store.sense.com

I like my Sense monitor and I would buy it again. I love the concept of monitoring electricity consumption, by device, using machine learning. I can't defend this product as actually working though, and I can't recommend it to anyone other than early adopter's and enthusiasts who are willing to look past the shortcomings. The primary issue is that the Sense can't seem to "learn" the majority of the electrical loads. I heat my house with an electric heat pump and two air handlers. Sense hasn't learned any of that. I heat my water with an electric heat pump too. Sense has maybe learned to recognize a portion of that (the fan or something), making for dirty data. "Unknown" would be better than incorrect data, in my view. Sense has learned my electric car, but the data doesn't align with what the car itself is reporting (if only there were a way to pipe the car's data into Sense...). I am willing to buy more equipment for better monitoring, and I have added several Kasa smart plugs to my house simply for their monitoring capabilities. Those are only available for lower amp, 110v loads though, so I have precise metering of my AppleTV (3w) and no visibility into my heat pump (probably multiple kws). 60% of my consumption is "other" (unknown), so between Sense and a bunch of smart plugs, I can monitor a minority of my electricity consumption. Remember how Tesla was trying to have a 100% automated factory but couldn't get a robot to lay a sheet of cloth over a battery? They gave up the goal of perfect automation and supplemented it with alternatives that were known to work (in that case, humans). Sense should continue to build up its AI/ML as its primary strategy, but please stop hoping AI/ML will solve everything near term. It's time to enable direct monitoring of 220v, high amp circuits.

Currently the features in the app don't provide the options to help me determine if I am on the best energy plan from my electric provider. Aditionally I have had the unit installed for almost 6 months and a lot of devices it still hasn't been able to detect. It would be nice to help the app to let it know when something turns on and off so it could aid it detecting devices. I am not able to set up power outtages for specific device for the freezer or fridge because it still hasn't identified the devices.

I would like the Labs to be more comprehensive. The data should have an option to save on local computer in real time. Devices are difficult to find and name. Always on is no help, what is always on? Functionally hardware works well, software need work

It would be much better if the device had more auxiliary sensor ports. I purchased the Solar bundle and I can’t use the sensor because my split service panel occupies all the ports.

Great real time usage and production information! Setup and device detection are lengthy processes. I had to take several runs at how to set it up, and wait for the remote monitoring people to come to a consensus about whether it's correct before it really worked. But they got there, and once it is set up, it lets you do things that are very useful. I have it matching my electric car charge rate to my net solar production rate, for instance (I'm driving on sunshine!).