I’m quite satisfied with Sense for three reasons:
- Reasonable expectations - I’m an electrical engineer and I have a rational view of how hard the problems are:
- Just accurately measuring AC split phase power with a couple of pairs of CT clamps. For those of you who say that this should be easy, you have never done a lab on measuring real and apparent power.
- Making sense of household power waveforms, given the ranges of device operation, the cacophony of different devices, plus induced noise from power generation, harmonic interactions, etc.
- Using machine learning and AI, especially with the limited CPU capabilities of the probe device.
- Reasonable progress
- I’m up to 28 active devices, most of them fairly accurate.
- I’ve seen EV detection work fairly accurately though it seems to still come and go. I’ve had a couple weeks where over 2/3 of the power was traceable to detected devices (higher % if you include “Always On”)
- Useful results, even without Sense detection
- I have worked to understand and lower my “Always On” from 620W to 320W and know how to go lower if I need to. I also know when my son has left his gaming rig on overnight… Have also spotted and turned off some outside halogen lights that were left on overnight, in a location we can’t see directly (250 extra watts in Always On).
- I have an accurate time view of actual usage vs. solar production, not just some net readings…
- I can see what’s happening over time with the big energy hogs in my household, even without detection. I can identify car charging for all three cars (two EVs and one plugin hybrid), plus upstairs and downstairs AC, to adjust use behaviors if necessary.
I’m in it for the long haul but have already seen 300$ in value.