Anyone use a home electrical monitor like Sense?

[beatle]

I'm planning to hook up my truck to the house via a transfer switch, and I'd like to get some more insight as to the circuits I should consider selecting as candidates. I'm also curious what my actual power consumption is for certain appliances like my microwave, furnace, media center, lights, and AC. It'll also let me see how much power I use to charge the truck since Ford hasn't opened their API to 3rd parties.

Sense seems to be the most popular system for monitoring energy use, but I also see IoTaWatt, and I'm fairly sure there are others that I haven't researched. Have any of you used one or both of these systems? What did you think?

Sponsored

 

[tkittlitz]

I have the Sense energy monitor with solar option. I use it mostly to monitor how much solar I am exporting, but it does work well for letting me know how much power I am using. The AI based learning is pretty good. But it often can not tell the difference between something like a toaster oven and an air fryer (The loads are just to similar to tell the difference)

 

[beatle]

Are you able to manually select the load and assign it a name if powered on individually or does it always confuse the two as effectively the same load?

 

[RickLightning]

You might want to check with your electric utility. Mine has an app, with a module that connects to the internet, that shows real time usage. 6 months free, then $1.99 (I'm still in my 6 months free).

In addition, anything that plugs in can be read using a device like a Kill-A-Watt. My library loans these out.

 

[beatle]

My local utility is kind of behind on smart meters and energy monitoring. Hopefully I'll be getting a smart meter this year, though their rollout map is too small to actually read. They make no mention of anything beyond the meter.

I have a kill-a-watt which is nice, but it's only useful on one receptacle at a time, and I can't use them on 240v circuits. My HVAC is on a 30A circuit which technically fits under the 7200w cap as long as I ration other loads while it's running. I'd love to know how many amps it's actually pulling.

 

[tkittlitz]

Are you able to manually select the load and assign it a name if powered on individually or does it always confuse the two as effectively the same load?

I have named the units separately (while the other is unplugged) but it always seems to choose the toaster oven label for the air fryer (the toaster oven was added first to my list of items). The resistive element's in those two items are just so close that it can't tell the difference.

Edit for spelling

 

[vandy1981]

Sense seems to be the most popular system for monitoring energy use, but I also see IoTaWatt, and I'm fairly sure there are others that I haven't researched. Have any of you used one or both of these systems? What did you think?

I have had a Sense unit for a few years but don't really find it that useful. You have to wait for the software to identify devices through an algorithm and the process can take days to months. You also can't have more than one monitor per account and can't monitor consumption of individual circuits.

I'm planning on switching over to the Emporia Vue system when I get some time. It works with solar and allows you to monitor individual circuits. They also sell an EVSE that can be configured to charge only when excess solar energy is being produced. I don't have a use for that feature, but it seems pretty cool.

 

[beatle]

Ah, I had not seen Emporia Vue. Nice that it's a lot less expensive than Sense. It may also be better for my use case to monitor power usage on a per-circuit basis as that's how I'll select my circuits for the transfer switch.

 

[Mr. Flibble]

Ah, I had not seen Emporia Vue. Nice that it's a lot less expensive than Sense. It may also be better for my use case to monitor power usage on a per-circuit basis as that's how I'll select my circuits for the transfer switch.

I came into this thread to recommend the Emporia - it is much more accurate than the Sense,

 

[vandy1981]

Ah, I had not seen Emporia Vue. Nice that it's a lot less expensive than Sense. It may also be better for my use case to monitor power usage on a per-circuit basis as that's how I'll select my circuits for the transfer switch.

Emporia seems to be a nice compromise between iotawatt and sense. Another thing to consider is that sense and emporia are both cloud based and don't have great integration with smart home hubs. If sense or emporia go bankrupt you're stuck with useless equipment whereas iotawatt can be used locally.

 

[gorwell]

I came into this thread to recommend the Emporia

Emporia also makes an EV Charger:

https://shop.emporiaenergy.com/collections/ev-chargers/products/smart-home-ev-charger-ul-listed

If you have solar + emporia monitoring and EV charger, you can set emporia to match the excess solar to charge your car.

I have the Emporia charger and solar, but don't really have space for the clamps in my panel for the monitoring. Might try to jerry rig something at some point.

I bought the Emporia b/c it was the cheapest 48amp charger and it had on the fly amp changes in the app as I don't need to charge @ the max all the time, but I like the option. Only downside is that the cable is pretty thick.

 

[PungoteagueDave]

I use The Energy Detective (TED) system to monitor 64 separate circuits at my home/farm. It is great, handles five individual inverters on the solar panels, and is set up with CTs on three separate electrical panels in the barn, boat house, and main house. We have it set up to consolidate all the information and run graphs and let us know where all of our uses are, big and small.

TED just helped me identify a bad inverter on our oldest panels, and has helped cut electrical usages in several places that we had no idea were hogs. For example, our 8-cylinder propane backup generator has a block heater that ran 24/7 year-round. We did not even know that it existed. TED told us that it was costing a lot even when temps were moderate, so we added a thermostat control that now lets it turn on only when approaching freezing.

https://www.theenergydetective.com/...yK02Yg_pDWEKO7wQzvEeEa7VkBUaEtSQaAmTeEALw_wcB

 

[AnotherEVTrucker]

I use a Sense with solar. It does a very nice job showing solar production and overall usage which is all I needed. The device detection has been a huge disappointment.

On the solar side, the solar-edge inverter came with a charger. It might be able to charge directly from solar. I’ll may post something once I have an EV / Lightning delivered.

 

[juddisjudd]

I have sense and for a while it detected my Tesla Model 3 but that doesn’t work anymore. I like sense but you can’t count on the detections.
For my tesla I have TelsaFi.com that keeps track of most things car related. I wonder if there is something similar for Ford.

 

[beatle]

I also use TeslaFi (and love it) but I haven't heard about Ford opening their API to 3rd parties. Heck, I'd be willing to pay Ford for a similar data gathering service. It'd be a dream for fleet owners.

I am leaning more towards IoTaWatt since I already run a number of IT services at home and it looks pretty flexible in being able to monitor a lot of individual circuits. It's not inexpensive though - once you add on a bunch of CTs the price is more than Sense.

I was not able to find any info on TED. It looks like they are between versions right now and their site has no info on their latest product.

Sponsored