I was very excited to see the long awaited Sense home energy monitor arrive in the mail the other day. Had to wait for a quiet day to install – did not want to disrupt much when turning the power off.

Installation was a breeze – much less than 30 minutes. It was fortunate I had a spare 50A/240V breaker from a kiln that has long since disappeared. The only difficulties I had were connecting it to WiFi. I tried two different networks and it required the password to be entered two times each go around due to it “timing out” the first try. Not too much of a pain, unless you have lengthy and difficult to type (on your iPhone) passwords.

I anxiously wait for the next few days to pass to see what it learns about my house. But, even without much data capture, it provided good, actionable information. The rise/dip in watts in the picture below is me turning on and then off the basement lights (hi-hats). Also, 760w/65w ~= 12. I have 18 lights in the basement, so I know six are not working. I went downstairs to confirm and indeed, six are burnt out. I will replace them with LEDs!