Energy Dashboard: Add Oil-Usage in addition to Gas

[Istria1704]

Wouldn’t it be better to instead of adding oil, wood, pellets, heat, etc separately, to just add a generic “add energy type” option where you can choose your own energy type, unit and logo?

For example, I don’t have gas or oil. I’m connected to city heating, so hot water flows into my house into a heat exchanger that provides house heating and hot tap water. The amount of heat consumed is counted in GJ by the energy meter. So I would need an energy category “heat” with unit “GJ”.

[goofy79]

First of all, the Dashboard is great !
I think it makes sense to add Oil.
For my situation, to add oil to the dashboard will be fantastic !

BR

[tobias1337 (t0bse)]

@Istria1704s post would be the best solution.

[koehntopp (Frank)]

Daily consumption translated to kWh for Gas iin the energy dashboard would be awesome - anyone know how to do this from the oilfox fillLevelQuantity sensor? Should be doable with a template sensor…?

[martinfitzg]

For the heating system I have it’s using paraffin. I am monitoring the watts it’s drawing, so when it goes over a certain value I can tell when it’s “firing” Vs when it’s just on.

What I would like to do though is have a flow meter on the fuel pipe it’s self.

Has any one done this with esphome or would be aware of such item I could put on the fuel line to measure that flow and hook up to esphome

I’ve seen a mix of ultrasonic or more mechanical based devices for measuring flow in a pipe but nothing really suited to this, eg low flow rate or suitable to be emersed in oil.

Thanks in advance folks!

[Psicrow925]

Huhu
That’s not quite right. Your OilFox provider can adjust the measurement interval. Every six hours is the lowest setting. This means there are four measuring points per day.

[CChris (Christoph)]

hm… thanks
This can only be set by the provider itself?
Not within the app? Or if yes - where can this be found?

I don’t really use any provider - I just bought them (used)… so they do not come from any provider / supplier.

[solomos (Gerasimos Solomos)]

@assembly

I’ve build a sensor for my oil tank based on a esp8266 with an ultrasonic distance sensor which works great. It gathers measurement throughout the day and submits its value once a day at 2 o clock in the night.

I’m doing the same with an ultrasonic sensor. Would you please give more information on “how do you gather measurements throughout the day and submits the values once a day”??

@assembly

It’s very easy to incorporate this in the energy dashboard (1 liter of oil≈ 10 kWh).

How comes ???

@assembly

Sure it says “gas” in the title, which is a bit annoying and the hourly graph doesn’t make much sense (the sensor probably isnt accurate enough for an hourly graph anyway), but for tracking weekly, monthly and yearly consumption it works absolutely perfect!

How did you do that? Energy dashboard doesn’t have volumes as you mentioned above.
Did you create a template sensor ??? Would you please also share the yaml for this ??

[assembly]

Hi,

As to not go off-topic in this thread, I’ve decribed my solution over here.

It would still be very nice if we were able to add oil in liters and this poll definitely has my vote!

[asfasty (Annette)]

Hello,

exactly looking for the same.
I triedsomething similar to get set up yesterday with a template and sensor.
However, the conversion to kwh looks strange to me and I am not sure if I am calulating correctly. For our oil tank, I believe we cannot install an extra distance meter. But when I can calculate manually every day by writing down burner hours and multiply with my consumption per hour (eg. 2.4 l/h) then I thought I can do that also automated in home assistant. Maybe it would be easier if there was a generic option for energy where you can pick measurment in liters. So yes I vote for this, too. First I thought I can just export values to my existing excel spreadsheet but seems that is even more complicated…

[assembly]

Hi,
if you know your burner uses exactly 2.4L (equals ~24kwh) per hour it’s running, you might be able to install a vibration or acoustic sensor on your burner.
Thus passing the time the burner has been running to HA, multiply by 24 to get your consumption in kwh, or multiply by 2.4 to get your consumption in liters.

You will be off a little bit (because the 2.4L is probably an estimation which fluctuates). Over time the discrepancy will get bigger, but to determine your consumption it should be close enough. Just make sure you do not trust these values to determine how much oil is left in the tank though, since the error will increase over time.

[asfasty (Annette)]

Dear Assembly,

Thank you for your response and valuable information.
The problem I had from start with the energy dashboard was that I could not save anything since burner hours weren’t allow (sensor.vicare…) then I tried the approach to create my own sensor with all of the help from different posts here. Once I had one really properly configured I was able to save the energy dashboard and then got all the options for water, gas etc. to set up a energy dashboard. So I added gas with the same sensor. I feel like I am doing something duplicate and can also see that my attempts still show up as sensors (just greyed out - need to find out how to get rid of my tests).
However, thanks for your calculation. I must have been lost somehow and thought 9,8 kWH are 1 liter - so I need to check my ‘calculation’.

Hope I get this sorted. Thanks again and most likely I will come back with another question. For now I have to go into this config jungle again

[asfasty (Annette)]

Hello assembly,
I can see now something more reasonable.

the Sensor that works if I am not completely mistaken is:

#Customize Yaml for Oil consumption
homeassistant:
customize: !include customize.yaml

sensor:

• platform: history_stats
  name: Oil Burner Time Today
  unique_id: oil_burner_time_today
  entity_id: binary_sensor.vicare_burner_active
  state: “on”
  type: time
  start: “{{ today_at() }}”
  end: “{{ now() }}”

• platform: history_stats
  name: Solar Warm Water
  unique_id: solar_warm_water_today
  entity_id: binary_sensor.vicare_solar_pump_active
  state: “on”
  type: time
  start: “{{ today_at() }}”
  end: “{{ now() }}”

template:

• sensor:
  • name: Oil Power Today
    unique_id: oil_power_today
    state: “{{ states(‘sensor.oil_burner_time_today’) | float(0) * 2.4 }}”

But why is it just not possible to get this in Liters? and add this in the energy dashboard? Just because it starts with a kwh for setup.

Would there be any conversion or something available?
I am at the same time trying grafana and influx db - however the best results imo I get from the codes I found in various posts here.

nite n8 for today…

[assembly]

Lets continue in the topic I started earlier for this purpose, as to not go off-topic here .
I’ll be more than happy to help and will try to answer your questions tomorrow.

[asfasty (Annette)]

ok , sorry - and thank you

[copadewe]

Hi CChris,
thank you for this example, i will also try to get this into work.
Let me ask basics, the first with “sensor” is in the configuration yaml part of sensor.
Ok I think is correct.
but where to put the second with the utility meter?
Also just under the sensor in config?
Thanks
oliver

[CChris (Christoph)]

Hi,
The example I’ve posted is obsolete now.
The Oilfox integration does provide some sensors for the Amount of used Oil and kWh by default for a couple of weeks / months now.

With these sensors, you can also use the integrated Helpers and create the utility meters without using the yaml configuration.

[copadewe]

I found the kWh but would like to have in liter.
Can you advice please, i did not found liter in the original oilfox

[tonygoodwin (Tony and Deborah Goodwin)]

Hi, I feel the original ask here has got lost in the various specific solutions that people have put together.

I have done one too, for Watchman sensit to get oil per day (one reading a day) and then take a scrape from an oil price site to work out how much that oil would cost at todays prices, and I’ve kludged it onto the Energy dashboard. It was difficult because as the OP said, only GAS is available!

My solution for Energy dashboard for oil (using ‘Gas’)

So I’m left with something that works, but its labelled GAS consumption, not Oil consumption, and the units are shown as m³ because GAS is prescriptive around what is allowed, and I chose that - in fact I’m measuring kWh per day.

SO CAN WE GET BACK TO THE ORIGINAL ASK - ALLOW OTHER TYPES OF FUEL THAT ARE CONFIGURABLE ALONGSIDE GAS

[Tim66 (Tim)]

I have built a diy oil sensor with ultra sonic, however with different temperatures there was a lot of variations. Also this was to critical for me to put an electronic device on top of the oil tank.

My oil heating device is using a fan for better efficency. I have put a Shelly 1PM in the elctronic line of the heater for measuring the electronic consumption.

I know the average oil usage per hour from last year.

With “MeasureIt” I have created a sensor who calculates the working hours of the heater. I have added some template sensors to calculate the current oil tank level and consumption.

I have added a “time * oil/h * 9,8kW” energy sensor and have put this into the energy dashboard. Now I can see the “oil usage” as Gas in kWh.