Iam testing utlity_meter and found it has issues when HA is restarted.
I am using fibaro dimmers that is providing entity energy, this is a incrementing meter of consumed energy in kWh, it is persistant and is always counting up without possibility to soft reset.
when i am using energy entity with utility_meter everything works fine until you restart ha. Utility meter is saving last value of the meter in core.restore_state, when HA restarts the energy entity value is added to the saved state value resulting in calculation error. for each restart it add the value of the energy entity.
Anyway the issue is not related to utility_meter, but template sensor, seems there are som bad design here. Upon restart template sensor is reporting 0 as value until its calculations is done. In a perfect world this should have been unavailable and not 0. Some of this problems was tried fixed with availability_template but that dont cover this issue.
Fixes would be:
Set unprocessed template sensors to unavailable until processed instead of 0
Delay utility meter calculation until template sensor is done. This is not recommended.
Expand functionality of availability_template.
It seems that the"0 as startup" issue is quite common problem.
If your sensor is 0 at startup then you don’t have it configured properly to be unavailable. It’s taking a code path and supplying an answer. Post it here and we can fix it.
this will result in 0 at startup because "unavailable" | float will return 0. If they are both zero you get 0 + 0, which of course equals zero. So your options are to add an availability_template:
{{ state('sensor.xxx') in ['unknown', 'unavailable'] or state('sensor.yyy') in ['unknown', 'unavailable'] }}
Or add it to the value_template itself:
{% if state('sensor.xxx') in ['unknown', 'unavailable'] or state('sensor.yyy') in ['unknown', 'unavailable'] %}
unavailable
{% else %}
{{ states('sensor.xxx') | float + states('sensor.yyy') | float }}
{% endif %}
- platform: template
sensors:
light_total_energy:
friendly_name: Light Total Energy
entity_id: sensor.time
unit_of_measurement: kWh
icon_template: mdi:counter
value_template: >
{% set ns = namespace(states=[]) %}
{% for s in states.sensor %}
{% if s.object_id.endswith('_dimmer_energy') %}
{% set ns.states = ns.states + [ s.state | float ] %}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{{ ns.states | sum | round(2) }}
so this sensors gives 0 at startup unitl sensor.time trigger calculation.
I dont know how to use the availability_template to set this sensor to unavailable until calculated.
Starting in 0.115 this should now update when any sensor updates because it will be monitoring states.sensor. When you update to 0.115, you can safely remove entity_id: sensor.time.
Until then, try this:
- platform: template
sensors:
light_total_energy:
friendly_name: Light Total Energy
entity_id: sensor.time
unit_of_measurement: kWh
icon_template: mdi:counter
value_template: >
{% set ns = namespace(states=[], offline=[]) %}
{% for s in states.sensor %}
{% if s.object_id.endswith('_dimmer_energy') %}
{% if s.state in ['unavailable', 'unknown' ] %}
{% set ns.offline = ns.offline + [ s.entity_id ] %}
{% else %}
{% set ns.states = ns.states + [ s.state | float ] %}
{% endif %}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% if ns.offline | count > 0 %}
unavailable
{% else %}
{{ ns.states | sum | round(2) }}
{% endif %}
If that gives you problems, i.e. you still get goofy numbers, use the availability template
- platform: template
sensors:
light_total_energy:
friendly_name: Light Total Energy
entity_id: sensor.time
unit_of_measurement: kWh
icon_template: mdi:counter
value_template: >
{% set ns = namespace(states=[]) %}
{% for s in states.sensor %}
{% if s.object_id.endswith('_dimmer_energy') %}
{% set ns.states = ns.states + [ s.state | float ] %}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{{ ns.states | sum | round(2) }}
availability_template: >
{% set ns = namespace(offline=0) %}
{% for s in states.sensor %}
{% if s.object_id.endswith('_dimmer_energy') and s.state in ['unavailable', 'unknown' ] %}
{% set ns.offline = ns.offline + 1 %}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{{ ns.offline == 0 }}
Thanks so much for this discussion. I have the same problem and we were already desperate. I’ve tried several procedures and the ones you suggest, and the only one that was 100% stable when restarting the Home Assistant, restarting the router, turning the router off and on, is:
sensor:
- platform: template
sensors:
energy_consumption_total:
friendly_name: Energy Consumption Total
icon_template: mdi:flash
unit_of_measurement: kWh
value_template: >
{% set ns = namespace(states=[], offline=[]) %}
{% for s in states.sensor %}
{% if s.object_id.endswith('shelly_shem_3_40f52001972c_1_total_consumption') %}
{% if s.state in ['unavailable', 'unknown' ] %}
{% set ns.offline = ns.offline + [ s.entity_id ] %}
{% else %}
{% set ns.states = ns.states + [ s.state | float ] %}
{% endif %}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% if ns.offline | count > 0 %}
unavailable
{% else %}
{{ ns.states | sum | round(2) }}
{% endif %}
The second option, where the “availability_template:” is tested, did not work properly if I turned the router off and on (more delay in sensor unavailability)
You wrote somewhere here that this should be solved by Home Assistant in version 0.115 and this complicated solution will no longer be needed. I’m using 0.118.4 right now and I’m still solving problems. As? Who to contact? Is this a bug, or rather an unfortunate feature of templates in Home Assistant?
