Utility power monitor

Hardware
1

Hello!

First of all, I know there are several posts with similar questions or thoughts, but to be honest I didn’t find any clear answer, if there are some, please drop some links I’d be happy to go through them. :slight_smile:

Long story short - I’m looking for a simple and not expensive solution for a home total energy monitor. I mean something with clamps I can clip on incoming wires and have readings in HA. I do have a typical European grid connection - 3 phases with neutral and 230V on each phase.
At the moment I’m using efergy engage but its service is getting worse and worse, it seems to me it is only a matter of time before it’ll stop working at all. So looking for a replacement ideally if it can be a local connection, not some cloud driven.
Have seen some projects with ESP32 and some PZEM sensors with clamps, are there any success stories? If yes could you please drop some link to instructions on how to get everything up and running A to Z.
And just in case there are some ready devices, I can connect using WiFi, ZigBee, and Bluetooth (only via ESP32 bt proxy, but works quite well).

Thanks! Would appreciate any comments and/or suggestions.

2

Yes, they work very reliable since years for me. :zap:

For the software part it is essentially just esphome.

Important thing is that each of the pzem module needs a own address set once like described in the docs. :page_facing_up:

the wiring on the low side is like this (Master UART is the esphome node) :point_down:
image

And well, that’s it essentially :raised_hands:

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3

Thanks @orange-assistant for your reply.
Will need to order everything then to get everything working together. Seems a little research is needed, but everything should be doable. At first, I couldn’t find how to configure Esphome with 3 sensors, only instructions on how to change address, but then what to do to get readings from all 3. :smiley:

Anyway - in the pic, I see you have 4 sensors, what is the point of having 4 of them?

Cheers!

4

It’s virtually to easy that’s why you don’t find it in the docs and it works likes every other esphome component in this regard:

sensor:

  - platform: pzemac
    energy:
    frequency:
    voltage:
    current:
    power_factor:
    power:
    address: 4 # 0x04
    update_interval: 0.1s

  - platform: pzemac
    energy:
    frequency:
    voltage:
    current:
    power_factor:
    power:
    address: 5 # 0x05
    update_interval: 0.1s

  - platform: pzemac
    energy:
    frequency:
    voltage:
    current:
    power_factor:
    power:
    address: 6 # 0x06
    update_interval: 0.1s

  - platform: pzemac
    energy:
    frequency:
    voltage:
    current:
    power_factor:
    power:
    address: 7 # 0x07
    update_interval: 0.1s

Well, 4 are more than 3. You are not limited to put the coils on the mains power lines but also free to (for example) hook them up on one circuit to measure particular usages beside the whole house usage :bar_chart: