Waiting Patiently...

The solar system is perched upon the rear roof.  The SolarEdge inverter and disconnect are mounted securely on the South wall exterior of the house near the ComEd smart meter (our electric supplier).  All of the wiring is complete and tested.

Everything is ready and awaiting the local jurisdiction building permit inspection and approval.  And after that I will need to get a go-ahead from ComEd to officially start the system.  But in the interim, I've been investigating a tool that was installed on our electrical panel at the time the solar was installed.  It is called Sense.

You may already be aware of this device, as it has been advertised more frequently lately.  The Sense device uses current sensing probes to identify within your home, individual, unique electrical signatures of the devices in your home. It uses machine learning to model the unique signatures as watt (or power) versus time plots.

Sense has a data base of wattage signatures and compares this against your homes wattage profile.  Over time, it attempts to discover major devices,  the heating, the cooling and the electronics of your home.  It suggests possibilities and it is up to you to validate what it has detected.  Once a device (such as an oven) is detected and validated (named), you can view statistics about the device.  Stats such as daily, weekly usage, cost to run the device per year and how frequently it runs.

The Always On category is interesting.  This is the collection of devices which are constantly drawing power.  Bedside clocks, routers, chargers that are always plugged in, televisions that use a small but constant level of power are all examples of this category.  Getting this down as low as possible is a goal.



In the first week of the device in our home, I have been able to identify and validate our refrigerators, the oven, Master closet lights, laundry room lights, and the main garage door.  An unusual light that was identified was the refrigerator door lights. I've been challenged by a "heater" that I have yet to validate and name.



So until the solar system is operational, I'll continue to seek and validate energy consumers in our home.  All for the benefit of energy reductions.

For those of you interested in Sense, check it out at https://sense.com/.