How do you monitor electricity usage?

I have had a Sense for over 4 years now and I still enjoy it very much. I have used it to reduce overall energy consumption in my home by helping raise awareness of "Always On". More on Always On in a moment.

My one warning - its not a "Buyer Beware", but more "Buyer be aware". Sense's ability to live up to its marketing hype with device detection is affected by many variables. Some homes have good results. Others don't. I've had reliable detections that work great for a while, and then stop working when the seasons change.
Another thing to keep in mind. We tend to think of appliances in their whole. "The Fridge". "The Washer". Sense uses Machine learning algorithms to detect devices. Notice I said devices, not appliances. Your Fridge is actually a whole bunch of different parts that do different things at different times. Sense may detect your "Fridge" but it has actually only detected the compressor. It may not detect the defroster, or the ice maker. Or it may detect those things, but not necessarily as "Fridge". There are tools to allow you to merge detected devices. So if it finds "Fridge" and then it finds "Light" and you know that "Light" is actually the Fridge Light, you can merge them together so it all gets tracked together.

This leads me to the next item. Sense doesn't always know what its detected. It knows it found something, and it can generally put a category to it (Motor, Heating Device, Light etc..) but the leg work on finding out which motor, or which light may be on you. Sometimes this is really easy. You turn on your bathroom vanity lights and see "Light" turn on in Sense, and you know and can then rename "Light" to "Bathroom Vanity". Other times, its harder to track down, especially when the device detected is a part of an appliance. This is where the active community forums comes in. Sense's Machine Learning is good, but at times, a human is better. Frequently people will post the graphic of the device that was detected, and other community members can chime in with suggestions. "I have a Garbage Disposal that has a waveform like that. Do you have a Garbage Disposal?"

While I say a human eye is sometimes better, this is another item to mention. Training Sense is NOT something you can do. People always ask "can I train it". The short answer is no. Sense's ML system will do its work and find devices on its own. There is no training mode. Turning something on and off a bunch of times to try to "help" Sense see it is not always useful.

Now, back to Always On. While my device detection has been so so, the Always On feature is what has really saved me the most money. After running Sense for about 48 hours, it will come up with an Always On number. This is basically the "low water" mark for electric usage in your home. At any given point in time, you are always using around xxx Watts. If you have an always on of 100w, using the average US rate of electric of 13.28c/kWh, that is $9.70/month or $116/year on your electric bill. While Sense cannot help you identify the Always On devices, just the awareness of the always on is enough to help you start making changes (if you want) to your home. Seeing my always on power of 600w (~$700/year) made me start looking for things that didn't turn off. I had a fan in my basement that ran 24/7 that I had never thought about. Now that fan is on a timer and only runs 12 hours a day.
My TV stereo system which was always on is now on a power switch. Savings of 15w of Always On power. And the list can go on. Without too much effort, and more importantly, without impacting the comfort of the home, I have cut that always on number down to 300w.

A last benefit of Always On. Once you learn your homes baseline, if that always on changes significantly in one direction or another, it can help to notify you that something is amiss. Always on goes down? Maybe a failed pool recirculating pump. Always On goes up a lot? Someone left the fan in the guest bedroom on. And so on.

So all in all, I highly recommend a Sense. Whether it detects many of your home devices, or you just use it as a live instant power meter, it can bring savings and knowledge to your electric consumption in your home.

This approach takes a wider look at your home's energy use.

Devices that monitor whole home energy use are called power monitors. You can enter information about the devices you want to monitor as well as information about your energy bills, and the monitor will let you know how much electricity your home is using and what that is costing you. The Home Joule plugs into an outlet and combines your home energy consumption rate with info about your local utility costs, time of day, and weather to tell you if you're using too much energy. There is also the Power2Save, which hooks up to the electrical panel of your home and displays how much your current electricity use is costing. Switch off a light, see the cost go down. And a newer device on the market is the Black & Decker Power Monitor, which uses a wireless sensor next to the meter to feed information to a portable monitor inside your home. You can use it to find out the best times to switch devices, appliances, and lights off for the most savings.

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