Not sure if anyone will be able to say one way or the other, but I’m seeing a difference of almost 300W between my previous detection and the dedicated circuit on my furnace. Is there an installation issue or could this just be the detection algorithm being a little overzealous when assigning power to the device?
Hi @ramon - it seems likely that the native detection model was picking up on something in addition that the dedicated circuit is not. The dedicated circuit device is accurate, reading ground truth data directly from that breaker. Depending on your HVAC system, there could be something else operating there simultaneously with your furnace that is on a different circuit.
@JustinAtSense did I see correctly during setup the circuit needs to be “active”? So if I was clamping my furnace circuit I should make sure it is running?
Hi @norenlaw. The dedicated circuit device circuit should be ‘OFF’ while an electrician is installing the flex sensors. After installation is complete, you can set-up dedicated circuit monitoring in-app. One of the steps for the in-app set-up is to turn your device ‘ON’ or flip the breaker. Sense needs to see ~20W coming through the flex sensors to complete set-up.
Just got mine today and it only has a solar sticker and an arrow. Well two arrows actually The arrow on the side with the sticker is pointing towards the solar sticker, the arrow on the flip side is pointing towards the circular opening. I didn’t pay much attention to how I installed the sense monitor CT clamps originally do I was wondering if this is correct?
The Sense monitor CT clamps can autocorrect polarity, so orientation shouldn’t matter. The Dedicated Circuit CTs cannot, due to the nature of the installation. For the Dedicated Circuit sensors, the NON-SOLAR (i.e., blank or Sense logo side) should face the breaker.
I have a four zone Mitsubishi system which includes three traditional wall heads as well as a 2-ton air handler with a supplementary electric heat kit. While the air handler controls when the electric heat kit is turned on/off, power for the electric heat kit is provided by a completely separate 240V circuit.
Oh okay I got you. I got rid of my supplemental heat, had an oil boiler with hydronic baseboard. After two years with the Mitsubishis I decided I would likely be all right without it. I had the hyper heat units. I have one outside unit that does three inside wall heads for the bedrooms and another outside condenser that does a wall head for The living room / kitchen area. I’ll be interested to install these sensors, prob tomorrow, But to be honest the reason I bought Sense over some of the other monitoring units was the fact that I didn’t have to clog up my breaker box with individual CT clamps…
I have two Mitsubishi MSY-GE18NA units, both 220, both cooling only. I was able to install a CT on each and now have them both monitored. Since they are cooking only, I turned on their fans before killing the breaker. That was how I was able to identify which CT was which and got lucky that they were labeled correctly from the start. I am seeing a standby of 12w always for the past week. I’d turn them off over the winter, but I want to make sure there no heater in them that comes on over the winter. I’ll leave these breakers live all winter, and if there’s never any extra element that kicks on, next fall I’ll turn these breakers off and save a couple dollars. So far Sense is estimating they’ll cost $6 each for the year.
Just installed both sensors. Apparently my living room mini split uses 13W when off and my bedrooms multi splits uses 19W. Spoke too soon, apparently they’ve settled down and are using around 5 watts. So overnight apparently both units routinely pull 60some watts for awhile then go back to 5 or 6…
One thing that would be nice in the next app update would be able to check on your dedicated circuit monitoring and be able to see that it’s set up correctly. I set mine up yesterday and I’m 90% certain I did it right- i.e. 2x240v circuits for my two Mitsubishi mini split circuits- But when I went into dedicated circuit monitoring on the app this morning it just says enabled. If I click on it it asked me if I want to continue setup which will delete my current setup. I realize I could do that and just set it up for the same two circuits again but still
There’s not really a way for us to know if something is set up correctly as we don’t know ground truth about your panel setup. We have to trust what the sensors and the installer tell us. At setup, Sense will look for a variety of issues (like under wattage or negative wattage) and those will cause setup to fail, but post setup, if you’re seeing positive wattage and installed with the correct method per your circuits, then everything should be correct, barring any bugs.
I realize that, I just meant if the app could show how you set it up originally. In other words I’m pretty sure I selected " 2x240v" in order to monitor my two Mitsubishi mini split systems ( one CT clamp per circuit) . I know there’s no way that you guys can know that is correct for my setup, I would just like to be able to look at what I selected on initial setup whether or not that’s the right way to do it is on me.
Thanks, again I’m pretty certain I set it up right but… If you could I’d definitely appreciate it. Either that or I guess I could just reset it but I would rather not. On a side note the data I’ve been getting on my Mitsubishis has been pretty enlightening. Explain some of my mystery always on
Keep in mind that even in the event you redo setup, you will not lose the data from the old device. That old device will remain in your device list and you can then subsume that within the new device, if you wish. This is different than how smart plugs works today. That said, I totally understand not wanting to go through setup again. It’s a good idea; let me look further into it.
