Template sensor should only update when sensor has a value

Configuration
1

I’ve searched all over on this forum and other forums, but I can’t get it to work properly, so I need your help :wink:

I use EnergyZero’s HACS integration and it works well. This retrieves gas prices and electricity prices from the EnergyZero API. This is used by a number of dynamic energy providers in the Netherlands.

Sometimes it can happen that the new gas price is not available in the morning at 6 o’clock. As a result, there are big gaps in my gas prices, so the energy dashboard doesn’t give the correct totals for my gas usage.

gasprijs
gasprijs1570×552 25.8 KB

In addition, the API only passes on delivery costs, so I add the extra costs myself. For this I use a template sensor. See the code below:

- platform: template
  sensors:
    gasprice_incl:
      value_template: >
        {% set gas = states('sensor.energyzero_today_gas_current_hour_price') | float + 0.6754 %}
        {% if gas > 0 %}
        {{ gas | float }}
        {% endif %}
      entity_id: sensor.gasprice_incl
      unit_of_measurement: "EUR/m³"

You can already see here that I only want to update the value if the sensor value is greater than 0.

In short, only if the sensor reports a new value do I want to update the template sensor, otherwise I want to keep the current value.

Am I doing this correctly and am I slightly off? Or am I completely wrong and should I take a completely different approach?

Thanks in advance for your help!

1 Like
2

If you switch to the current format you can use a trigger-based template sensors and filter out the state changes that you don’t want to track.

template:
  - trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: sensor.energyzero_today_gas_current_hour_price
        not_to:
          - unavailable
          - unknown
    sensor:
      - name: Gasprice Incl
        state: >
          {% set gas = trigger.to_state.state | float(0) + 0.6754 %}
          {% if gas > 0 %} {{ gas }}
          {% else %} {{ states('sensor.gasprice_incl') }}
          {% endif %}
        unique_id: gasprice_incl
        unit_of_measurement: "EUR/m³"
3

Okay, that looks promising. One more question then: I now have all my sensors (including the template sensors) in the sensors.yaml.
But I suspect that your piece of code doesn’t belong there, is that right?

4

Correct, the sensors.yaml file likely has a top level configuration variable “sensor”, for the new format the top level variable needs to be “template”. There are a few different ways to include files in your configuration. The basic method is just to have all the template entities in one file. Personally, I prefer using packages

5

So far it looks good, the code is in the right place and valid.
I just have to wait until early tomorrow, because then the sensor will be triggered.

I did some small tests via the template editor, but that doesn’t really test well, so I’ll wait and see in the morning.

If everything works I will update the post tomorrow :+1:

6

Unfortunately, it still doesn’t work flawlessly…
Firstly, I have the problem that it stays empty after a restart of HA, which is strange because the sensor then also gets an update.
Second, the template sensor is currently empty, while the real sensor does have a value and that shouldn’t happen if I’m right.

The code I’m using now is as follows:

template:
  - trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: sensor.energyzero_today_gas_current_hour_price
        not_to: ["unavailable", "unknown"]
    sensor:
      - name: Gasprice Incl
        state: >
          {% set gas = trigger.to_state.state | float(0) + 0.6754 %}
          {% if gas > 0 %} {{ gas }}
          {% else %} {{ states('sensor.gasprice_incl') }}
          {% endif %}
        unique_id: sensor.gasprice_incl
        unit_of_measurement: "EUR/m³"

The real sensor has a big gap again, like every morning between +/- 06:00 and +/- 08:30. But the template sensor remains Unknown.

Could it be a case sensitive problem? I don’t know which values ​​are exactly ‘unknown’ or ‘unavailable’.

Anyone have an idea?