RIE + Sense: Energy Insights for Your Home

Sense is an iOS and Android mobile app that helps you easily manage your home energy use directly from your phone. It uses software that analyzes your home’s electrical currents over 1 million times each second, giving you a complete, real-time picture of your home’s energy use, as well as identifying specific appliances by recognizing their unique electrical signature.

From day one, Sense provides a real-time view of your overall energy use, with tips on how to save and be more efficient. It works in the background to automatically identify common devices that cycle on and off frequently. Over time, Sense gets smarter, telling you which devices are used, how often, and for how long. These details empower you to find ways to save energy, and money.

These are some examples of how Sense helps you save:

• Right from the beginning, you’ll be able to see how much energy your whole home consumes, helping you track and understand if you’re using more energy than the average home in your area during peak, and off-peak hours
• As Sense works in the background, you’ll be able to tell Sense about your home and the devices you use most. Sense will immediately provide you with helpful insight into how much energy these common devices use, giving you tips to help you save from the start
• Many devices in your home consume energy even when not in use. Sense helps you identify these sources of energy waste, giving you insight into which should be replaced or upgraded
• In the summer, you might measure how much less electricity is used by fans than air conditioners and decide to incorporate attic or ceiling fans into your home’s cooling system to save money, while staying comfortable
• You can learn what it costs to run the washing machine and decide to run a few full loads instead of several small ones. You can also use Sense to measure how washing in cold water saves electricity. Or that washing during off-peak hours also helps you save

Yes, getting the Sense Home app and your advanced meter connected to your home’s Wi-Fi is needed to provide you with the powerful, personalized home energy insights you expect from us. Sense’s Wi-Fi requirements are no different from many other IoT devices you may already have in your home, such as having a modern Wi-Fi router and strong signal strength between your electric meter and the router. If you want more particular information on Wi-Fi requirements, visit help.sense.com.

You’re placing your trust in us, when you invite us into your homes. We don’t take this lightly. We’re committed to protecting your privacy and safety by granting you full control over the information you choose to share, while relentlessly striving to ensure your data is secure. This involves several precautions:

• All communications between the Sense-enabled electric meter, the Sense cloud servers, and Sense Home app are encrypted. We use AES 128-bit encryption and TLS/SSL (HTTPS)
• Sense stores all data in cloud servers using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Your home’s device data is collected and processed by automated systems that power the Sense Home app, send notifications, and generate email reports. Access to these production systems is limited to a very small group of Sense engineering team members
• Personally identifiable information (PII), like email address and account information, is stored in systems that are physically separate from application data. Sense Support employees will, on occasion, need to access some of your data to troubleshoot an issue, but we will always ask you for permission before we do
• Sense never shares any of the accumulated data with 3rd parties unless a user explicitly opts-in. You could be offered such a choice on a case-by-case basis, such as a utility wanting to provide discounts/services to its customers in exchange for sharing limited power data

No. The Sense app is free for customers with an advanced meter — there are no subscription fees.

Your Sense Home app is uniquely tuned to your home—its electrical setup, devices, and appliances. When you move, you’ll need to reset your account to make way for a new Sense system in your next home. This reset will erase all data, so if you want to compare energy costs between homes, be sure to download your data first.

In your new home, if there’s a Sense-enabled advanced meter, you can connect to it using your mobile phone to set up a new system.  

Learn More

The Sense support team is ready to help answer any questions you might have.

Visit help.sense.com.

The Sense Home App for advanced meters doesn’t currently support solar monitoring. We’re actively working on this feature and will share updates when it becomes available.

To complete setup, you’ll need to be within fifteen feet of your meter to connect. During pairing, keep you phone or tablet relatively still, facing the meter directly (heavy walls and building materials may interfere with the signal). While some customers are able to do so indoors near their outside meter, most users do report needing to go outside to complete the setup process.

Rhode Island Energy does not share individual account billing information with Sense. The bill forecast feature within the Sense Home app takes an average rate across the state you reside to determine an estimated bill, but not your actual bill. Sense Home app users can adjust their rate within the app by following this help article. To see your near real-time usage and how it compares to your previous bills, please visit your Rhode Island Energy Account.