I’m relatively new to Home Assistant and am trying to figure out the right combination of hardware and software to use to explore then manage my energy use, and I’d appreciate any pointers/leads/advice you have to offer.
I’m working in a moderately complicated residential building (house + in-law + workshop + etc.), with a master electric panel, ~4 subpanels each with a few dozen circuits, a number of built-in electrical appliances, a number of power intensive plug-in devices (e.g., dehumidifiers, space heaters, computers, etc.), and some electric HVAC. (No solar or storage.)
My goals are to (a) get a clear picture of the “worst offenders” / best opportunities to reduce electric consumption and (b) monitor this over time to confirm changes are working etc. I’m imagining a dashboard that’s kind of like a layered-bar-graph (where layers correspond to different electric loads) that maybe I can categorize (e.g., group “kitchen” together or “upstairs lighting”), click-to-expand or compare month-to-moth, and maybe flag a handful of loads (the ones that are both big and changeable) to go onto a “hot list” dashboard that I check every couple of days. I’m planning to capture this information through a combination of (a) breaker monitors on select breakers in the electric panels, (b) smart plugs on select devices, and (c) a utility integration that gives me hourly whole-house total consumption with a 2-3-day delay. I was kind of thinking about doing this using Home Assistant, several Iotawatts, emoncms running on a raspberry pi, and a dozen or so smart plugs, but I’m not sure this will (easily) accomplish what I want and am open to alternatives.
There are a couple of challenges I keep running into:
Load hierarchies and “everything elses”. I have way too many loads (circuits, appliances, etc.) to install a physical monitor on every single one. But I should be able to monitor the “20% that make 80% of the difference” right? I could put a monitor on the incoming electric main, a monitor on the incoming line to each sub-panel, monitors on a handful of the most-important circuits in each sub-panel, and smart plugs on a handful of the most-important plug-in devices. Mathematically this will be plenty of information to be able to graph things like: oven, refrigerator, and “everything else in the kitchen” (i.e., total on the kitchen subpanel minus the oven minus the refrigerator). Or “total for all power outlets in the in-law”, “the space heater plugged in in the in-law”, “the dehumidifier plugged in in the in-law”, and “total of everything else plugged-in in the in-law”. etc. The problem is the tools I mentioned above don’t seem to make this sort of hierarchical load organization very straightforward (especially if you occasionally want to reconfigure – e.g., move the smart plugs around and tell the system that “smart plug X is now on circuit #14 rather than circuit #8”.)
Which system is responsible for storing history? After a quick glance it looks like emoncms is designed for this purpose and I can add plenty of storage to the PI that it’s running on. In contrast I haven’t found good settings within HA for adjusting things like "on this smart plug, store instantaneous power consumption, measured every 30 seconds, with 6mo of history”)… and my HA device doesn’t have a ton of storage. But then the integrations appear to be intended to import data from emoncms into HA rather than vice versa. That covers the breaker monitors, but not the smart plugs. How is all this intended to come together?
What are the best tools to use for dashboards / visualization of the type I mentioned above?
I try to answer the one regarding the history.
I do operate emoncms and emonpi in parallel to the Homeassistant. Before i get a smartmeter, i pull all the energy data out of emoncms.
After i get the smartmeter, i pull all the data from it directly to HA.
In my opinion, the history data in Homeassistant dont take that much storage. I operate the HA instance about 3 years now, and the size of the DB is around 1.6 GB.
When you can share some details about what you like to display on a dashboard, i can tell you how to get there.
What works for me and likely will work for you is a combination of an energy monitor plus some number of smart power plugs.
For panel circuit monitoring, I’m using the IoTaWatt energy monitor, which can collect data from 14 circuits with current transformers (CTs). This covers my main feed (2 100A CTs), and 12 other circuits, some of which are on my sub panel that I power with solar/battery when the grid is down. There are also very helpful function scripting features I use with IoTaWatt.
For plug-in device monitoring, I use Kauf power plugs (and there are others available) for refrigerator, TV/entertainment center, microwave, clothes dryer, computer/router, etc. On the ones with multiple devices like the entertainment center, I simply plug everything into a power strip, and plug the power strip into the smart plug.
I route the data from all of these into Home Assistant’s Energy dashboard and realize exactly the sort of capability you ostensibly are seeking. I am quite pleased with how stable it is and all the visualizations that are available.
@WillS can you please say a little more about how you realize the this capability in HA’s Energy Dashboard. For example, how can I see a breakdown of total consumption that includes a layer/value for “everything in subpanel A except for the 3 individually-monitored circuits and the 2 smart-plugged appliances”?
I’m sure I saw somewhere a suggestion that a more central power monitor (such as a smart circuit breaker) could be broken down into individual devices. i.e. that each device has it’s own ‘signal’, identifiable even when multiple devices are running at once.
I can’t find this searching Google or this forum. Has anyone else come across it, and does that sound absurd or possible?
That would be an ideal setup for me e.g. to monitor the kitchen appliance circuit and distinguish between oven and hob to ventilate the room appropriately.
I have a main panel and two subs, and I recently installed the Emporia passive energy meters. in all 3 panels Each circuit breaker is monitored. To monitor individual devices on a circuit I’m using the Emporia smart outlets. In the Emporia app one links the outlets to the circuit it’s on, so the outlet’s usage is subtracted from the circuit total. Initially I put the outlets on the coffee maker (I used to leave it on, absent mindedly, now I have a timer set to shut off after the time it takes to finish brewing - significant), the woodstove fan, 110v washer, and the 4 UPSs about the house serving the media, network, and hubs on either end of the house.
In two weeks I’ve found concerning draws that have let me do what’s necessary to consistently keep daily usage down. I haven’t yet done much outside of using the HA energy meter, and liking what I need to watch in dashboards w/o much YAML at all, but I’m a HA work in progress [g]. I now know how to gauge what a daily total will do for the monthly nut.
Not sure of what all is out there in this regard, but the little research led me here, and I’m pleased with the product.
YMMV
Here’s a write up I did on my energy monitoring that allows you to see both high level energy use, use by category, and granular use. Ive been running this for a few years very reliably, but there is some effort in getting it setup.
That’s a reference I intended to return to. I’m green with HA, and it’s been an intense few weeks with it. But yours is a reference I saw, intending to make use of in due time. I just wanted to give a shout of thanks for making the time/effort to share all that.
:edit: Your post is likely the deciding element when deciding to go with Emporia.
@mike15 As mentioned, I use IoTaWatt with 14 channels and corresponding CTs. You can monitor the entire subpanel as a circuit, then create an object that subtracts out the individually monitored circuits and smart plugged appliances.
Mike, all source inputs show up individually, as well as full rollups. I don’t have an aggregate that shows "everything in subpanel A except for the 3 individually-monitored circuits and the 2 smart-plugged appliances”. Each circuit monitored by CT or smart plug constitute the source inputs. With CTs on subpanel A, with IoTaWatt you could create a function that subtracted out the 3 individually-monitored circuits, though I haven’t tried doing the same with the Energy Dashboard for a scenario such as “the 2 smart-plugged appliances”, giving the remaining aggregate.
