This is a simple reporting problem and requires absolutely no new complicated feature specs… All I want is to have the ability to set my Solar NEM True-Up date, and have my consumption and production reported for that one-year duration… The analogy would be the ability for an accounting application to support calendar and fiscal periods…
First, in the settings, allow for the user to set their NEM True-Up date…
Second, on the mobile app, I envision navigating to the “Trends → Solar” section…
Under the “Usage Section”, continue to support the Day, WK, MO and YR views… But to the right, add another time window for NEM True-Up (not sure what the right abbreviation would be for this view, but I am sure something like “NEM” might work just fine).
Then basically show the graph based on the NEM True-Up window, and adjust all of the statistics underneath to apply to the same window of time…
One of my MAIN use cases for Sense is to manage the consumption of my solar over production… The “Net production” figure in the statistics area allows me to figure out how much excess energy I can “burn” with my space heaters during the wintertime…
Please, please, please… This is a feature that would help anyone that is on a NEM solar plan…
Here is the screenshot from the mobile app that I access on a daily basis to manage my excess solar production burn…
As you can see, if my annual True-Up was January 1st, this would show me that I have a 16% overproduction, I still have about 759.7 kWh of energy to burn without any financial impact to me… If I don’t use it… I lose it…
And as you can see by the green consumption bar in the graph… I have been aggressively trying to burn off my excess production by warming my home with space heaters instead of my gas furnace…
Having this view based on my NEM True-Up date would be a game changer for me…
OK… There’s a part 2 to this request… And part 1 above is a good feature alone, without this extra enhancement… But this part 2 would help even more…
The ability to forecast your solar production… The problem with my solar true-up is that I actually need to try and over consume and have a positive energy balance in February, knowing that I am going to over produce on the solar side in March, April and May (which is my true-up month)… And solar production is pretty predictable from year to year…yes, it varies a bit…but a forecast really does come pretty close to actual…
This would allow a solar customer to even more accurately and conveniently manage their production balance across their true-up window…
Funny… I am a little shocked that I use so little electricity myself!!! And the only reason my usage is right at 400kWh/month today is because I have been aggressively burning my excess solar production by running multiple space heaters in my house…which saves me a bundle on natural gas heating… Otherwise, I would be well into the mid-300 range (probably 355-360kWh per month average)…
I have natural gas heating (when I use it), as well as natural gas for my clothes dryer, stovetop and my water heating…
And I am a gadgety person what runs multiple computers and consumer electronics on a regular basis… I also work from home…which means my computing environment is on all day long to support my work!!!
I have to admit, that while I do use electricity to drive my various consumer electronics… I am pretty careful about turning stuff off that I am not using… So lights are not on all over the house in unoccupied rooms… And I am an empty nester now, so the kids bedrooms are dark and not consuming anything to drive their personal electronics…
Annually, I consumed about 9mWh in 2010 when both of my kids were home, and I hadn’t switched over to CFL/LED lighting… I was also running a 24x7x365 file server and was pretty loose about turning stuff off (hard to chase down electric waste with the kids in the house)… In 2015, my usage was went down to about 6mWh…I still had the kids in the house… In 2020, my usage went down to about 4.5mWh…
And as you can see, I am at about the 4.9mWh range for this year… And that’s including my egregious use of electric space heaters in December… I didn’t burn my excess solar energy in January-March of 2021… So I believe that 4.9mWh range would probably go up next year… Because I am absolutely planning on heating my home with my space heaters after the new year!!!
Anyways…that’s some background on my electric usage background…
As a solar customer with net metering, I would like the ability to set my annual true-up date and see various views of my data based on that true-up date.
As an example, I would like to see how much solar I produced as of my true-up date. I would like to see how much energy I have sent to the grid since my true-up date. I’d like the ability to forecast how much energy I will use and produce before my next true-up date based on historic averages… Etc, etc, etc…
Can we add a feature where i can set my year to start April 1st (or any date I choose)
My utility company resets my solar credits that I sent to the grid March 31st every year. Would be awesome to use sense to track more accurately what I possibly have left for credits.
Seems like a simple config but would like some feedback!
I think there is another Wishlist item like this one floating around in the list. If I can find it I will merge and you will need to “Like” the original post to be heard
Yes I did like the other item as well, but I did not see a lot of likes and wanted to get a new one out, hoping for a merge and additional views.
This would help track the NET metering credits expiry dates.
Will merge - activity always helps stir possible “likes”. FYI - I’m not sure how widespread the notion of solar credits are. In California we have a couple state-defined flavors of Net Metering that don’t involve credits per-se, hence no management of accumulating credits. The net metering flavors here, NEMS 1.0 and NEMS 2.0 work fairly well with the Sense TOU and sellback mechanism. I can add up my monthly Bills to get something close to my True-up. Two things that limit:
My Billing period start and end dates aren’t the same dates in each month and the periods vary from 27 days to 32 days.
I have to accumulate the monthly Bills and subtract off the monthly charges to figure out the upcoming True-up. But my utility does a more exact job in prepping me than Sense as the end of the true-up draws close.
Would be awesome to get more likes on this Product wishlist, The NEM true up or new year end date tab would be very helpful for solar users that have credits that expire on a certain date. A tab for Solar year end credits would assist in how much i should crank my electric heat in february and march so i can burn off all credits before they expire march 31st.
Seems like a simple wishlist item.
thanks for your review.
Can someone from Sense confirm if this is doable. It has been over two years this feature request has been up and has created chatter.
Simple, can we add a feature in the app for a solar true up date that will allow users that have all the solar credits expire at a such date?
I agree. I am the OP on this thread, and have felt strongly that this is a missing view that I really would like to see.
Seems like it would be a simple thing to implement. It’s merely implementing the equivalent of a fiscal year. The ability to choose any calendar date as the start of the fiscal/true-up period.
There may be some more complex UI considerations that I am not thinking about, and I definitely recognize that to be a possibility.
I am also wondering what happened to the regular app updates. Even if this specific feature is not implemented, I am surprised that other features haven’t been implemented as a matter of continuous improvement.
This is just an outside observation and associated speculation. I think Sense has entered a new phase of growth which is both a good thing and a bad thing for current users of the orange/green monitors. The addition of Sense-enabled meters and panels should bring new users in the millions, instead of tens of thousands. That means much greater probability for long-term viability for Sense (I have seen 3 of their competitors from back when I first bought, get lost along the way). The flip side is that much of the development seems to be focused on operational scaling, utility-centric features, and perhaps panel-centric features (which could have broader applicability). I’m guessing that part of the scaling improvements will eventually include improved detection, because utilities will demand that. But I’m also guessing that anything related to electricity costs and pricing will be driven and gated by utility needs and contracts, rather than end-user needs from the orange / green monitor community. That kind of explains why Sense removed the $$ (Show Cost) option for the top-level Dashboard. The top-level Dashboard is clearly targeted mainly at incidental utility users - it doesn’t do to show incorrect costs for utilities, given all the complexities of getting each individual utility’s numbers right (add-on fees, tiered pricing, weird billing cycles, etc.).
I guess I have not been keeping up with the evolution of Sense. I had no idea that Sense was being integrated into electric panels and such… Any links to these products would be interesting…
Nevertheless, the current installed base are real customers who have played down real money for this product, and there’s got to be some commitment to maturing and improving the current platform, right? This is far from a cheap $99 product and while it is not thousands of dollars, I would say that the $350.00 pricing deserves some level of ongoing support.
If the preponderance of their development and support efforts is on their integrated panel product(s), I guess that means that current and new customers are subsidizing that development with very little in return.
Oh well, I know you said that it’s just speculation… And truth be told, I am happy with the current product as-is. It provides me visibility to my consumption and solar production, and I can cut that data in useful time filters. But I am disappointed that improvements and maturity of the platform and mobile app have been slow with little progress. A glimmer of loyalty to the current customer installed base would be much appreciated.
Having lived in both the hardware and cloud world, and knowing what’s inside of the monitor (including the FPGA ) and behind the Sense mothership data operations, we’re not the ones “subsidizing” the new development - that’s the VCs who put in $100M+ into Sense in 2022 (that’s the gross revenue equivalent after COGs, of Sense selling maybe 1.5M monitors.
Yeah, that makes sense… You are just hearing my frustration coming out when stating that we are subsidizing Sense’ future (and to some degree, that’s how it’s supposed to work anyway)… Ugh, I really like my Sense, but I still wish there was more investments being made to mature the platform…
@MikeekiM,
I have the same sentiments. I have reasonable confidence that Sense is quietly improving detection - the detection / data science team embarked on a rethink of how to do things beyond the instant (on-off transition based detection) we have today, about 2 years ago and there are indicators they are still working on that (progressive detection). But I would at least like to see them finish off and/or productize the numerous unfinished features, from the existing Labs features to the incomplete Dashboard (no solar). But their growing footprint in meters and panels gives me confidence that we’re not going to be hung out to dry like Neurio users.
