Please allow for ccf for gas consumption measurements in the Energy dashboard

Feature Requests
1

I am using a RTLSDR via AMR (Automated Meter Reading) to decode live output from my natural gas meter for it’s total meter reading in CF, rtlamr converts it to CCF to line up to my billing format, and reports via MQTT. I then use utility_meter for hourly/daily/monthly calculations. In our area CCF is what the gas company use as a unit of measure report for usage on our meter readings and bills, and not ccm nor kwh. Many of the meters here through AMR support these broadcasts so meters can be read remotely by the gas companies. The reading itself is the current meter value for total gas consumed since the meter was replaced. I don’t see any option to use the mqtt sensors nor utility meter entities in 2021.9.0 to use for the gas consumption option.

- platform: mqtt
    name: "meter_natgrid_gas"
    state_topic: "rtlamr/meter_natgrid_gas/state"
    unit_of_measurement: "CCF"
    icon: mdi:gauge
    device_class: energy

utility_meter:
  gas:
    source: sensor.meter_natgrid_gas
    cycle: monthly
  daily_gas:
    source: sensor.meter_natgrid_gas
    cycle: daily
  hourly_gas:
    source: sensor.meter_natgrid_gas
    cycle: hourly

EDIT: For corrections. The meter itself outputs CF, but the rtlmar output I had was set to convert to CCF to line up to the bills from my gas provider.

2

I’m in the same boat (and also a national grid customer), although my unit_of_measure is cubic foot:

  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "rtlamr/20061227"
    name: Gas Meter
    value_template: '{{ value_json["Consumption"]|int }}'
    unique_id: "rtlamr/20061227"
    unit_of_measurement: 'ft³'
    json_attributes_topic: "rtlamr/20061227"
    state_class: "total_increasing"
    device_class: "gas"
    expire_after: 28800  # 8 hours

For now I’m doing some division to convert to cubic meters:

  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "rtlamr/20061227"
    name: Gas Meter Metric
    value_template: '{{ (value_json["Consumption"]|int / 35.3147)|int }}'
    unique_id: "rtlamr/20061227CUBICMETER"
    unit_of_measurement: 'm³'
    json_attributes_topic: "rtlamr/20061227"
    state_class: "total_increasing"
    device_class: "gas"
    expire_after: 28800  # 8 hours

Although even after all that, I don’t have any gas options in energy configuration, so maybe I’ve completely missed something.

3

I may be wrong, but I think CCF and CF are the same thing. The meter says “CF” on the front, but National Grid on their site says “This is the total quantity of gas you used within the billing period. CCF = Cubic Feet”
Edit: This was incorrect, while Nat Grid does use the terms interchangeably, the meters themselves are CF but the bills are in CCF and Therms.

4

From what I have read:
Ccf is the volume of 100 cubic feet (cf)

1 Like
5

I think that’s right now that you mention it, the meter says CF, but rtlamr config I have converts to CCF to line up to the Nat Grid bill. Messes me up as Nat Grid references CCF and Cubic Feet interchangeably for the same value when I went to check before I posted :smiley:

meters:
  - id: xxxxxxxxxx
    protocol: scm+
    name: meter_natgrid_gas
    format: "#####.##"
    unit_of_measurement: "CCF"
    icon: mdi:gauge
6

I voted for this FR as my gas utility, Columbia Gas, lists gas consumption on the monthly statement in Ccf, then they convert Ccf to therms and bill me for the therms used.

In the meantime I plan to use templates for conversion.

7

Exactly the same here, thank you for the correction and adjusted the original post to be corrected.

1 Like
8

Ok last spam post (sorry about this), would CCF or Therms for supported energy units make sense for this feature request?

EDIT: @eyager’s comment was correct, Therms calculations are varied, even month to month by the same energy provider, so doesn’t make sense here.

9

I’m in the same boat with using rtlamr. I have Center Hudson and they also use Ccf for billing. I have mine setup a little different tho but at the end of the day, the data is what we are looking for:

sensor:
  - platform: influxdb
    host: a0d7b954-influxdb
    port: 8086
    username: 
    password: 
    queries:
      - name: "Gas Meter Reading"
        unit_of_measurement: "Ccf"
        value_template: '{{ ((value | int) / 100) | round(2) }}'
        group_function: last
        where: '"endpoint_id" = ''16602455'''
        measurement: '"rtlamr"."autogen"."rtlamr"'
        field: '"consumption"'
        database: rtlamr

utility_meter:
   hourly_gas:
    source: sensor.gas_meter_reading
    cycle: hourly
    tariffs:
  daily_gas:
    source: sensor.gas_meter_reading
    cycle: daily
  weekly_gas:
    source: sensor.gas_meter_reading
    cycle: weekly
  monthly_gas:
    source: sensor.gas_meter_reading
    cycle: monthly
    offset:
      days: 19
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
10

CCF unit conversion would make sense as it is a fixed measure of a volume of gas equal to 100 cubic feet.

In addition to CCF some utilities bill gas usage by MCF which is 1000 cubic feet of gas, so that is another unit that may need to be supported.

Therms, however won’t because there is too much variation of what a therm actually is compared to a measured of volume of gas. A therm has been defined as 100,000 btu of gas, but a CCF of natural gas on average is 103,700 btu. Some will incorrectly define a therm being equal to 1 CCF, others will define 1 CCF being equal to 1.037 therms. Some utilities will take into account the actual average BTU content in the gas which can vary from month to month. For example in July the conversion would be 1.04812, but in May the conversion would be 1.06475.

Similarly we can’t automatically convert MMBtu or KWH billed based on a volume measurement because each utility would do this using a different BTU factor.

1 Like
11

That’s a great point… I hadn’t noticed before, but looking at my bill, indeed Nat Grid uses different values for Therms calculations based on the month.

12

Somehow I missed it in the release notes, but in 2021.12.0 ft³ was added as a supported unit for the energy dashboard with gas. Thank you to the HA developers to add this!!

Also heads up, 1 ccf = 100 ft³ , so may need to tweak your units if you were using ccf vs ft³.

13

I may have lost track, but is ccf supported?

14

ft³ (cf) is supported, but ccf is not, however it’s a factor of 100 difference, so at least for me this was reasonable. Converting to m³ to me didn’t make sense so didn’t want to go there.

15

+1 to this. My utility company tracks gas in ccf, and I apparently can’t add it to the energy dashboard with ccf as a custom unit

1 Like
16

PR opened: Add support for CCF volume unit by epenet · Pull Request #84029 · home-assistant/core · GitHub

3 Likes
17

Thanks epenet!

18

Supported now in Core 2023.1.1, however, CCF is not supported in Energy Dashboard yet.

Energy Dashboard Gas and Water supported units of measure limitation (CCF and others) · Issue #15038 · home-assistant/frontend (github.com)

Slight Workaround, you can switch your entities unit of measure to one of the supported units of measure, add it to energy dashboard, then switch the unit of measure back. It will show up in Energy Dashboard, and track and work, but in the wrong unit of measure.

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19

I upgraded to 2023.1.2, and tried this out. My sensor configs are in yaml, so that is where I configured the units in CCF. I tried both changing an existing sensor, and creating a new one. Either sensor can be configured into the Energy Dashboard.

The issue I see, is that the Energy Dashboard takes the sensor values (even though the values are in CCF), and multiplies by 100 and displays the energy in ft³.

20

I’m having the same issue, my Energy dashboard keeps multiply by 100. Did you figure it out? Thanks