Ideal placement of energy meter clamps for energy dashboards

Hi,
As I‘m new to HA I‘d like to get some input what the best placement of energy monitoring clamps would be so consumption can be visualized as easily as possible. I would also appreciate some pointers on how to then setup HA for my setup.

I have have two power sources (meters):

  • Main: Which splits up into house, solar and wallbox (single tariff)
  • Heating: for the heat pump only (peak/off-peak tariff)

I want to install Shelly EMs (already done for Solar production) so I can measure total grid consumption, wallbox, house and heating. I will have some energy monitors for larger devices which would be included in „house“.

I figured putting another meter in for the wallbox but I‘m unsure if I should now measure either:

  • main and calculate house by using main, solar and wallbox, or
  • house and calculate main by using house, solar and wallbox, or
  • would it even be easier to add meters for main AND house

So the main questions I have:

  • where to place the monitor clamps to make visualization easy
  • how to calculate a consumption for a consumer not having a meter - eg. Main or house as described above (I assume by creating a new entity but not sure)

And also how to setup the heat pump consumption in HA as this is separate from the main.

Any help is much appreciated.

Do you have 3 phases? Then you are best seated with the Shelly Pro 3EM for all the phases and load paths you want.
You can maybe hook the wallbox up directly, so you dont need an extra Shelly.
The same goes for the solar inverter.
Then your meters can maybe be read by whatever standard you have in your country (SML in germany, P1 in netherlands etc.).

For the HA setup make a grid sensor for each meter and add price sensors as defined, then add consumers as devices and solar/batteries as solar/batteries.
So in summation get readers for the meters, connect to wallbox and solar inverter if possible (then you can even get the house by substracting the wallbox and adding solar to the main meter) or add a Shelly for the ones you cant directly read out.

Yes, 3 phase system.
Will have to use Shellys as my meters aren’t smart yet. I already have the 3EMs.

The question I have is where it is recommended to put the meters.

If I measure incoming energy I can use Solar and wallbox to calculate the ”house”.
If I measure the house consumption I could calculate the incoming grid energy.
What would be better or doesn’t it matter.

And can I do the calculation - is the a custom entity? What is the recommended way to do this?

Attached a photo of the fuse box:

  • underside brown - incoming from grid
  • underside black - line to the house installation
  • upperside black - solar return
  • upperside brown-black-grey-blue - line to wallbox
    green-yellows are ground and be ignored

I mean is it really necessary to spend x100€ for xShelly 3EMs just so you dont have to wait for smart meters or did you already get 3 EMs?
If you can good for you, but for me it seem like a waste of money and time to let an electrician install that when you eventually get smart meters.
If you are in germany, you cant use solar before they install a smart meter anyway (maybe other countrys too). By the way with smart meter I dont mean the smart meter with a gateway, but the “Digitale Messeinrichtung”. That one is also readable.

The calculation can be done in a template sensor like this

{{states('sensor.main_meter_power') | float - states('sensor.wallbox_power') | float + states('sensor.solar_power') | float}}

or something similar depending on your setup.

What Meter, Wallbox and Solar Inverter do you have?

The installation is from 2010 when the house was build. So no smart meters not even for the solar installation.

Also been trying to get smart meters for years - apart from the fact that you also have to pay a lot for them they never came. Buying the Shellys is not an issue. Also installing them is not as I got the electrical side covered. Problem is only with HA as I‘m totally new to it.

Thanks for your responses so far - need to figure out how to get a template sensor/entity that would provide the calculated data - your hint helps a lot.