Sense Flex Home Energy Monitor

It does a good job telling you how much electricity you're using, but the auto-ID of devices works very poorly.

Everyone wants to save money and this device can help you do just that. The install is very easy, the instructions are well done, and the implementation of the app is excellent.I did a lot of research on this before buying, and was aware that it may take a long time for it to find some electrical loads, so I was prepared for that, but it is going to take a few months minimum for it to find most of the things in your house, and some of them will never be discovered because they do not have identifiable energy signatures. A computer, as an example, uses almost random power usage while in use and the Sense is probably never going to be able to detect that.I bought several TP-Link Kasa smart plugs which have included energy monitoring features and used those on the loads where Sense will never be able to detect them such as my TV and office computer. This does add to the cost but adds more detail to your results. Hopefully they will support other brands of smart plugs in the future.Using Sense I have been able to nibble away at my Always On power usage. Always On is things that just never completely turn off, and for me, it is the second largest consumer of power in my house. I have been able to drop that over 100 W and 24/7/365 that adds up.I've got alerts set up if my fridge or freezer run too long or not enough so hopefully I will be able to catch them if they fail before all my food spoils. I am able to control smart plugs through Sense too.Very happy with this device. I think more people should own them and be able to see what is costing them money.

Reviewed this and competing solutions. Purchased this solely because the marketing information was the most refined. So far as real product specifics neither this nor the competing solutions offered any real depth of function. Now on with my experience and lessons learned. Instructions are well written but like the marketing materials have some serious holes. 1) establish a sense account prior to installing (not mentioned as a prerequisite). Have your WiFi name and PW available and check signal strength at the panel prior to attempting install. If you have a firewall or a router with firewall capability better have your admin acct and PW ready. You may need them. 2) set up a small table near your panel because the slick marketing guys designed the installation instructions to be cute not practical. They are on a fold out poster the size of a twin sized bed sheet. Not real practical while standing in front of an open electrical panel. 3) I ordered the optional 2nd set of CT pickups to monitor a sub panel. But, installation instructions and labeling all indicate a Solar kit. Only after struggling through the on-line portion of the installation was I able to determine that they are the same. Just an additional point of confusion for the installer. Now the good stuff. Sense does sort out many of the devices within the household. Sometimes it even identifies their type properly. Buried in the application menus are various functions to assist you in identifying them and renaming them. You can set since to notify you when a known device turn on or off. This is quite useful in sorting them out and getting them renamed. Be prepared to spend a lot of time helping Sense make sense of what it finds. The individual device consumption data is quite useful. I love the interface and the fact that after a few days it starts estimating annual costs per device (pretty accurately too). Just be aware going into this that you have to put some effort into it. After 5 days it still has not found out Mai refrigerator nor our freezer. It also thinks out water well and our HVAC unit are the same device. Perhaps with more time it will figure these out. I’ll update this one n a week or two upon deciding if this is a keeper or if I’ll try another.

I am an Electrician and decided to buy this monitor for my home with solar. I hardly write reviews but I am rather impressed with this monitor. First off, it's extremely easy to install. It took me about 15min. However this is what I do for a living so I would say 30min to 1 hour install time if you're not used to being in an electrical panel. If you're handy with tools you can handle the install. If you're not handy at all I would recommend getting someone to install it. You do have to go into the main electrical panel and there are dangers if you have no clue about Electricity. The second point I wanted to make, This unit measures the voltage as well as current. This makes the unit more accurate and I can attest to this. My inverter was only a few watts off of what Sense was reading. The sense uses the current sensors and measures the voltage. The formula for Watts is Voltage multiplied by current. I know some cheaper models will not measure voltage and it just assumes it's 240V, your Voltage can vary + or - 10 volts or more. Measuring the actual voltage makes it much more accurate. All in all I think it's a good unit and if you're on the fence I would recommend it. The only thing I do not like about the sense is it would be nice to have more ports for more current sensors. For most people this unit does the Job. Thanks.

Like many others I had high hopes. I do a lot of research when purchasing things to make the best informed decision. As a matter of fact, this Sense Flex was replacing another energy monitor that came with the ATS Panel from Generac. The Generac PWRView was flawless at matching my utility companies numbers, but the software was garbage. This led me to purchase the Sense Flex. Based on the reviews online and Sense's advancement in AI, my educated decision was to go with Sense Flex... and from there it goes downhill:To start... I get the unit, open up my panel and install the device per the instructions. For install with a generator the diagram clearly shows the Flex CT Clamps on the utility side (service main) before the ATS and the main CT Clamps between the ATS and the load. Then we get to the written instructions which say to clamp the main CT clamps to the service main. Welp ... the diagram shows the Flex CT clamps connected to the service main but in writing they tell you to use the main CT clamps... Moving along! Next in writing they say that you need to connect the Flex CT to the "service line" which they show in the picture as the service main. But wait, they also say that you can connect to the generator lines that feed the ATS. Well those are completely different lines. So which is it? Well come to find out after extensive shuffling around in the panel the Main CT's need to go between the ATS and the Load and the Flex CT's need to go between the generator and the ATS. If it's any different you either get a reading of 0 or it thinks the generator is always on. To make everything so much more interesting, every time you reconfigure the CT clamps you have to data reset otherwise the device doesn't realize that you've moved things around.So now that we got the install sorted out... Time to watch the magic, or in my case, the lack of magic. Once the device is installed it's supposed to go through a signal detection phase where it starts at 0% and works its way up. Two days later I'm still stuck at 0. So I contact support. That was useless because 2 more days and there's no reply. The "community" forum is active with employees almost every hour, they are all over twitter, but it appears that no one can help you when you file a tech ticket. So I go to subscribe to the forum because that's where everyone is. Welcome to the forum, where you can't post anything until we "trust" you will be a good citizen of our lovely forum which could take days. They actually send you a message stating that when you sign up. So, strike 2. Let me call them, nope, they don't have a phone number. Strike 3, I'm done.So here I am analyzing the data to see if there's something I missed and I start to compare the Sense to the utility company. My raw numbers are way off. So I look in the Sense app and see that one of my CT clamps reports 0. I go out to the panel, give it a tap with my fist, and off we go reporting numbers again... until tomorrow, rinse and repeat. So do I have a defective CT? Maybe, let me add that to my ticket that no one will reply to. Done. Wait some more, move the clamp a few more times, no tech support. So now I can't even get an accurate reading as to basic electrical usage. This is pure khW used in a day. Even the last monitor was able to get the baseline number right.Since I received no tech support, no community support and apparently a defective product I've ordered a new one and we'll see how it works when I get it. My hopes aren't so high anymore. I'll report back with updates once I receive the new unit. Many of the reviews on here are post install when they have reporting and detection issues. I haven't been able to get that far, so I'll have more to report in due time.