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Water Hot/Cold

Device: Mystery Device
Make:
Model:
Estimated Savings:

After I installed Sense, I saw something on the Power Meter using electric every few minutes. The same signature. All day long. 24/7. It was not using a lot of power but the spikes where there and consistent.

After investigating by going around the house and turning things off, we finally found it. It was our Whirlpool water cooler and specifically, it was the heater for the hot water.

I bought a smart plug and initially put the water cooler on a schedule turning it off for about 12 hours/day. But because the water cooler was either on or off, and we use the cold water all day and evening, this was not working. Now we just turn the hot water off in the morning and turn it back on the following morning for my wife’s hot chocolate fix. I still have the whole unit on the smart plug so it only runs about 12 hours/day, however.

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Identified 2 appliances about to die!

Device: Fridge
Make: Kenmore
Model: 106.8772681
Estimated Savings:

We had a very old freezer — more than 35 years old — which we thought was “still going strong”. After installing Sense and get a number of devices recognized, it was clear from the usage that this freezer was not only a major power hog, but the power meter also showed it was running about 55 minutes (or more!) every hour. Recognizing the savings potential, we took our time shopping around and settled on a new ‘basic’ freezer, which “paid for itself” in less than a year; Sense shows that its “on” cycle is ~20 minutes/hour (vs 55!) AND the power while on is about 1/4 of the old one.

Fast forward a year later: our old (but not as old as the freezer) analog fridge (which we loved the inside layout of) started making noises louder than usual at times; cleaning the coils did not help. Looking back over ~6 months at the Sense “Trend” data, it was clear that the “on-cycle” times started getting longer about 6 weeks earlier.

Then, one day it wouldn’t start after a brief power outage … panic! Turned it off, back on — whew. It started back up.

We’d been casually looking at possible replacements, but with the added incentive of the Sense data showing a recent gradual increase in the “duty cycle”, we knew we had to decide on a replacement. It took us almost 3 months to agree on one and get it in — but we didn’t have to make a “rush” to decide and get the quickest one available. We also were able to wait for a good sale (praying the old one wouldn’t die before we could get the new one in!). The new fridge has the latest cooling technology and runs at about 1/3 the monthly cost of the old one … and no scramble to “salvage the contents” of a failed fridge.

While most new replacement appliances will give a power savings, Sense allowed us to plan for replacement and wait for a good sale — which was about an additional $800 savings between the two appliances!

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I was paying for my neighbors energy bill!

Device: Mystery Device
Make:
Model:
Estimated Savings:

Last year I moved into a new apartment, about 1200 sq. ft. But after the first full month my electricity bill was in excess of $200! Granted it was summertime with 106 degree temps but that just seemed outrageous to me considering I would set my thermostat to 80 when I left for the day and would only lower it to 78 when I was home. Management told me it was because I was on the sunny side of the building and that the previous tenants bill was similar to mine. No matter what I did I could not lower my bill. Fast forward one year later. My last month’s bill was even more outrageous. Given how careful I had been I was convinced either something was powering on constantly or someone else was on my electric meter. After I had the Sense Meter installed I instantly saw something using massive amounts of power even when everything in my home was off (excluding appliances like the fridge). I isolated the usage down to one breaker in my box. I called management and showed them what I was seeing and they sent someone out the next day. Sure enough my upstairs neighbor was tied into my meter! For over a year I was paying for someone else’s power usage. They would constantly leave their A/C running because their bill was always so low every month. I knew something was wrong and I don’t know how else I would have been able to prove my case without Sense! Thank you!

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Replaced “Giant Toaster” Dryer

Device: Dryer
Make: Whirlpool
Model: Cabrio
Estimated Savings:

I replaced my old “giant toaster” dryer with a Samsung vent-free heat pump dryer. Before, the old dryer would rack upwards of 6400+ watts (including whatever other normal devices were on at the time) according to Sense.

With this new dryer in the same scenario, the total household wattage does not go over 950 or so. So we’re talking approximately 1/6 the power consumption versus the old dryer. It’s still to early on for Sense to identify the new dryer specifically; it’s a new category for Sense to figure out.

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Inefficient A/Cs & Water Heaters

Device: Water Heater
Make:
Model:
Estimated Savings:

As a Solar Energy contractor our job is to optimize the energy consumption, not just place panels on your roof. Sense has been key in identifying inefficiencies on our customers’ homes, especially the A/Cs and Water Heaters…the biggest Energy Hogs! We’ve been able help our customers maximize their investment by making energy visible even before we install solar, this means they get to see the real impact before and after. Average energy savings are 30% for A/Cs and 10-15% on water heaters. With SENSE their no need to guess where your energy is being used and where your home improvement budget should be invested. Data is not an opinion, it is fact…makes SENSE?

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Small Load setting = BIG Savings

Device: Dryer
Make: Kenmore
Model: 796.80272900
Estimated Savings:

After Sense found our Dryer I was amazed that the unit uses 5kW when drying a normal load. I played with the different drying setting and found the the “small load” setting only uses 3kW and dries the laundry just as well. I have worked in educating my wife to use this small load setting, and she remembers most days. When she doesn’t I have also set my alerts to let me know when the dryer is turned on. If she “forgets” to use the small load setting, I head up to my laundry room and restart the load on the small load setting.

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Sense justifies the decision.

Device: Light
Make:
Model:
Estimated Savings:

Outside garage lights are six 60 watt candelabra bulbs. When I first got Sense they weren’t detected but I saw that when the lights came on it was about 350 watts. I was leaving them on dusk- dawn but cut back on that schedule after seeing the usage (Thank you Sense!). At the time, replacing them with LED bulbs, based on cost, didn’t make financial sense- as the bulbs blew out I would replace them. A couple months later Sense identified the outside garage lights, I put the Sense app on my wife’s phone and she saw the 348 watt bubble and made a comment on how much energy the outside garage lights used (Thank you again Sense!). Sense estimates $81 per year to run those lights. Since I had a recent reminder about usage from my wife, was in Home Depot and they had the LED lights on a sponsored NH Saves deal. Two 3-Packs cost me $15 ($7.50 each). Each LED light is estimated to use .67 cents per year. Bye-Bye incandescent outside garage lights….

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Time to clean the refrigerator coils

Device: Fridge
Make: GE
Model:
Estimated Savings:

Bought our current home in December of 2017. First this home was our vacation and retirement place as we lived in another location due to my job.
I noticed after 12 months, the refrigerator that came with the home, was on longer than others I’ve had in the past and was not very cold either.
Mostly it seem to us, replacement was needed. The sense device tracking was essential in helping me understand the cause. Of course you can always get an appliance tech to check out but really thought it was more of a situation that it was not opened very often but then we started to use frequently because we actually moved full time into home, 15 months from purchase.
Reading about the problem this could be, an appliance blog suggestions pointed to dirty coils and accurately diagnosed the problem. The person explaining the cause pointed out you would see the refrigerator running longer and not as cold. Exactly what sense was seeing. Story short, cleaned the coils and instantly, refrigerator is now colder and runs a lot less. Sense saved us an appliance tech call out and now going forward, when I see same current timeline from this appliance, I’ll clean the coils.
Of course one could say, clean coils every year and you would not have to go through this but I prefer to use technology to tell me when and not depend on me to remember.
Thinking same type of monitoring could be used to change out AC filters so you could get the full life out of each instead of an interval time.

This is my story
Mark

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More “Safety” savings than “Money” savings

Device: Oven
Make: GE
Model: JSP34W0W3WW
Estimated Savings:

My wife & I had just finished cooking baked chicken, and were about to start watching tv. I kept getting alerts that the stove was turning on, and sometimes the oven turning on. I marked the stove alerts as “device not on” because the oven is often confused with the large stove burner. I thought Sense was confusing the heat pump with the stove/oven, then it hit me, we never turned the oven off after dinner was done cooking! We checked, and yup, the oven was still on. It would have been cycling on and off for at least an hour while we ate dinner in front of the TV.

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Sense showed that my fridge was overactive

Device: Fridge
Make: Amana
Model:
Estimated Savings:

We’re finishing up a gut renovation of our kitchen. We’re buying a new, smaller fridge for it, but we moved the old one to the basement. The fridge compressor was turning on a bunch, but it is an older fridge and we had only recently purchased the house, so I didn’t know if this was common for this older make and model. I had also noticed that the freezer had a lot of frost throughout it and the light didn’t turn on, but again, older unit and I didn’t remember if the light had worked since we bought the house. Maybe the bulb was just burnt out. I’ve only had my Sense active for a week now, but that basement fridge was one of the first devices detected. I was able to use the power graphs to see that the fridge was on for close to half the day. That I knew wasn’t right. I used this data to really inspect the fridge and discovered that although the freezer drawer would fully close, the rubber gasket wasn’t sealing the top of the unit. I started to push and pull on the gasket and on the drawer itself, and bam! it dropped slightly onto the track. When I closed the door this time, the gasket fully engaged.