Fridges gone wild!

Device: Fridge
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I have 3 refrigerators in my house. One is a kitchen sized fridge/freezer and the other two are smaller wine-cooler style fridges. It was surprising to compare the energy usage of these fridges. The kitchen fridge is an Energy Star rated unit and Sense showed that it is continually cycling on and off. The others are less efficient. Sense made me think about these fridges. Are they operating efficiently? Are they energy hogs? Do I even need them all? I put a temperature probe in each fridge and was shocked to discover that the temperatures were all over the map. The fridge part of one of the smaller units was at 32F (freezing!), and the kitchen one was way too warm (42F). Over a period of a few days I was able to set the temperatures correctly to a recommended 37F. While it’s not easy to estimate how much energy this will save, I now know that these fridges are at the correct temperature. Sense made me think about how efficient everything in my house is. I’d never questioned the temperature of my fridges before.

Water heater standby costs

Device: Water Heater
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In March I concluded that a timed water heater 12 hours On/Off saved 6.25 KwH per month.

I have also calculated that my cost to heat water is 1.3606 cents per gallon

Sense let me know I was leaving the hose on.

Device: Water Pump
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Day 4 of Sense. It detected the Well Pump yesterday. Sense showed around 12 noon the pump was coming on every 30 or so minutes but I wasn’t using water, turns out I was out watering and left the hose on, there are small leaks in the nozzle and at the house connection which is the cause. Turned that hose off!

Sense saved me from a fire.

Device: Freezer
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Sense alerted me to abnormal cycle rate of my deep chest freezer. Come to find out that it was shorting out and the insulation was slowly burning each time. It was all black and charred and I thought the burning smell was the fan above it. This saved my house as it’s a new freezer with R-600 which is explosive. Thank you sense and saving my house I JUST bought 3 weeks ago.

Air handler fan wastes energy

Device: Heat Pump
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Sense saved me about $500 the first day it was installed.

Even before Sense had identified any devices, I started looking around for devices that might be wasting energy. We’d just replaced our HVAC system with an energy-efficient air source heat pump system and were looking forward to realizing savings over our old oil heat and AC units. I discovered that the air handler fan for the upstairs was set to constantly run at medium speed. Using the Sense app I discovered that this was using about 450W just moving air around. It being Spring, there was no heat or cooling needed in the house. I switched the fan off and saw a dramatic drop in power usage. Without Sense, I would never have known that this so-called energy-efficient system was wasting so much energy! While I have a long way to go, Sense has given me the information I needed to take charge of excessive energy usage in my home. The fan is now set to Auto mode, and although it’s still using energy, it’s far less than the 450W if was using at constant medium speed.