Home Assistant - Wholesale Electricity Usage Charts

Usage charts in Home Assistant for Amber Electric or Localvolts pricing

22 January 2024: Added Localvolts version to repo.
18 May 2024: Added negative price support to cost/profit utility meters. Existing users: just add the line delta_values: true to each import cost and export profit utility meter.

This package is used in Home Assistant with the Amber Electric integration or integrated Localvolts pricing to estimate usage in kilowatt hours and dollars. Example charts using the ApexCharts Card HACS frontend integration are included.

Using prices from your wholesale electricity provider integration, import and export prices are recorded at the end of each cost period (30 minutes for Amber, 5 minutes for Localvolts), as well as the cost/profit for each cost period.

Amber-Styled Charts

Combined Energy and Cost Charts

Prerequisites:

• The Amber Electric Home Assistant integration or having Localvolts prices integrated into Home Assistant.
• A Home Assistant inverter integration which provides import and export power (or a power sensor from which import and export can be derived).
  • The example code uses the GoodWe integration.
• The ApexCharts Card HACS frontend integration.
  • This integration is not required if you choose to build your own charts with a different integration.

Please note that the values will not match exactly with your wholesale provider's reporting, as:

• The power values reported by your inverter are unlikely to exactly match what is recorded by your smart meter and sent to Amber
• Any Home Assistant downtime will not have logging of power or prices
• The clock on your HA computer may not be in sync with your provider's clock, so the cost period may be shifted slightly

For example, my inverter typically reports imported and exported power about 2% lower than what is reported by the smart meter to my provider. In the inverter_import_power and inverter_export_power template sensors there is a correctionFactor variable which helps to compensate for this - I have it set to 1.02.

The YAML is provided as a package. It can be implemented as described in the Home Assistant documentation. For example, add the following to configuration.yaml:

# Use packages in /package folder
homeassistant:
  packages: !include_dir_named package

and then copy amber_usage.yaml to config/package/amber_usage.yaml. Do not copy amber_usage_part2.yaml or charts.yaml to the package folder.

For these instructions substitute localvolts_usage.yaml and localvolts_usage_part2.yaml if that is your provider.

Implementation

To get it running, the only changes you should need to make are in the template sensors and the automation.

• Implement and test the template sensors first by adding amber_usage.yaml as a package and updating the code as described below.
  • Do whatever is required to have inverter_import_power and inverter_export_power return power as positive values in kW.
  • Start with a correctionFactor value of 1.
  • Confirm that the sensors are returning correct import and export values as a positive number in kW.
• Add the remaining code by appending the content of amber_usage_part2.yaml to amber_usage.yaml.
  • Update the amber_30_minute_import_cost_export_price automation by updating sensor.your_amber_general_price and sensor.your_amber_feed_in_price to the corresponding sensor names from your Amber Electric integration.
  • Use Developer Tools to confirm that no errors are being raised.
• Restart Home Assistant.
  • Reimann Sum sensors
  • They won't exist until you have restarted Home Assistant.
  • The Riemann Sum sensors won't start logging data until non-zero data is coming from your template sensors. Give it some time.
  • Utility Meter sensors.
  • These are derived from the Riemann Sum sensors, so they won't exist until you have restarted Home Assistant and the Riemann Sum sensors have data.
• Add chart cards to a dashboard by adding a manual card and pasting the yaml into it.
  • The provided charts are only intended as examples - build your own to suit your needs.
  • They are provided as a single vertical stack card that you can add to a dashboard.
• Over a few days, note the difference between what your inverter has reported in kW to what is reported in Amber's app.
  • In the power template sensors, correctionFactor is a multiplier to adjust the kW of your inverter sensor to be closer to what is reported by your smart meter to Amber. Adjust the value accordingly.

Notes

• If you look at the built-in HA state graph for the a utility meter, it will be smoothed and not represent the data very well. Click the Show more link to see it resetting to zero every cost period.
• If you wish to have a utility meter with a different duration (e.g. hourly or weekly), it's simple enough to add another using one of the existing meters as an example.
• Input numbers are used rather than sensors because upon a HA restart, sensors will create a new value at the last recorded value. In the case of Import Cost and Export Profit, the daily charts sum the values and this would result in a duplication of values in the cost period, falsely inflating the daily sum.