Whole House Surge Suppressor thwarting detection?

Technical Questions
1

Hi ,
Have had my sense installed for more than a month, with precious few devices isolated. I have a Square-D Homeline surge suppressor installed in my breaker panel across both legs.I wonder if this device is suppressing the transients which sense uses to profile devices. I do not wish to remove the protection, so if Sense cannot operate with this suppressor in place, I will have to return the sense. Thanks for any help you can offer.

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2

I have an Eaton 2-pole 50 amp breaker surge protector in my panel. It’s 108 kA per phase and status light shows it’s still in protection state. It’s on the top two breakers from each leg coming in. My detection result is linked below

3

I have a Square D HomeLine whole home surge suppressor installed and Sense has found 11 devices so far and it’s working on another at the moment.

4

Thanks Bubuski. After more than a month, I still have mostly ‘unknown’ and ‘always on’ loads, with a couple of others misidentified.
Good to know I am not alone w/a whole-house, panel-mounted surge suppressor, and others are having some successes. I will stay tuned as device discovery continues.

5

Thanks Doug. As noted above, good to know others w/similar config are having some successes. I will stay tuned as device discovery continues.

6

Hi David, Sense should be able to work as intended with surge protectors, so far, we have not seen issues with these in the field. It looks like your Sense is still learning your home, so at this time I would suggest to give it some time and see how device detection progresses. If it has not improved after some time, please contact our customer support to have a look as there might be a technical issue with your monitor.

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7

Guess the consensus is that surge suppressors are ok, i also have one and device detection has been going well, 27 so far, but a couple are generic motor x so still have to figure out what that means and track it down.

I also have a Power Factor correction box across my mains, it corrects inductive reactance (motor load) with a capacitive reactance so in theory leveling power factor to a pure resistive load for more accurate billing by the smart meter. I can only say my usage went down from the years previous average when i brought it online, no scientific measurements here, other than a power factor meter across the mains which now balances out to really close to a 1.0 (adding -.80 to +.20 example) or very close to a whole PF of 1.0.

The PF correction box has not hampered my detection either, but i am sure it changes the signature of motor loads and the associated ripple factor signature that Sense uses to detect patterns. I asked that technical question after purchase and prior to delivery to the “help” line and never received a response from the engineering team from Sense.

Cheers… -John

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8

Unless you are billed on KVAR rather than KWH the power factor on your side of the meter has no impact on what you are billed for. You have spent money to help your utility company only.

9

Not sure if I like the way you are thinking! but see your point. My neighbor swears by the box, maybe i will start to swear at it! I saw a definite decrease in billing KWH, but it could be coincidence. Only reference was the past years usage and billing vs.months. Now that Sense is up, i might get better metrics.

Just posted about meter cycles billing cycles too. Noticed a 10% delta one month plus and another minus Sense usage correlated to power company billing.

10

Edit- see your other post.

11

Thank you!