Sense Home 4+

I got Sense with Solar around 6 months ago when I installed a solar array. The inverters for the solar array monitor power produced but not power consumed by your home. Sense allows you to do both in a very sleek app. Device detection is automatic via their machine learning algorithm and while not perfect, it has reliably detected most of my frequently used appliances both big and small. There are some quirks where it will think two similar devices are the same thing (small space heater and a coffee pot in my case) or it will recognize a device when it turns on but not as it ramps up power usage (my electric boiler has 4 heating elements, it only recognizes the 1st one). I personally find this very cool even though it’s not perfect. The power monitor works superbly for overall home energy usage and allows you to find energy hogs you may not have noticed otherwise. I’ve lowered my energy bill by tweaking different light bulbs, finding vampire drain devices, and swapping small devices for more energy efficient ones where possible. Overall I give it 5 stars even with the mild shortcomings. And they are still actively developing better algorithms which will improve over time with updates.

It’s been almost two years since I installed SENSE in order to monitor our home’s solar energy production versus electrical energy consumption overall, in greater detail than we were able to using NeurIO. I have to say, while Sense beats NeurIO and everyone else in terms of the APP’s layout/presentation, Sense’s AI algorithm has not improved much in all that time. It’s performance is poor at best and almost useless overall. After several reboots and two complete deletions and reinstalls of my Sense account, Its AI algorithm still can only identify a random 6 or so devices including one or two major consumers of electricity as well as some minor appliances/devices. There seems no rhyme or reason to it with false positives as well as some seemingly inocuous devices like a coffeemaker or two locked on seemingly for good until suddenly they aren’t anymore. Meanwhile, the large attic exhaust fan, Kitchen Convection Oven, Kitchen SuperSteam Oven , and Kitchen Induction Cooktop plus the Home HVAC system go unrecognised. Use of the “merge” function can totally confuse the algorithm as well as myself in pinning down a device amidst the clutter. Currently, I see no hope for improvement and looking around for a substitute only PowerX and Emporia stand out because of their use of dedicated clamps on selected circuits. But they create other problems in terms of panel overcrowding, etc. as well as the fact that aren’t actually totally comprensive either. Sigh…..

I have had sense for a while now and this is my 3rd house with sense. When we moved in I had $570 electric bill. But sense helped my find problems I fixed. For example my pool pump variable speed motor was misconfigured. (2 pool guys never noticed it) sense never detected my pool motor but I can see it turn on with my schedule taking 2800W 12 hours a day. Now it takes 380W. It doesn't make financial sense to run solar pool heating I could not do this match without sense. My kitchen lights took 1300W now they don't. My landscaping lights took 2000w now they dont and there is still money to be made as I or sense have not identified a lots of load yet. I don't like to waste resources. I love sense it's fun and I frequently find my self checking what is going on. I was sceptical of the price tag but I would pay even more for it now that I had it for so long.