What's new in v20

News & Announcements App Release Notes
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Hi everyone and happy Spring!

This update (version 20) presents Goals, a brand new feature under the Usage view that allows you to set goals for your energy usage, Always On, and if you have Sense Solar, your solar production. We hope this update will give you the knowledge to manage your energy use more wisely, in effect helping to save you money!

Goals
With the latest update, you can set goals for various points in time, including by day, week, month, billing cycle (if you’ve already set your billing cycle under Settings), or for “any point” in time. Want your usage at end of month to be under $100? Hoping your solar production at the end of day is over 500 kWh? Or maybe you want your Always On at any point to be under 800 watts? In addition, Goals can help you manage tiered billing plans by alerting you when you’re tracking towards the next tier of energy charges.

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This new feature can be accessed via the “Usage” screen (tap the menu icon on the top left of your home screen). You should see “Goals” at the top, above “Trends” and “Power Meter.” To create a goal, tap on the “Goals” card and select “Add new goal” at the top of the page. This screen might look familiar if you’ve created Custom Notifications for your devices. All of the orange fields are editable. As you edit your goal, the bottom section, “Your history,” provides some data to help you set realistic goals. Once goals are created, Sense will send push notification alerts (and show in-app notifications) when you exceed your goal. You can also check your progress for any goal by going back to the “Usage” screen in the app. Additionally, for monthly and billing cycle notifications, Sense will notify you if you are likely to exceed your goal.

Notes on particular options:

  • The “Dollars” option is only available if you have set up ‘Electricity Cost’ under Settings.
  • The “End of cycle” option is only available if you have set up ‘Billing Cycle’ under Settings.
  • Solar options are only available if you have installed Sense Solar.

Take this video tour with Sense product manager, Hilario Coimbra:

Other improvements
This update also contains a couple minor bug fixes.

  • Resolves some issues for iPhone X display
  • Fixes an error with landscape scrolling in the Devices “name edit” view

As always, we love feedback, so let us know how you’re liking the new update! We’d love to know how it’s being put to use.

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Woo-hoo new stuff. How many minutes were spent debating putting that out of place looking plant on the table? :smiley:

I’m still waiting for the app update to be available on my OS device, but can we disable Goals so they aren’t in the Usage area? Or can we move it to the bottom? The video has it right at the top as seen below. I don’t honestly see my self using this particular new feature so I’d like my Trends/PowerMeter to be more easily viewed/accessible in this area without having to scroll.

goals

p.s.

I could see people with kids liking this feature if you could say “I want Billy’s television in his room to be under $10 this month” and then challenge their kids to reduce their TV (or whatever device) time and add that money saved to their allowance.

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I’ll plead the fifth on the plant. But at least we didn’t go with the much larger spider plant that was also in the room :grin:

I’ll let the team know about the desire to move around the cards. But I definitely suggest trying it out a bit!

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I confess to being the plant advocate! Else the room looks too sterile IMO. It’s been featured in all our product vids, so you can look back in time and see how its grown.

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:rofl: A good line item to add on Linkedin! :smiley:

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I have solar so it might be nice to add a comparison between usage and solar such as (SOLAR) > (USAGE). Can;t seem to find this in the menu ;}

Carol

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I too would like to see estimated consumption during solar production (went to home vs went back to grid). also, anybody else notice the brief “your monitor is offline” message while starting up the app, I don’t recall seeing this message before updating app.

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Thanks for the feedback, Carol. So would you like something like a daily/weekly/monthly/any time notification saying that your solar production was greater or less than your total usage for the day (or week or month)?

For the time being, you can try making use of the Your history section at the bottom of the ‘Add new goal’ screen. So, you could create a goal to monitor your usage at end of month to be under your average solar production kWh. You can find the average solar kWh if you change ‘Usage’ to ‘Solar Production’ and look under Your history.

It’s not exactly what you’re looking for, but it may help in the short term!

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I think any of the above would be great.

As you suggested about for the time being,
that seems to be to much hand waving for it to be useful.

Thanks for the feedback.

Carol

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Or how about charting the calculated net power in the same way as usage and solar production ? Then we could just set a threshold for the net power for whatever time periods are available.
That would also let us compare more easily against our solar net meters.

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So, in addition to usage and solar production, you’d have net power (solar production minus overall usage)? I’ll definitely pass that on to the Product team.

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Yes, that would be great for two reasons:

  • Easy to match up with net meter production
  • The net crossover is a natural threshold to monitor.

I’m guessing it could be slotted into the Usage tab/card

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how is the goals end of day “trending to” calculated on solar production, typically this time of year I can produce 35kWh daily and goals is currently estimating a 69kWh daily trend

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App version 20.1 just downloaded on IOS. Anything in there we should explore to help confirm results are as Sense expects us to see? :beers:

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Hey Brian. I just checked the changelog and it doesn’t look like anything earth shattering. The UI fixes/improvements are:

-Changing the live wattage number to red when a user exceeds an ‘any point’ goal
-Fixing an issue where the ‘Now’ marker gets clipped off the screen when a goal nears 100%

If you’re still seeing black wattage when you exceed a goal, let us know! Same goes for ‘Now’ getting cut off on your screen.

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Ok thank you sir.

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Hi Ryan: Indeed, it would be useful to have a goal that is “Net Usage”. 2019 California Building/Energy Code is going to require ALL new residential construction to be Net Zero Energy. Homes can be built to be NZE, but occupant participation is required to truly achieve it. So you can see how Sense can really help in that effort with a Net Usage goal. Feedback is essential to change behaviour.

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Thanks, Antje. I will pass it on!

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And while Sense is at it, add net usage to the Usage tab as well. Please…

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I cannot wait to “play” with this, but it will have to wait until Sense has a sense of the major appliances first.