WTH - Gas but no 'other' fuels

Month of "What the heck?!"
1

more of a ‘would be really neat for this to be up next’ thing

We have electricity tracking, potable water tracking but no ‘other fuels’ - for instace:

  • KG usage of pellets
  • L usage of oil/ethanol

It’d improve the utility of the energy dashboard to be able to track more fuel types

2

Hi everyone,

Here’s a quick summary of my request:

  • Add support for alternative energy sources like wood, heating oil, and pellets in the Energy Dashboard.
  • Allow manual input or integration of sensors to track consumption.
  • Enable visualization of these energy sources alongside electricity and gas for a comprehensive overview.

I really appreciate the Energy Dashboard in Home Assistant for visualizing electricity and gas usage. However, many households use alternative energy sources such as wood, heating oil, or pellets, especially for heating. In Germany alone, around 25% of all households use oil heating. It would be fantastic to have the ability to include these energy types in the dashboard.

Ideally, users could input consumption manually (e.g., in kWh, liters, or kilograms) or integrate data from compatible sensors. A similar visualization to electricity and gas would make the Energy Dashboard even more versatile and provide a complete overview of a household’s energy usage.

Best regards,

Thomas

3

Yeah, I am tracking the consumption of pellets by my pellet stove in home assistant.

The lacking is really at the energy dashboard side. Being able to put the sensors I have in there would be awesome. Besides it making perfect sense.

4

This is pretty much a duplicate of https://community.home-assistant.io/t/wth-gas-but-no-other-fuels/802401

5

I actually went through and added my pellet boiler - so I’ve worked out a ‘path of least resistance’ method to make this work:

  • Allow multiple Gas sources with a configurable ‘top level label’ (ie. gas)
  • Expand to allow KG and any other units

Right now what I’ve did works, I get KG used and a cost but it just shows up as m3 on the energy dashboard (which while sucky is fine ultimately)

6

I am using district heating and get the consumed energy in kWh.
While that works for the energy dashboard and shows the correct units and price, the label is still “Gas” which is not korrekt.
As gas heating is something that is slowly (very slowly ;)) fading, I think it is time for home assistant to also accept the newer types of heating and probalby also the older types (i.e. oil).

1 Like
7

I track wood logs burnt in my fireplace (in kWh equivalent based on weight, via a template sensor) and currently have to present it as “gas”. It “wood” be nice to be able to set&track any kind of energy source

8

I have a fuel oil boiler and I can reasonably calculate gallons used based on run time from my thermostat and the gallons per hour rating of the nozzle on the boiler. I’m looking at using the “Gas” fuel type, but it doesn’t have a gallons option, it seems to really be meant for gaseous fuels. Either a custom fuel type or the addition of gallons so I can bend it to my will would be very much appreciated.
Thanks for the all the good work!

9

My WTH-moment last month was, that I wanted to integrate my oil-based heating and I needed to re-calculate the oil-consumption (measured in liters) to m³ to be able to get them integrated in the energy dashboard.
So it would be great, if liters could also be supported for heating.

Best regards,
Dominik

10

Also just not calling it “gas” would be useful. I receive kWh in warm water. But on the energy dashboard it says gas.

11

My take on this is that, as someone using this type to keep track of an oil based heating system, the scale is not precise enough for systems that spend way smaller amounts of fuel than the usual gas systems. This results in having the charts with the bars well implemented, but with a legend of 0 across the y axis. The only useful info that i take from this tracking is the € value associated to the ‘0 m3’ I’m spending