I just saw the Utility_meter component, and had a question about how it works. I have a Rainforest eagle device that reads meter data from my PG&E smart meter. The eagle gives me two readings: Current Meter value, and Current consumption. the two numbers look like this:
Current Meter value: 26069.077 kWh
Current consumption: 500W
The consumption value fluctuates up and down, obviously as I use more/less power. The current meter value simply continually counts up as kWh are used. Which of these should I use for the sensor input? is the utility_meter component smart enough to use a rate function to determine the value of consumption, or does it simply do a subtraction of two values at the end of the day/month to find out what’s been used? The documentation doesn’t make this clear, so I’m not sure what value to use. My guess is that I should use the running total kWh value, but I’d like to know if someone else has more knowledge of this.
Thanks.