it only has one blower for both furnace and a/c functions… but the blower is capable of different speeds and in my unit, has a different cycle/speed for the furnace and a/c functions… this allows me to see exactly what the different functions cost me…
Don’t think of Sense grouping things by breakers…it has no idea which breaker things are on. What Sense does is lo look for unique power waveforms (“signatures”) coming thru at the main breaker (where you installed the Sense current sensors). It looks for repeating patterns, then Sense tries to identify them (with a bit of help from us) by comparing those waveforms with its large library of similar ones.
So if, for example, you had a system consisting of multiple components on multiple breakers (like a geothermal system with well pump, the heat pump, a radiant pumping system, and a forced hot/cool air system with multiple devices…like mine) sense should be able to detect each component (“device”) and you would be able to monitor them separately OR merge them into one GEOTHERMAL device.
Pretty slick when it works, but requires LOTS of patience and also no devices that disrupt the waveforms (like my deep well constant pressure pump does).