Entity for sesor.states('home_power_calculated')

[andrewmathues]

Hi there,

would it be possible to create an sensor-entity for the calculated powerconsumption for home when the entityfield is kept blank?

Kind regards
Timo

[gcoan]

The card will calculate home power consumption from other entities if you don't populate the home sensor in the card, but it doesn't create entities for you.

You could easily create such a sensor yourself as a template sensor using the formulae:

home power = import power - export power + solar power + battery discharge power - battery charge power

Use get the state values for each of your existing sensors and add/subtract them as above.

Word of warning though that this will be a very 'noisy' sensor as every single watt of power change of any of the underlying sensors will result in a new home power sensor value being stored in the HA database. It'll add a lot of data storage to your database, I've seen it happen myself.

To get around this issue, I create my home load sensor as a time-based trigger sensor, i.e. it only updates every 5 minutes so I get less state changes stored in the HA database. Mine is a home load sensor but it's exactly the same principle for home power calculation, just change the device_class to power and state_class to measurement.

This is what I have in my configuration.yaml:

# Home consumption sensor, updated every 5 minutes instead of the default of every minute
- trigger:
    - platform: time_pattern
      minutes: "/5"
  sensor:
    - name: "House Load Today"
      unique_id: "house_load_today"
      unit_of_measurement: kWh
      state_class: total
      device_class: energy
      state: >
        {% set x=(states('sensor.total_solar_energy_today')|float(0) 
          + states('sensor.total_battery_discharge_today')|float(0)
          - states('sensor.total_battery_charge_today')|float(0) 
          + states('sensor.grid_import_today')|float(0)
          - states('sensor.grid_export_today')|float(0) ) 
        %}
        {{ max(x,0)|round(1) }}

[andrewmathues]

I have already created a template sensor like yours.

However, the problem for me is that when the sun is shining, the house consumption goes down or the consumption is calculated negatively if there is more solar power than house consumption.

But I want my pure house consumption, regardless of how much sun is shining (substract individuals is set).
The manually created sensor is also quite inflexible.
If consumers are added to the power-flow-card, these also have to be created manually in the template sensor.

You would save yourself all this if the calculated house consumption (subtract individuals is set) were a separate sensor.
This sensor could be excluded from recorder.yaml and instead a template sensor with -trigger - time pattern (like yours) could be written to the recorder.

I'm not sure with all my writing whether I'm just thinking wrong.

[gcoan]

However, the problem for me is that when the sun is shining, the house consumption goes down or the consumption is calculated negatively if there is more solar power than house consumption.

Not sure I see what the problem is with this sensor. If you are using power sensors for solar generation, import, export, battery charge and discharge and they're all being updated in real or near real time then you should get an accurate home power reading and no negative values.

All your solar generation is either going to the home, being exported or being charged to the battery, so if you take account of all these 'power routes' in the calculation then the calculation will be accurate.
After all, that's what the power flow card does.

Take your point about inflexibility if you add extra sensors to the flow card you'll have to update the template sensor to match rather than it being automatic, but since you can only have 4 custom sensors its not something you do every day.

And yes, excluding from the recorder will save filling the HA database up.

[andrewmathues]

Hi,
sorry for the late response.

My meter concept is a bit tricky as I have two electricity meters from my supplier. The first one measures the total consumption or PV production from the property.
The second measures the consumption or PV production from the house.
I read both of them using an IR Tasmota head.
The difference between the two represents the consumption of my heat pump.

After the second meter, there are ampere clamps from Solaredge (once for the output of the solar system and once for the house consumption, so that Solaredge can calculate correctly and the battery is used correctly).
I read Solaredge via modbus.

The sensor.tasmoata.consumption.house provides me with useful values as long as there is no sunshine.
However, as soon as there is more production than house consumption, I have 0 W or - W on the sensor.

And this is exactly where a Power Flow Card sensor would play into my hands, as it calculates the value correctly.