At the TechAdvantage conference this week, Sense is debuting its partner program for rural cooperatives. Through the program, cooperatives can offer the Sense Home Energy Monitor to their members at a significant discount and take advantage of real-time insights into energy flows at the grid edge.
The Sense Home Energy Monitor uses high resolution waveform processing to track sub-second differences in current and voltage. Using this data, utilities can gain insights into home energy use to improve customer service in areas such as resolving high bill complaints. Sense also offers the potential for forecasting of loads and solar production, DER integration and control, voltage analysis, and targeting system investments.
How it works
Today the Sense Home Energy Monitor is installed in a home’s electric panel and connects to the home’s internet and reports energy data through the cloud to the Sense apps for iOS, Android, and the web. Since homeowners can track their home’s energy in real time right down to the second and set goals for future usage, the Sense app increases customer satisfaction while helping consumers save energy. Studies conducted by Efficiency Vermont and Alliant Energy have demonstrated potential energy savings of 6-9% among residents who installed Sense.
Sense users so far have shown to be engaged in tracking their home’s energy and activity. During an average week, 50% of Sense users open the app at least once, and those users open their app on average ten times. The monthly active users make up 75% of the customer base.
With permission from co-op members who install the Sense home energy monitor, cooperatives have access to real-time insights into energy flows at the grid edge. Cooperatives can use these insights to:
• Anticipate surges in net demand when clouds block the sun by seeing real-time views of both solar production and consumption.
• Forecast loads and solar production more accurately to target investments in distribution systems. For instance, Sense can identify EV adoption and charging patterns.
• Improve ability to promote demand flexibility through direct insights into members’ solar production, electric vehicle charging, energy efficiency and demand response.
• Manage peak loads by prompting members with real-time alerts, then tracking actual reductions by analyzing Sense home data.
• Verify end-of-line voltage in support of Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) and distribution switching, and diagnose voltage sags across the grid.
• Analyze waveform data to anticipate and avoid outages due to factors such as equipment failures.
— Solar Builder magazine
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