Sense has updated the Sense app to track how much of a solar home’s energy is powered by the sun right now and how much is coming from the utility or going back to the grid. With this update, solar homeowners who have the Sense Solar Home Energy Monitor can instantly see when their daily activities are powered by solar, so they can save more on their electric utility bills and move toward greater reliance on their own clean energy.
Sense tells users what’s using energy in their home and how to reduce their utility bills. The Sense app is like a fitness tracker for the home, showing what’s on, what’s off and how much energy the home is using. With Sense’s insights, people can set goals to save money while making their home more efficient and safer.
To see how much money their solar panels are saving them, users can set their utility’s billing and solar energy buy-back rates in the Sense app. In many states, the utility buys back energy at a lower price than it charges for electricity. With Sense Solar, customers can determine the best balance of solar and utility power for their budget and to maximize their solar investment.
In addition to tracking in real time, homeowners can understand their solar production and usage historically, including the past day, week, month, year or utility billing period.
The updated Sense app allows Sense Solar users to:
- Visualize how their solar production and energy use flows to and from the electrical grid in real-time, in both watts and dollars.
- Set a utility buy-back rate for their solar production and compare the financial benefits of shifting loads to times of peak production versus selling energy back to the grid.
- Comply with all the energy monitoring requirements of California’s Title 24 legislation.
Sense Solar is an essential tool to comply with the energy monitoring requirements of the new Title 24 rules that take effect in California in 2020, the first state to require solar for newly built homes. The Sense app tracks information mandated by Title 24, now including:
- The PV system’s nominal kW rating;
- The number of PV modules and the nominal wattage rating of each module;
- Daily, monthly and annual kWh production in numeric and graphic formats for the system;
- Running total of daily kW production;
- Daily kW peak power production; and
- Current kW production of the entire PV system.
The new codes are expected to deliver more than $1.7 billion in net energy savings over the next 30 years and reduce carbon pollution statewide by 1.4 million metric tons.
News item from Sense
Is there any way to use Sense to trigger a wifi switch? We get 3 cents per kWhr for solar energy going into the grid and pay 12 cents for energy from the grid. We would like to use as much solar power as we can to charge our electric car and heat water in the future. We live in Texas so we will need to run the air conditioners before we charge the car.
Basically, is there any way to use the Sense output in a power management system?