The energy use of your devices is always changing. Take, for instance, a smart TV. It may draw 1-2W of Always On energy, and use 100W when you’re watching TV. However, sometimes your smart TV will quietly wake itself up to check for software updates or refresh your media content. In this state, it may spike up to 10-20 watts for a brief period of time.
We call this last state “Standby” — not quite Off, not quite “Always On,” but not quite On either.
When you’re looking to get a quick picture of your energy usage, devices in this middle state can add noise and prevent you from seeing the true energy hogs that are costing you money. With our new Standby state, you can fine tune how your smart plug and dedicated circuit devices appear in the app, giving you the visibility you need to take control.
When a device reaches this threshold, it will be considered ‘On’ and a bubble will appear.
When a device is in Standby, you will not see a bubble for it, but you can quickly see if it’s in Standby via the global Devices page or on the specific page for the smart plug or dedicated circuit device.
If you want to see every last watt as a bubble in the Sense app, you can turn this all the way down, but we suggest trying out some different values to help improve your Sense experience.
To set it — Look for the big spikes in the power meter and think about them in relation to your actual use of the device. Do you care when the device is silently sipping a few watts in the background? Or do you just want to know when it’s drawing major wattage? We set a default of 8W and that should work well for a lot of devices, but consider tailoring it to the specific devices in your home.
Please wait while you are redirected to the right page...