First of all many thanks for this writeup! I feel little bit guilty that I have left this thread without traction and I’m very glad to see that kind of post here (proposal how to tackle the problem).
Let me just understand your suggestion. If I understand correctly you propose that utility-meter will expose sensor (e.g. sensor.pump_monthly_report) and recorder should be disabled for it. To store the data it should make a direct DB call. Is this what you are proposing?
If that is the case I see few potential issues:
- Currently utility-meter is a regular sensor. It is just producing some values (it’s state) based on other sensor states. It doesn’t interacts with DB directly.
- I’m not sure if direct access to DB is allowed
- Recorder stores all it’s records in the tables which have a general purge settings so I guess we won’t be able to store such data in the regular tables
- HA core team is doing table structure changes from time to time
- So we will need to maitain special table in the DB, I assume we don’t want to have there any retention policy