I still don’t have my September report in my email.
Have you received previous reports? Check spam?
Yes, I received the August report. I’ve already checked my spam folder, it’s not there.
I’m realizing I didn’t ask the most obvious question. You didn’t accidentally toggle off the setting, right? Under Settings > Notifications and scroll down.
Just checked; It’s still on.
Here’s a trick for those with Sense Solar who don’t have solar and wonder what to do with those spare CTs! …
As reported elsewhere I’ve used the solar CTs for my AC unit and hot water tank but I now have 2 Sense Solars so for September I decided to hook ONE solar CT to ONE of the main legs. The other solar CT is not clamped to anything.
SO, the “Solar” reporting I have here is actually representing the power balance between my main legs. 50% would be ideal.
Next up I’m going to clamp both Solar CTs on the mains along with the Main CTs.
I’ll shoot you a PM to avoid troubleshooting here.
We got PTO for our solar on 9/5, so this was my first full month with Sense, but not quite a full month of solar.
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I find these monthly reports a TOTAL WASTE!!! Who really cares what their usage was in September?
I set my billing date as the 12th. I want a report on the 13th saying usage from 12th of prior month to 12 the of this month!!! You can get what is in the current email by going to the Trends tab, clicking on Month, then clicking < to see last month usage (divide that by 30 days, divide by 24 hours and you get the average wattage figure too). SO THE CURRENT E-MAIL IS A total WASTE!!!
Now, tell me a similarly easy way to see the usage that one should care about. What your electric provider is going to say you used in your monthly billing period!!!
You can go into Trends>Usage and switch to the Bill tab. Then touch Usage to see total usage for the billing period and associated cost.
In my case:
- I have solar so I have to subtract that off to get the net usage that matches up with my utility.
- My billing period doesn’t exactly align since it moves around by a couple days in each month.
- The $$ don’t exactly match up since I have a Time of Use plan with different costs at different times and months. I just use the average kWh cost calculated over the past year.
But I’m spite of those differences, Sense comes close.
I don’t have a Bill tab. Just Day, Week, Month, and Year. But even if they had a Bill tab, it should support you entering a starting date (and time) and ending date (and time) so that you can compare to your bill.
Three things:
- First, I agree - I would like a billing period that I can program to match mine, or alternately a customizable period as you suggest !
- The Bill view is only available in the Android and iOS apps, not the web app.
- If you really, really want to do the comparison vs. utility, it’s pretty easy using export from the web app with a little Excel, though some people believe they shouldn’t have to do that, even if it gives them what they want/need.
You could try updating the billing date with your electric company to obtain more value from the reports. I find the monthly reports to be really useful.
I paid $250 for the device. The least they could do is send me a Report email that means something to me instead of me having to call the electric company and hope they can change my billing period.to make life easier on Sense. For me a September summary report is not significant. If you don’t mind my asking, why is it useful to you, unless your electric company changed your billing period.
Thanks for the info. I will try installing the app after i rewatch the last episode of Walking Dead and watch tonight’s season premiere.
I am one of those that think we shouldn’t have to go to Excel. The only thing Sense does really well is instantaneous power readings and energy readings. A/C, fixed speed pool pump, refrig, all the major power consumers move back and forth between the Other category so doing Trends on devices is useless. I sometimes see the A/C bubble disappear on my PC screen and the Other bubble nearly explode. lol.
Since those 2 things are what Sense can do, I think it should put some effort into helping people use it to estimate then verify their utility bill. That means replacing the simplistic billing date and rate with something more usable. In my younger days, I did quite a bit of programming, so I am not easily fooled with the tier, time of use, etc being hard to do. This is from another post I did on the topic.
"Delivery charges with the half dozen electric companies I have had were just a charge per KWh on top of the energy charge. For example, 3 cent delivery charge and 4 cent energy charge makes 7 cents/KWh for first 1 MWh. Then 3.2 cent delivery and 4.5 cent energy makes 7.7 cents/KWh for the next 2 MWH. Then 3.2 cent delivery and 5 cent energy makes 8.2 cent/KWh for the next 5 MWh. User would just enter 7 cents - 1 MWh, 7.7 cents - 3 MWh, 8.2 cents - 8 MWh. Monthly access/account fees could be a fixed number you enter.
As someone who in my younger days did quite a bit of programming, I would say the majority of use cases for tiered pricing, TOU and floating bill dates could easily be programmed. But not with simplistic static rate and billing date. The person would have to be provided a way to enter a start date/time and end date/time and ability to adjust it each month when their bill says the next meter read date. Most tiered pricing that I have seen is $x for the first m MWh, $y for the next n MWh, $z for the next p MWh. That would be very easy for the user to enter and for the software to use. TOU charges may vary seasonally, that just means that the user has to go in and change the values during the first month of the new structure (be nice if they could save the prior one as a profile so they can go back to it next season). I will admit it is the most difficult. Not so much from the programmer’s perspective, but from the user perspective. The user would have to enter the hour brackets and corresponding rates for each day (with s/w help for days with the same hours/rates as another day). Would this satisfy 100% of people? No. But why do NOTHING just because you can’t do 100%?
About the only thing that Sense seems to consistently do well is measure instantaneous power consumption accurately and keep track of total energy consumption. You can’t look at device trends and totals because you don’t know how much of a device’s power went into the OTHER category. It sure puts my A/C, fixed speed pool pump, refrig and other major power consumers into the Other category multiple times daily–sometimes while they are still running!!! I can watch A/C bubble disappear and Other bubble all but burst.
Seems they would want to maximize the ONE THING that Sense can do well…and that would be to predict/verify your power bill."
There are better places to discuss dynamic-rate support. Let’s please keep this thread focused on the actual sharing of monthly reports, as was originally intended.
Congratulations on a job well-done… Your historical energy statistics are truly superlative! I’ve followed each of your updates and modeled my outcomes to your actualized energy-footprint…
Continue documenting your monthly progress! Your efforts are greatly appreciated… Hopefully in the near-future, my home automation will consistently afford outcomes within alignment of your efficient usage-levels.
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Usage History: I’m within the lower 10% in both Average Watts and Always On , compared to Sense users, within the state of Ohio .
Standard Smart Home: Ranch with full basement (3k sqft living space), built April 2016, 3 bedroom, 3 baths. Gas appliances ( Furnace, Water Heater, Oven, Dryer )
Primary Occupants: 2-Adults (Husband & non-working Spouse)
Sense Installation Date: January 2, 2018
- Jan 2019 - ( Average 692 watts) ( Always On 163 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Feb 2019 - ( Average 521 watts) ( Always On 101 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Mar 2019 - ( Average 471 watts) ( Always On 95 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Apr 2019 - ( Average 397 watts) ( Always On 98 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- May 2019 - ( Average 382 watts) ( Always On 100 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Jun 2019 - ( Average 387 watts) ( Always On 97 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Jul 2019 - ( Average 999 watts) ( Always On 115 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Aug 2019 - ( Average 706 watts) ( Always On 97 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Sep 2019 - Factory Reset of Monitor: Sept 18, 2019 - ( HyperLink )
- Oct 2019 - ( Average 381 watts) ( Always On 94 watts) - ( HyperLink )
- Nov 2019 - ( Average 464 watts) ( Always On 91 watts)
Notes:
- Pre-Reset - Number of Originally Found Devices: 16 (Removed 3 devices that were no longer detected)
- Post-Reset - Number of Found Devices: 15 (No Merged Devices)
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