This is Sense, a clever little box that will give you unprecedented insight into your home's
entire power usage.
I've been using it for two months and I like it, but the pace at which is learns is a bit
frustrating.
It's installed in your breaker box.
A couple of wires run out to breakers to power Sense itself and then these clamps are put
around the two hot wires coming out of your meter.
They electromagnetically listen to the power flowing into your house and that the basis
of the magic it does.
I installed it myself and you probably can too, but remember to turn off the power before
wiring it up and do get an electrician if you're not confident doing it.
It runs over WiFi and there is an extension cable to mount the antenna on the outside
of the breaker box if needed, although it worked fine for me mounted inside.
The data starts flowing as soon as it's up and running.
At it's most basic level, Sense will tell you the entire amount of power being consumed
by your house.
It's a basic watt reading and immediately you can watch it rise and fall as different
appliances come on and off.
One set of lights I had used 180 watts - quite the contrast to the LED bulbs elsewhere in
my house.
It's a fun game and you start to learn about how much power you're using but the real magic
takes a few weeks to begin.
As Sense starts to observe your house, it starts to look for the fingerprints of certain
electrical appliances.
After a couple of weeks, you'll start to see it identify certain things and provide an
extra level of information about them.
For example, when they are on and off and how much power they are using over the last
week or month.
It's really interesting data and you can do other things, such as set alerts.
I have one if my refrigerator is off for more than an hour.
But, as good as it is, it takes a long time for Sense to discover these things.
That's my biggest complaint about it and there doesn't seem to be a way to speed it up.
When I was at CES I met with Sense and told them this.
They understand but explained it's slow because it's actually pretty difficult to do.
To me it's obvious that, say, my microwave is on because I pressed the button but to
Sense it's just another change in the electricity consumption of my house.
It uses machine learning to try and spot patterns and figure out what is on and off.
Phillips told me it's a bit like listening to a room full of people talking and trying
to figure out what each one is saying.
At first it's just noise.
Some appliances have tell-tale fingerprints -- the equivalent of, say, a distinctive accent
in the room full of people -- that make them easier to spot, but most aren't so easy to
distinguish.
In the two months I've been using Sense, it's identified nine appliances and the always
on group.
Those nine are things like the refridgerator, hot water boiler, rice cooker, those power-hungry
bathroom lights, my furnace and oven.
They are all pretty power hungry appliances.
Something like a Google Home speaker or the microwave I don't use much, it's going to
be difficult.
Everything it hasn't identified is divided into two buckets - always on, the constant
draw of power consumed by your home no matter the time of day, and the rest.
This always on consumption is pretty interesting.
In my house it's around 300 watts and costs me about $30 per month, so using this I've
been trying to reduce it to save money.
If there is a particular appliance you want to monitor, there is a way.
You'll need a TP-Link Kasa or Wemo smart plug with energy monitoring.
Plug the device in via the smart plug and it will talk to Sense and send over power
data.
I have it on my living room entertainment gadgets.
Here's what it looks like when I switch the TV on.
It will track this collective usage and give me an estimate of how much power this uses
per month.
Sense works with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.
You can ask things like if the water heater is on or how much energy you're consuming
or generating, if you have solar.
And so that's Sense.
Despite the frustrating pace of automated discovery, I found the Sense unit quite useful.
With a bit of manual detective work, you'll be able to figure out what a bunch of appliances
use in your house and track down where your wasting energy.
This means your $299 investment in Sense has the ability to pay for itself if you put in
the work.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about Sense is what it could become.
More users will mean more data and better detection of devices.
And with that could come much more advanced notifications, such as noticing changes in
patterns of power usage that might indicate faults developing.