The Sense Energy Monitor – Is Worth The Money?

The Sense energy monitor is easy for me to recommend to friends and family. Sense’s ability to track and analyze your home’s electricity consumption patterns over time so that you can see what appliances use the most electricity in your household. It also provides detailed information about how much money could be saved if certain appliances were unplugged when not in use.

If you happen to be a solar owner, this energy monitor is even more helpful. You can tell how much energy your solar panels are generating with the energy monitor. 

Home energy monitor lets you know when appliances are energy hogs. Imagine having this information so that you can unplug them or reduce energy usage by, for example, changing the temperature on your hot water heater. Sometimes, it’s impossible to reap the savings goals without replacing old inefficient appliances. Sense does provide an insight into energy usage and money savings that many homeowners don’t currently have.

If you are curious about how Sense does this magic, let’s jump into the energy monitor’s features.

How Does Sense Home Energy Monitor Work?

Sense monitors are tiny boxes that hide underneath an electrical panel. Sense measures energy usage by attaching Current transformers (CTs) monitors to the main power lines of your home. Monitors can pick up energy readings for every electrical device in your home without creating a lot of additional individual plugs for every outlet.

Energy monitor recognizes and interprets unique electrical signals to identify appliances. Sense Energy Monitor uses electrical waveform recognition to identify those energy hogs, like air conditioners or ovens, from energy-efficient devices, like LCD televisions. By doing this, Monitors can identify how much energy appliances use over time and provide information to become more energy efficient.

The energy monitor sends all the energy usage information to its app to have real-time data access to your energy usage and energy cost.

How Does Sense Save Money By Analyzing Energy Usage?

Now that we have a basic understanding of how the energy monitor works. How can you use a Sense energy monitor to save you money?

An energy monitor can save you money by giving energy consumption reports that show you how much electricity each device uses.

Only the best Energy Monitor can also give energy savings suggestions. For example, what types of devices use the most energy and reduce energy costs for those appliances or equipment. 

If your hot water heater is energy-intensive, the Sense energy monitor users might decrease the temperature. This can help you determine how much power it uses and save money by reducing energy costs and usage.

In addition, the best Sense Energy System saves the homeowner by supplying comparisons that are done between similar periods, even typical homes in your area.

What Are Some Of The Features Of The Best Sense Energy Monitor?

• Appliance Recognition
• Sense Labs
• Mobile App
• Notifications

Sense Monitor offers many great features for reducing that pesky electricity bill. The energy monitor itself has built-in WiFi, allowing you to monitor energy use with the Sense app on your iPhone or Android device.

It’s great for smart home integration with a whole home energy monitor.

Sense allows homeowners to easily track energy consumption usage by the appliance and compare between devices. 

It also takes a daily snapshot of each devices’ usage, creating a historical timeline of energy use. This allows homeowners to keep track of their energy use and identify patterns in some appliances or devices that might be causing higher-than-usual power bills.

Appliance Recognition For Real-Time Energy Monitoring

Various monitoring systems for appliances can plug into each electrical circuit on the house. Sense is different in that it gives the homeowner an overall picture of the energy consumption on the home. With its device-level detail, Sense is one of a few systems that can identify which devices are using most of your electricity. Sense allows you to pair with an appliance’s “real” name, not just how much energy it uses.

Check Out The Sense Monitor Labs!

A motor is one of the most prevalent components in many electronic devices. The sump pump, for example, is powered by an electrical motor. Some of the most important motors in your home operate vital appliances like an HVAC pump or sump pump.

Even if enough voltage at terminals, when a stall occurs, the motor does not turn; this can serve as a warning a failure of the motor is around the corner.

Luckily, the Sense Labs feature monitors these stalls and can send alerts to your smartphone if a motor stalls. When a stall occurs, make sure to look at the motor to see if there’s anything wrong!

With Sense Labs, you can get proactive instead of reactive with your appliances. This is important because it can extend the life of your device and potentially save you money on repairs.

Sense Mobile App and Notifications

Many Energy Monitors apps can track homes’ energy efficiency using individual plugs to track historical usage.

Sense is different and uses interactive bubbles to visually represent your home’s energy use. It automatically assigns each appliance or device to one of these bubbles.

Each time the Sense detects the device through machine learning, the process takes time. It calculates and updates the total amount of energy used. You can then tap a given bubble to see your energy use and other related stats, like how much money you save when you turn off device X or what time of day it’s used most frequently.

Other Sense app features include,

• energy reports
• energy comparisons
• energy alerts on changes in significant usage
• device detection
• energy goals

Monitor Solar Generation With Sense Flex

If you have solar panels or looking to add them in the future, you are in luck with the Sense Flex energy monitor. Sense energy monitor allows you to monitor energy generated from your solar panel by measuring energy generated and energy saved.

Display solar power production and real-time power consumption all in one screen. Simple but effective energy monitor for solar energy.

Sense Flex can be set to maximize energy use by working out the best time of day to charge and slowing down the AC as needed.

Smart Home Compatibility

Sense energy monitors can integrate smoothly with smart home devices such as Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT.

Simply ask Alexa, Alexa, ask Sense how much power I’m currently using?

Energy-saving smart home devices such as Philips Hue lights or TP-Link Smart Plugs can be monitored with the energy monitor energy devices for a high-tech energy-efficient home.

Energy Consumption Tracking With Energy Goals

The energy monitoring system can set goals for energy consumption and track how you are doing against them. 

You can also see how much energy is being consumed by the month, week, or day which helps you identify when usage is high or low. It shows electricity consumption, but you can see how much energy was generated in a given period if you have solar panels.

The Sense Energy goal is a matter of selecting what you want to track. You can choose to see if your home uses more or less energy than it did in the past month, week, or day. If this seems confusing, you’ll have the option of just “setting things up.

Cool! How do I set that up?

To set up goals, go to the Goals section on the Dashboard and click “Add New.” Next, select what you want to track, such as how much energy you use or the total of all your solar panels. You’ll be taken to a page where you can set up your goal.

For instance, if I try to reduce my energy consumption by 10% next month, I would enter a reduced kilowatt amount and the date range.

You can use either a daily, weekly, monthly, or a particular cycle time frame for setting up your goals, depending on how often you’d like to check in on them.

Once you’ve set it up, you’ll be able to see where you’re at as far as meeting those goals, and if you haven’t hit them, you’ll have a chance to turn things around.

Installation

Installing the sense energy monitor is not hard. Still, if you’re not comfortable around electricity, you may want to hire a pro. The installation requires removing the main breaker panel cover and applying CT on primary downstream circuits.

Refer to this earlier blog post and video for more explanation on installation. I would highly recommend ensuring a good WiFi connection at the main circuit breaker panel. There is an external antenna, but I had trouble with this install portion. I ended up having to put a WiFi extender closer to the breaker panel to ensure I had a good signal.

The verdict

Sense is a mobile app and energy monitor that can keep you on top of your home’s energy usage. It allows you to set goals for yourself or family members, detect devices in the house with machine learning technology.

The Sense Flex device also monitors solar power generation from panels and how much money one saves by turning off specific devices during various day hours. 

While it does require some installation work, this device will help save time and potentially even more money over the long term.

If you have experience with the sense energy monitor, please share it in the comments below.