Thank you. I do think most folks in the community are probably considered some of the most powerful users, so I can’t speak for the majority of users—let alone smart meter users who are going to be using Sense—but it is certainly worth considering.
I certainly do understand the desire to want more, though.
Hi,
Thanks for reaching back out. I’d be happy to answer your questions, not necessarily in order.
Based on my calculations, Sense is only tracking about 25 percent of my daily energy usage.
Sense actually monitors 100 percent of your home’s total energy usage—what you’re seeing is that individual devices aren’t yet being broken out, which is different from overall monitoring.
Sense misidentified my hot water heater as my clothes dryer, and it never rediscovered the hot water heater.
If you filed a support ticket on this, please send me a private message so we can review it together. In some instances, updates to our dryer detection model improved signals for electric dryers, if the dryer and HW Heater were conflated your dryer may have been chosen while signals to your HW Heater were ignored. This likely improved overall detection at least for one device. At least compared with the device signatures I have seen. Currently, electric hot water heaters are theoretically detectable but not usually identified; if you have a dedicated circuit, that can greatly improve detection.
I entered all details—the make, model number, and even the serial numbers—in hopes that Sense would monitor them. But it detected nothing.
Those fields are for your personal reference and do not influence detection. Sense relies on electrical signature patterns, not on user-entered metadata. When you add devices at the beginning in can help with stage 1-3 detection but the additional data does not add anything to detection.
After waiting a considerable time for new discoveries, I decided to reboot my Sense unit, knowing I would lose two years of data. I bit the bullet, reset the unit, lost all data, and started over.
A full data reset can sometimes realign detection, but when you have more than two years of history, preserving your data usually yields better results.
Device detection depends entirely on the models and data we collect—there’s no way to speed up or slow down detection for a particular device. If you need further assistance after filing a ticket and working with the team, feel free to send me a private message.
First off, thank you for your response!
Let me ‘fine tune’ my previous statements for you.
Shortly after my initial install of my Sense monitor, it discovered my hot water heater, among other appliances. Everything worked fine for over a year and then, BAM, my hot water heater was not showing any report, but the report was now being posted under my clothes dryer. The hot water heater never was rediscovered. Yes, I filed a support ticket but was told nothing could be done. Just to let Sense keep monitoring and that some day it would rediscover my hot water heater. By the way, when we used the clothes dryer, there was no monitoring from Sense. I waited and waited until I finally made the tough decision to reboot and start all over. The reboot did give Sense the ability to discover my hot water heater. which by the way is on it’s own circuit.
I do realize that Sense monitors 100% of my home, but is only reporting around 25% of what is being consumed on a daily basis.
(As a side note, I recently had a whole home surge protector added hoping that it may help. Regardless, I wanted and needed that protection because our area does receive a lot of lightning. I’ve never lost anything, but I was afraid my luck was going to run out if I didn’t get this installed.)
Understand that I like the Sense monitoring idea, it’s just that going on three years, one would think that I would have more small appliances, lights, air conditioners and heaters that would have been discovered by now. Example: We use a small room sized oil filled room heater during the colder winter months, which is set at a constant energy draw of power (except when it thermostatically cycles off) but it has never been discovered. Some overhead room lights (only 2 rooms out of 7) were recognized. before reboot. Now only 1 room has been re-recognized since reboot. We have 2 refrigerators and 1 chest type deep freezer. All three were recognized fairly quickly when first installed. Now, after the reboot, I have the refrigerators back, but not the chest deep freezer. As a note, I did the reboot 5 months ago on 1-1-2025 to start off the new year.
In closing, I want to believe that my Sense monitor is going to fulfill it’s duties eventually. It’s just taking a lot longer than I had expected. I’m thinking more like 5 plus years to become the energy monitor that I thought it would be.
Thanks again for responding!
Ron
Let me ‘fine tune’ some of my statements for you.
Hi,
For cases like this, please file a support ticket at https://help.sense.com/hc/en-us/requests/new. If you need additional assistance, send me a private message.
A few things to keep in mind:
Sense may not detect every device, and performance can vary based on your home’s configuration.
If a device is not detected or loses detection, there is no guarantee it will be rediscovered. The system is autonomous once deployed, so a previously detected device may not be detected again.
Therefore, if an agent said that your dryer would be detected again, that is not necessarily true. Your hot water heater has a chance of being detected, but that does not mean it will be. There was probably a chance your hot water heater appeared more as a dryer but was named “Hot Water Heater” when it was detected. This is fine as detection usually prompts you to try to name the device detected but it may not be the name of the device Sense saw on the backend. Therefore, when the system was updated, it may have steered the device closer to what Sense was reading, even if it was not able to detect your dryer either. Detection depends on factors in your home. For example, whole-home surge protectors can distort signals and hinder device detection. While surge protection may be important for your setup, it can affect Sense’s ability to identify devices.
Generally, during the first three months of data collection, detection is most active. Once your system stabilizes, detection improvements will depend on your installation and any changes in your home. Future algorithm updates may refine detection for specific devices—such as dryers—but I recommend focusing on how Sense works today rather than relying on potential future improvements.
I am aware that at times I advise folks to wait for Sense to gather more data and that, over time, detection may refine and improve—and that is true—but at the same time, it may be that because of various factors in your house, Sense cannot confidently detect many of your devices.
In some cases, factors in your home may limit device detection. If you file a support ticket, we can review your setup in more detail and help optimize your installation, but there may be inherent limits to what Sense can detect. My goal is to ensure you have the best possible configuration for device detection.
Thanks again,