As a seasoned solar panel installer in Calgary, Panel Upgrade Experts advises its customers to keep an eye on their solar energy production and consumption using the Sense application.
This article will cover how Sense technology works and explain how you may save money with it.
What is Sense?
Sense is a smart, machine-learning home device. It connects to your house’s circuit breaker panel and immediately starts tracking and classifying the electricity used by your home appliances and devices. This technology aims to assist you in spotting problems and modifying your energy habits to save money on your power bill.
How does Sense work?
A Sense box is installed inside your home’s electrical panel by a licensed electrician. If you have solar panels, it has an additional port that can be linked to optional detector clamps that attach to the wires from your solar inverter. After the monitor is put into place, it only takes thirty minutes for it to start detecting electric current flowing in.
Data collecting
Sense is trained using machine learning to recognize the “electronic signatures” of a variety of appliances and devices. Sense is the most effective at detecting appliances that consume a lot of power, such as a toaster, water heater, air conditioning unit, or clothes dryer. All of these appliances have their own distinct energy usage patterns and are easy to identify.
Small, low-wattage devices, like game consoles or smartphones, are more difficult for the Sense device detection algorithms to classify. If you turn off all other appliances in your house and plug in just the one you want to track, it’s possible for the monitor to identify a new device.
Data monitoring
The Sense monitor connects to your Wi-Fi network and sends information to the Sense cloud. You can check all of your account’s data using the Sense app on your smartphone. In the app’s dashboard, you can view your appliances in the form of circles of various sizes and hues that correspond to their use and device type.
How can you benefit from using Sense?
Sense provides you with real-time information on solar panel energy generation and consumption. It shows you where your money’s going and allows you to make more informed decisions about your power usage.
By indicating when an appliance is broken and consuming electricity even when it’s switched off, the Sense solar energy monitor may help you save money. It may also remind you when you forget to switch something off, such as a sump pump or hair straightener that isn’t in use.
If you have solar panels, Sense measures the precise amount of energy your solar cells are generating at any moment. You may use Sense to ensure you don’t consume more power than your panels generate, so you won’t have to pay for costly energy ever again. The Sense solar energy monitor collects data and provides a chart of your power consumption over time, creating an energy usage profile on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Learn more about how the Sense solar energy monitor works on their official website.