Troubleshooting

Before you start

We can see what happened. The 9388A retains roughly three months of operational data on board. We can often download that log and tell you when peak demand occurred, what was running, whether a setting was wrong, and whether a controlled load was disconnected. That beats guessing. When you call about a bill, have your meter read date ready.

Stay outside the panel. Anything involving opening an electrical panel, touching wiring, or entering programming mode is work for a licensed electrician or for us. The checks below are all done from the front of the unit, at your thermostat, or on your bill.

The display is dark or blank

What it means. The controller is not getting power. Usually the dedicated 15-amp breaker feeding it has tripped or been switched off by someone working in the panel for an unrelated reason.

Check:

1. Look in your main panel for a single-pole 15-amp breaker labeled for the demand controller or Energy Sentry. If it is tripped or off, switch it fully off and back on.
2. Has a solar installer, HVAC technician, remodel electrician, or utility crew been in the panel recently?
3. If the breaker holds, you should see FE and a number, then the reading loop.

Call us if the breaker trips again immediately, the display stays dark with the breaker on, or it lights up but shows nothing readable. Do not keep resetting a breaker that trips.

ID reads 0.0 and you do not have solar

What it means. The unit is not measuring current. The most common cause by far is that solar mode was switched on inadvertently during programming. In solar mode the firmware stops taking the absolute value of the CT signal and starts tracking direction, so on a home with no solar the reading collapses to zero. The other causes are a CT that came loose from the service conductor or a lead pulled out of the terminal block.

Check:

1. Turn to ID and watch for a full minute. Sitting at exactly 0.0 while the house is obviously drawing power is the symptom.
2. Turn on a large load such as an oven or dryer. If ID does not move, the unit is not seeing current.
3. Confirm you genuinely have no solar, including anything a previous owner installed.

This is not a homeowner fix. Solar mode lives in a hidden submenu inside installer programming, and correcting it may also mean re-checking CT orientation and which phase the controller is powered from. If an array was recently added and nobody told the controller, say so on the call. That changes the commissioning entirely.

ID drops to zero as solar comes online

This is correct. It is not a fault.

The CTs read net current at the service entrance. When your array covers what the house is using, net demand at the meter really is near zero, and the 9388A reports what it sees. Your utility meter is doing the same arithmetic.

During strong midday production the system has nothing to control. As production falls off in the late afternoon, right as the on-peak window opens and the air conditioning is working hardest, ID climbs and the system goes back to work. That window is where most solar homes set their monthly peak, and it is the window the system is protecting.

Sanity check: ID should be near zero on a clear midday and should rise on cloudy days, under monsoon cover, in early morning, and after sunset. ID reading zero at 9 p.m. is a real problem. Call us.

Loads are not shedding

What it means. Either the system has no reason to shed, or the connection to the load has been broken.

Check:

1. Compare AD to DL. If average demand is well below the limit, the system is working correctly and has no reason to act.
2. Check CL. A clock that is off by hours means the system is controlling at the wrong times.
3. Check LS and count the bars against the number of loads you were told are controlled. A missing channel is a strong hint.
4. Consider who has serviced your equipment recently. See the HVAC section below.

Call us if AD is clearly above DL during on-peak hours and no bars are changing. The onboard log will usually tell us which load stopped responding and when.

Demand limit is never reached

What it means. Usually the limit is set higher than your house ever draws, the system is measuring low, or your on-peak schedule does not match the rate plan you are actually on.

Check:

1. Watch PD over a hot week. If peak demand stays well under DL, the limit is too high to do anything. That is a tuning conversation, not a fault.
2. Log into your utility account and read your plan name. If you never switched to a demand-based plan, the system has been working correctly and saving nothing, because you are not billed for demand. This is the most common reason a correctly installed system shows no savings, and changing the plan is the customer's responsibility.
3. Check ID with a large load running. If ID barely moves when the air conditioner starts, the unit may be measuring low. Note the number and call.

Call us if the rate plan is right and ID looks wrong. Measurement scaling, including the Demand Range setting that has to match the installed CT type, is installer-level and has to be verified against the actual CTs on your service.

Relay chatter or short cycling

What it means. A load is switching on and off faster than it should. On an air conditioner that is a real risk to the compressor and needs attention promptly.

Check:

1. Identify which load. Stand where you can hear the condenser and watch LS.
2. Did it start right after you changed the demand limit? If you dropped DL sharply an hour ago, put it back and see if it stops.
3. Did it start after HVAC service?

Call us. Minimum on-time and off-time protection is set in installer programming, typically 8 to 10 minutes minimum on for air conditioning depending on your averaging period, and 5 minutes minimum off. Water heaters and other resistive loads carry no such restriction, so chatter there points somewhere else. If those values were cleared or never set, the fix is a programming visit, not a replacement. Do not leave a short-cycling compressor running for days. Turn the thermostat off or call for an interim workaround.

The rotary knob only turns one direction

What it means. The rotary encoder behind the knob has lost one of its two quadrature channels, so the unit reads motion one way and ignores the other. The controller is almost certainly fine and still controlling loads normally.

Check: turn the knob slowly both ways and confirm the display advances in one direction only. That is the whole diagnosis.

Call support. This is a component-level repair on the control board, not a field fix. Do not open the logic cover, do not reseat or replace the knob, and do not order a knob cap. The knob is not the problem.

High bill after installation

Check, in the order we see these:

1. Rate plan. Look for a line item charged in kW. If there is no demand charge on the bill, the system has nothing to reduce. This is the number one cause and one call to your utility fixes it.
2. Read the right line. Compare the demand charge against the same month last year, not the bill total. Totals move with weather, occupancy, and energy rates.
3. Thermostat. Holding the house at 78 to 80 leaves no stored cool to work with, and the compressor fights every shed cycle. Set it to 70 to 72 and let the house pre-cool. This feels backwards. It is not.
4. Demand limit. Compare PD to DL. If PD blew past DL, something interrupted control during that interval and the log will show it.

Call us with your meter read date. With roughly three months of onboard data we can usually identify the exact interval that set your peak and what was running.

An HVAC technician disconnected the control wiring

What it means. Exactly what it says, and it is common enough that it changed how we install. A technician servicing a condenser finds an unfamiliar wire in the control circuit, disconnects it, and does not reconnect it. The air conditioning works fine. The controller no longer has any control over the largest load in the house, and nobody finds out until the bill arrives.

Check:

1. If you had HVAC service and the next bill jumped, say so when you call. It is the first thing we look for.
2. Watch LS on a hot afternoon. If the air conditioning channel never changes state while other channels do, that is the signature.
3. Check whether the warning sticker on the enclosure or inside the panel door was removed or covered.

Prevention. Line-voltage control through the 50-amp latching relay is far less exposed to this than low-voltage thermostat control, which is one reason it is the standard method today. Either way, tell every HVAC contractor before they start that the home has a demand management system and the control wiring must be reconnected.

Call us to verify the load is under control again after any HVAC service. It takes a few minutes and it is free.

What is installer-only

For the electrician you may be handing this page to: rate selector codes, daylight saving, number of relays, load priorities, minimum on and off times, the demand control algorithm setting, averaging period, demand range, and solar mode all live inside installer programming, reached by holding the front panel button for five seconds. Homeowners should not enter that loop. The Demand Limit is the only owner-facing adjustment and it does not require programming mode.

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Symptom not listed here? Call toll free (888) 461-9336, direct (970) 461-9600, or email help@energysentry.com. Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM–5:00 PM Arizona time.