Energy dashboard: my device's power entity isn't listed as an option

Energy
1

(Apologies if I’ve posted this in the wrong area… not sure if this counts as an “energy” topic or a “dashboard” topic since it’s about Home Assistant’s built-in energy dashboard…)

I just installed a new ESPHome device in my home that reports energy usage (both energy in Wh and power in W). I’m trying to add it to my Home Assistant “Energy” dashboard, but its power entity is not showing up in the list of available entities. Can anyone point me to a fix?

For a little more detail, here’s what I did:

  1. Open the “Energy” dashboard
  2. Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner
  3. Scroll down and click “add device”
  4. In the window that appears, there’s a combobox/dropdown for “Device energy consumption”. Choose my device’s energy entity here.
  5. There is also a dropdown for “Device power consumption” but my device’s power entity is NOT listed in this dropdown… That’s the problem.

Here is the relevant snippet of my ESPHome YAML for the device that creates the entity that should be listed:

>   - platform: template
>     name: "Total Power"
>     lambda: return id(phase_a_power).state + id(phase_b_power).state;
>     update_interval: 10s
>     id: total_power
>     unit_of_measurement: "W"

When I look at the entity in my device (settings > Devices > …), it shows a meaningful reasonable value… but the Home Assistant Energy dashboard doesn’t consider it eligible for some reason. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks!

2

The Energy Dashboard will only accept valid entities.

For Energy:
device class “energy”
state class “total” or “total-increasing”
unit of measurement from the list including “Wh” and “kWh”

For Power:
device class “power”
state class “measurement”
unit of measurement from the list include “W” and “kW”

if the entity does not have all of the correct device class, state class, and unit of measurement, then AFAIK it will not show up on the list

3

Thanks @Biscuit ! adding the device class and the state class flags to the YAML for this entity solved the problem!