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Sense finds free water for my garden and yard

Device: AC
Make:
Model:
Estimated Savings:

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.

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Heating element in my dryer not turning off

Device: Dryer
Make: Samsung
Model: DV316LES/XAA
Estimated Savings:

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.

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Dehumidifier running constantly

Device: Dehumidifier
Make: Hisense
Model: DH70K1G
Estimated Savings:

I live in a high humidity area and my crawlspace requires a dehumidifier. The settings chosen would leave it running almost constantly. It would have cost $600/year to operate. I was able to modify the settings to get it down to about $300/yr. I am planning to seal up the crawlspace and I expect to gain a little more. I never would have known it used so much power.

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Reverse power flow to Grid

Device: Other Device
Make:
Model:
Estimated Savings:

I use Sense Solar. It works well. It is very interesting to me. But my system has main solar power, sub solar power and batteries using grid-tie-inverters. Then it makes reverse power flow to Grid utility. The Sense app shows value of (a) power to grid and (b) power from grid. I checked the values of power using another power meter. It shows that (a) and (b) are reversed. This fact is not serious issue for me because I understand it.
I hope your model includes reverse power flow in machine learning.

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Hot tub is out of season

Device: Hot Tub
Make:
Model:
Estimated Savings:

I didn’t know if I was better off leaving my hot tub run all year, or drain the water and refill it.

I monitor the cost to heat my hot tub. I overlap with the waste water cost averaging my city does. That determines the price of water for the year.

I found it was better to completely drain my hot tub for 4 months and fill it, rather than leave it running at a cooler temp.

Water is more expensive than my electric!

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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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Trane XL 950 is only as good as it’s programmed

Device: Central Heat
Make: Trane
Model:
Estimated Savings:

We were seeing bills of $700 for Jan/Feb. We purchased a Trane system with the most efficient heat pump and the Cadillac of thermostats the XL950. The first winter we saw savings but nothing like we were expecting. We couldn’t figure out why this much more energy efficient system was still costing as much as it was. This is where Sense came into play. It helped me to identify times of the day when energy was spiking along with realizing our system wasn’t working as I expected.

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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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Over active Water heater

Device: Heat Pump
Make: Water furnace
Model: Series 5
Estimated Savings:

I set out to find out if my electric water heater was over active and running alot. But what I found out immediately was my gas furnace was running the geothermal heat pump all the time. So after some learning I’m looking to cut bill from 300 a month to under 100.

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Hot water circulator running at wrong time of day

Device: Water Heater
Make: Rheem
Model: Marathon 80
Estimated Savings:

I use time of day billing with my utility company to get lower rates during off peak hours. I installed a hot water circulator on my water heater to reduce water waste waiting for hot water at the tap. But I set the circulator timer to run 15 minutes every hour during peak rate hours, which caused the water heater to turn on every hour even when we weren’t using hot water! By turning off the circulator during the 8 hours of peak time the water heater only turns on if we use hot water.