Sense alerted me to an incorrect solar configuration

Device: Mystery Device
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Having just moved to Hawaii, I was flabbergasted by my first utility bill. The first order of business was to install two Sense monitors (I have two 200A panels and one 100A panel for the swimming pool). The second order of business was to look into installing a PV system. Fast forward a few months and we got a system designed and installed. It consisted of 62 solar panels and 4 Tesla Powerwalls. In order to minimize the reconfiguration of the electrical panels we decided to only back up the 200A panels in case of an outage. This left the swimming pool pump and heater off the backup system, which is fine. Importantly though, those items would be fed from the solar and battery. They are the biggest sinks for energy so I wanted to make sure that we used solar/battery for it as we don’t have net metering here. Installers turned on the solar system and everything was working fine. However, using my Sense monitor on the pool panel I saw that when the heater was on I was drawing that power from the grid instead of from the solar/battery. If I didn’t have that insight I would have gotten a big surprise at the end of the month with all that power drawn from the grid. I called my installer and explained what Sense was showing me and he sensed [;-)] that I knew what I was talking about. He came back and reconfigured the CTs and now my pool panel uses our plentiful solar power.

Avoided a fire and loss of property

Device: Mystery Device
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The following is a situation that Sense helped me resolve that not only saved money, but more importantly possibly avoided fire and loss of property as well as life because of a defective electrical device.

With the help of Sense, I was able to uncover a problem that existed for months. I run Sense in a MUCH different way than anyone else does, but it serves my purposes perfectly. I installed Sense INSIDE a commercial Onan diesel generator for load management purposes while the genset connected to a house with multiple electrical services. While testing using Sense, it recorded very frequent power spikes of about 1.2kw that were happening continuously 24×7. This has been happening for months. I was able to narrow it down to one of the apartments and discovered it was an electric heater that was plugged in and forgotten about. I learned that the electric heater may have been defective since the power cycles were happening way to frequent. Once the heater was disconnected, the power meter flat lined as it should since no additional loads were turned on during the test. I would have never found this problem if I was using analog meters since the blimps of the needle would be barely seen and not recorded for future analysis. If the heater was left alone for weeks or months and if it was defective could a house fire resulted? Possibly. Did this test end up saving money after eliminating the frequent and continuous 1.2kw spikes? YES.

Sense finds free water for my garden and yard

Device: AC
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My house has a basement sump pump. I was looking for a way to monitor the pump via Sense to make sure it’s working and get advanced notice of potential pump failures so my first indicator of a problem wouldn’t be a wet basement. Using Sense, I was able to set up an alert to notify me if the pump hasn’t run for a defined period of time. But during this process, I realized that the pump runs a lot in brief cycles of on-off. I noticed it runs 300-500 times per month during June and July.

Sense helped track a problem with our pump.

Device: AC
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The component that turns our pump on and off has had some issues lately. Occasionally the contacts don’t close and the pump continues to run when it shouldn’t. Being able to identify this problem using Sense has done more than save money on energy; it may have saved our pump’s life expectancy.

Electrical spikes

Device: Other Appliance
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When I had my solar system put on my house in Florida about two years ago, it came with Sense. While the solar was being put on I also had the electrical enclosure and the circuit breakers replaced. Within days, I noticed electrical spikes while observing the electrical draw in the Sense app on my phone. I finally called an electrician to look into it.

Turns out, the installer for the electrical enclosure used wire nuts rather than NSI connectors. My high voltage oven and air conditioner lines were both arcing, the wire caps showed signs of overheating in one case melting. The electrician put on NSI connectors, the spikes disappeared, and a house fire was avoided.

In Florida, I have ceiling fans in every room and the Lanai. They are always on. Because of Sense, I have my Always On down to about 300W and I can see the house is well below average usage.

Heating element in my dryer not turning off

Device: Dryer
Make: Samsung
Model: DV316LES/XAA
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Two days ago after running a load in the dryer, my daughter tried putting in a new load, but the dryer wouldn’t start back up. The cabinet was also very hot to the touch. It got so hot that it blew the thermal fuse, likely preventing a fire.

Checking the device power-meter in the Sense app, I noticed the dryer’s heating element (about 5000 watts), had been on for about 45 minutes. From historical Sense data, the “normal” for this dryer it to turn the heating element on for about 1 minute, then off for about 1 minute. So 45 minutes of continual on-time was very uncharacteristic for the heating element to run.

Sense saved my water well pump

Device: Water Pump
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My well pump (2000 watts) had been running for a day straight when we weren’t even home. I immediately shut the well off remotely (I use a Third Reality switch to turn off the well pump switch) and started investigating once I got home.

Upon investigation, I realized that the well pump never turned off because it wasn’t making enough pressure to trigger itself off. I opened the well head cap to see that water was spraying out of the pitless adapter (part of the pipe that takes water from the well and sends it underground to my house) and back down into the well.

If Sense didn’t alert me to this odd usage, the well pump would’ve stayed on the whole time I was out of state, and likely would’ve burned the well pump out. My house wasn’t losing water, just wasn’t making enough pressure to turn the well off, so I doubt we would’ve realized it. Once we fixed the pipe, we were back to full pressure and a huge electric cost savings.

Saved thousands in meat, maybe my house.

Device: Freezer
Make: Montgomery Wards
Model:
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While on vacation I opened the sense app several times to see my solar production and noticed a 1500watt other bubble that on. The bubble kicked on the day after we left and was on all day which puzzled me. The next day, I sent my brother to my house and had him flip breakers off one at a time until the bubble disappeared. Which lead him to my pantry which had an old Montgomery wards standup deep freezer. The deep freezer’s compressor locked up and didn’t have any type thermal overload. It was also full of food. My brother said he couldn’t touch the compressor and even the cord was really hot. He moved the meat (1 cow, 1 pig and random stuff) into several family members freezers. The new freezer I purchased also takes about 15% of the energy to run than the old one. This was also before labs…. My brother also bought a sense meter a few days later.