I'm trying to improve my energy tracking and I think I'm having a problem with matching the energy concepts with how I'm using my equipment.
In short, I want to assign energy to actual devices, insteag of the energy tracking plug or device. For example, from between December and January, I want to track my christmas lights. In summer, I want to track my Airco. I may use the same plug (I have a drawer full of them) for different gadgets over time and I might use a different plug for the same gadget the next year.
As far as I can see, there are two for me significant challenges in the current infrastructure - but perhaps I'm just not knowledgeble enough.
Issue 1 - device permanence. I could name my plug Christmas light during the winter and Airco in the summer, but that can be quite confusing.
Issue 2 - total energy tracking. Related and maybe more important. As the energy and power is not assigned to an actual device and since the HA energy tracking uses device total power values, the energy tracking is very difficult to manage. When I get a new gadget and I plug it in to a smart plug I've been using before, the total consumption (on the plug) reflect the total usage throughout the lifetime of the plug.
It would be much more convenient if I could create virtual or actual devices (depending of if the device itself is smart) and assign the plug as a downstread energy device. It would also be great to have any number of downstream/upstream energy devices to really get granular.
Is this already possible, have I misunderstood everything? Or is this something that should be proposed to the roadmap?
Interesting, thanks, I haven't seen that before! But my problem is actually the opposite, powercalc says "no need to buy smart plugs" and "PowerCalc accurately estimates consumption ". I actually have the hardware to track the power, I don't want to estimate it just assign it to the actual device.
For example, I intend to replace my automatic fuses with smart fuses. That will give me power tracking on each circuit. I'll then have power plugs measuring invidual sockets. I want to be able to assign that tracked (not estimated) power to the right devices, not the fuse or the plug.
It will help me track what actual devices are most power hungry over time.
You might be able to make use of a utility meter and the tariff setting that it provides. The source would be the energy sensor of the plug and the tariff would be set to the name of the actual device that is plugged into the socket.
When you do this, the utility meter splits the usage over several utility meters, one for each tariff (so one for each device you might plug in). Those would be your sensor to use in the energy dashboard. They each only count usage when the tariff is set to the name of that specific device.
You would need to always use the same plug for each device. Otherwise you'd get multiple energy sensors for one device (one per plug it is used in).
Another useful trick: if you do not set a cycle on the utility meter then you will get an ever increasing total that never resets. So you do not need to make the utility meter a monthly or daily one.
I think this may be just what I was looking for! It's a helper device so essentially the virtual device I was thinking about and I can use them my energydashboard.
For my Airco, I created two helper devices (one for power and one for energy). I've been experimenting a bit with the settings and having net on and delta off gives me what I was looking for. I added a device to my energy dashboard and used both the energy and power helpers.
I'm now thinking of redoing all my plugs using the Utility Meter helper device integration, but it sort of tripples the devices (original plug, energy helper and power helper) so I need to think about how it could be simplified or automated.
You mentioned that I would always need to use the same plug for each device. I noticed that it's possible to change the underlying sensor after the helper is created. I haven't done the tests yet, but that would indicate it's possible to change the plug later (the old breaks, migrating to new communication standard, etc.). Have you tested that and found it didn't work?
That would be a way. I haven't tested it, but the stats will undoubtedly get confused when the total of the base sensor changes dramatically going from one plug to another. This can be fixed by editing the statistics after you see a weird spike in the energy dashboard (which could take up to an hour to show up).
For power you cannot use a utility meter, that would require a template sensor instead. You could set that up to listen to the utility meter tariff too.