What is a normal Unknown percentage?

In my house, the percentage of devices classified as Unknown is always around 50% to 60%. Is this what most Sense users experience, or is mine abnormally high or low? It is hard to get meaningful information on how to reduce my electrical usage when over half of it is classified as “Unknown”.

I have had my sense connected for 6 weeks so far and my Unknown is at 43.5% and my Always On is at 27.6%, so just over 71% between the 2 of them. My Trane XL20i heat pump (5 stages of heating and 2 stages of cooling), makes up the bulk of the unknown for me. All my computer/entertainment equipment behind UPS’s makes up the bulk of the Always On. Hopefully thing will improve over time, but my experience so far is that device detection is measured in weeks and months, not days and weeks.

I’m around 85% unknown… but I also have an EV.
It has detected ONE light for me. No others - Maybe because my whole house (except for that light) is LED? and pulls very little?

I don’t know what the bulk of my Unknown is, I suspect it’s a lot of things. I don’t have one large thing (like a heat pump or EV) that I know uses a lot of electricity. The biggest single user I have is a hot tub, which Sense has identified and it seems to average about 10% of my usage.

I’ve had my Sense installed since late October, around 12 weeks.

Mine has yet to detect ANY lights. Just microwaves, fridges, dryer, well pump ,etc stuff for me so far. I figured it doesn’t attempt to do lights until all the “complicated devices” are done.

Same here, mine has not detected any lights either. It has detected a whole lot of things - some of which I do have in my house and some of which I don’t.

Hi Matt, it seems like yours is higher than the average, but we realize we need to do more to model big energy users in homes. So far we’ve been focused on devices which are used a lot and useful for things like awareness, but we are ramping up our efforts on big energy consumers. You may have seen that we just released the first of a series of models for EV charges (which are only in a small number of homes, but they are major energy consumers in those homes). We also have work going on right now for improving coverage of furnaces. Next up is TVs and other entertainment systems (also big energy consumers in many houses). Our plan is to continue to update our modeling based on the very large amount of data that we are now processing.

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I’m at about 50% unknown after almost 4 weeks, had some issues with the unit at first, so couldn’t get data for the first week or two.

No lights for me, only multiple heaters and things, still can’t figure out what they all are.

I was looking at my “Unknown” today, and checking it over the past few months:

September: 64% Unknown, 35% Always On
October: 53% Unknown, 36% Always On
November: 46% Unknown, 36% Always On
December: 37% Unknown, 42% Always On (no idea what changed, except I went on vacation for a week)
January: 35% Unknown, 47% Always On (no idea why the jump, no new toys that should be considered always on).

At any rate, what I’ve noticed, over time Unknown is certainly decreasing. I’m assuming it’s identifying items and removing them from Unknown. That part is reassuring. As for Always On having a sharp increase over the past 2 months, I wish I could figure out why.

I forgot about TVs. we have 2 and neither has been detected, but both are used daily.

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The hard thing about TVs - and I don’t know if you watch your reporting closely when the TV is on, but it’s a little like a cobblestone road. I can always tell when my wife is watching TV when I check at work, because the baseline is fluctuating +/-20-50w. I have to imagine this is a little like mumbling to make another language analogy, and has to be hard to “learn.” (at least modern flat-screen TVs) Perhaps one of the hardest things, apart from low wattage led bulbs, which are more like a whisper.

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For January
Unknown = 60%
Always On = 17.2%
Number of devices found = 12

Devices

  • Furnace = 4 (in one unit)
  • Fridge = 1
  • Garage Door = 1
  • Kitchen Light = 1
  • Heated Mattress Pad = 1
  • Sump Pump = 1
  • Heat Sources = 3 (unknown)
  • Motor Sources = 1 (unknown)

I’m assuming my TV and projector are big contributor to the unknown. I can see real-time that they consume decent amount and are on for 1-3 hours a day. As others have said TVs will be hard to detect because their usage is so dynamic based on content being served up. While idle, screen goes blank (on mine, prevent burn-in), and uses ~100w, but then jumps to 500w when watching something.

Two other devices that are consuming a lot of watts and are un-found still the electric dryer, and space heater. I’m assuming both those will be found in due time, since they are predictable power draws.

Here’s a cap of my TV doing its thing. Bear in mind we have maybe 100w coming from a surround sound system, which likely accounts for most of the fluctuations. In reality, modern TVs are probably going to be as difficult to separate out as a small handful of leds - they just use so little power. My always on baseline +/- unknown is typically in the 200-250w range. The TV isn’t much above that:

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I’ve had mine in for almost a month: 40.8% unknown, 33% always on

I have had mine installed since November 17th.
November: Unknown 63.5% Always On: 18.7%
December: Unknown 42.7% Always On: 23.0%
January (so far): Unknown 42.7% Always On: 24.3%

I like the pace Sense is figuring out the power users in the house, and reducing the unknown usage, although it currently seems to be on a bit of a plateau :slight_smile:

Matt:

I have had my unit for several months and I have a whole host of every day items that have not been detected at this time. No one is currently home and I am showing 425 watts of always on and zero of unknown. I have been able to track about 150 watts of always on but can’t find what remains which is very frustrating. And Sense has never detected a light since it was installed. Good luck as you will need it.