Use your monthly reports!

This is worth reading in order to understand how Always On (AO) is calculated

As far as discovering AO devices, the best method is possibly one of common sense and won’t often involve flipping breakers:

  • A fridge is literally always plugged in, and so has an AO component but you don’t want to pull the power on it or flip breakers necessarily. Putting a fridge on an HS110 smart plug is a great way to track that power since devices like that can be particularly difficult for Sense.

  • Most truly always on devices that will register 100% of their load in the AO number are going to be small wattage devices like modems and network gear. And Sense for that matter!. Listing out your devices like that and looking at the specified wattage is probably the way to go. You can also put those on a smart plug but that’s overkill in most situations. Consolidating those devices using a dumb power strip on a single smart plug is a good tactic.

  • Devices like an HVAC system that has an always-on controller board or a TV or AV device that is left in standby mode are other candidates for easily accountable AO.

  • A “Tester” smart plug is very handy for tracking and accounting for AO: A modern “wall-wart” transformer will use very little power when “just plugged in” but there are still many wall warts that can suck power when not doing anything (like a charger). Give them some time plugged into a “Tester” and you’ll see precisely what’s going on.

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