Massachusetts-based home energy company Sense has introduced two projects that make homes safer and more reliable.

The first Sense Labs project is the Power Quality project that tracks variations in electricity entering the home and shows voltage data in an app so users have more insight into how their home power is functioning.

The Floating Neutral project goes a step further by identifying which homes experience power variations that indicate a fault in the power wires feeding the electrical panel, a dangerous condition called floating neutral that could cause damage to electrical devices in the home and potentially pose a fire or shock hazard.

The Sense monitor uses high-resolution voltage data and machine-learning techniques to analyse energy patterns in the home in real time. With the Floating Neutral project, Sense proactively diagnoses problems in the home that might otherwise go undetected and alerts homeowners to take action.

For Sense’s utility partners, hearing from users with insights about floating neutrals helps the utility address problems more efficiently and reduces the risk of electrical fires.

Since introducing these projects, many Sense users have taken action to remedy dangerous electrical situations they discovered in the app. One user had seen his lights flickering but didn’t realise it was a serious issue until he saw hundreds of power dips in his home’s power quality graph. Another user discovered a partial break in a neutral wire after seeing his irregular voltage patterns. Yet another was alerted to a floating neutral in the app and immediately contacted his utility to get it fixed.

Sense Labs is an invention space where the company previews features under development that can make smart homes more insightful and less wasteful than they are today. In the labs, Sense shares projects that push the boundaries of smart home innovation, moving closer to the company’s vision of a future when intelligence is built into the home itself.

With intelligence about electricity and other resources built in, smarter homes can discover problems, lower carbon emissions in coordination with the utility grid, reduce costs and automate maintenance.

The Power Quality project continuously tracks the voltage coming into the home and identifies dips and spikes. Most homes in North America have split-phase 120/240V electric service. In a split-phase 120/240V electric panel, each leg in the home’s electrical service panel should sustain a voltage of around 120V. This project identifies fluctuations outside of a normal range.

When voltage drops 10% below the normal threshold, it’s flagged as a dip. When it rises 10% above the normal range, it’s flagged as a spike. Brief voltage dips and spikes can be harmless. However, frequent dips and spikes may indicate an issue with the power feed from the utility or the wiring inside the home. The user is alerted in the app and can see how frequently the fluctuations took place, when, and how their home compares with most other Sense users.

A floating neutral occurs when the connection to the home’s neutral wire breaks or becomes loose. When this happens, the voltage on one power leg increases while voltage on the other decreases, so some electrical devices receive increased voltage, while others receive less. This condition can cause damage to appliances and potentially pose a fire or shock hazard.

In a typical US home, 240V electricity flows into the electrical panel via two power legs from a utility transformer. The phases are inverses of each other, with each carrying 120V relative to a third neutral wire. When the neutral wire breaks or becomes loose, the neutral can float. This can be a problem with the utility wiring or wiring in the electrical panel in the home.

The difference between the phases remains 240V, but the voltage on each leg is out of balance without the neutral. The lights in the home might start flickering or an outlet could be energised with up to the full 240V, which can damage devices and pose a shock or fire hazard.

Sense detects a floating neutral by seeing when the voltage on the two phases drifts away from each other. The larger the load imbalance, the more serious the issue. Users receive an alert in the app letting them know a floating neutral may have occurred in their home.

Since introducing the projects, users have experienced electrical issues that have been fixed thanks to the insights and alerts.

For example, Sense alerted Tom B about the danger of a floating neutral in his home. Tom had seen flickering lights in his home but hadn’t pinpointed the cause. He contacted his utility, which fixed a poorly connected neutral that was spliced to the main feeder wire near the pole.

Curtis K, a user in Raleigh, North Carolina, opened the project and saw 74 dips or spikes in his home’s power in the previous 30 days. After ruling out his HVAC system as the cause, he contacted his utility, Duke Energy. Utility technicians arrived quickly and found a partial break in the neutral, which they repaired.

Andrew C, a user in California, learned the flickering lights in his home, which he thought were normal, were actually a cause for concern after seeing hundreds of variations in his power quality in the app. He contacted his utility, which inspected the line to his house, found an issue and fixed it immediately.

Founded in 2013 by pioneers in speech recognition, Sense uses machine-learning technology to provide real-time insights on device behaviour, even for those devices that are not smart. Users rely on Sense for a range of uses including checking what time their kids get home, monitoring their home appliances, determining whether they left appliances running or doors open, and identifying how to reduce their energy costs. Sense is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.