It’s about time I figured out where we use all our energy
It’s been a busy week where I’ve learned a lot and slept just as much. Starting a new job is always tiring, there is a lot to learn in a short space of time. Due to the nature of my new job I’ve been thinking a lot about our energy usage, when do we use the most, how much and what are our the biggest contributors to our energy bill.

It seems that I’m not the only one thinking along these lines as the latest public release of Home Assistant has a new Energy Monitoring tab.

This new tab in Home Assistant is just what I’ve been looking for. It takes data from your home assistant installation, such as any devices that have built-in energy monitoring (lights, sockets), dedicated energy meters or even APIs so long as they are available as a sensor.

It then does all of the maths and tells you how much energy you have used at a given point on a given day. Even better is that the Hassio team have made the modules use to create the energy tab available throughout Home Assistant so you can create your own love lace UI with only the info you want

I only had one problem. I don’t have any devices that track their energy usage or any that are just energy trackers. As an Octopus Energy customer though I do have access to their Agile API.

So with a bit of googling and help from this post on Reddit, I managed to get my Octopus Energy Data into Home Assistant 🥳 The problem being is that the data is input into home assistant 24 hours later than it is consumed (so If I used it yesterday it would show up as if I used it today) and it all comes through in one lump so the energy tap shows that I’ve used 10kWh of electric at 3 am and nothing else for the rest of the day.

From what I can make out as I am not on Octopus’ Agile tariff my usage data isn’t given to me in almost real-time (every half hour) when my Smart Meter sends the data to the Data Communications Company who send it to Octopus. Whilst not completely useless, as it does give me my usage for the last 24 hours it’s not quite what I’m after.

So, me being me, I went and investigated what options are available to me and I have to say I’m quite impressed with what’s out there.

One of the first things I searched for was something to put in my Fuse Box / Consumer Unit, as whilst I would need a qualified electrician to come and fit them, it would be hidden out of the way.

After a quick look at the Blackadder Database, I came across the Hiking Sigle Phase 65A DIN Rail energy monitor. this little beauty sits between the fuse for a circuit and the things on the circuit and not only gives you energy usage stats but also has a built-in relay so you can turn the circuit off remotely.

Whilst not ideal in our current situation, we rent our flat, I could see this being really handy if you had a consumer unit in each room with separate fuses going to each light or power socket, something I’ve been thinking of doing when we eventually have our own home.

Next up I thought about changing the sockets in the flat to one that monitored energy usage.

in the same database, I came across the Makegood MG-UKWSG01 Energy Monitoring Wall Outlet.

You can switch and monitor each output individually. The only thing I don’t like about these is that when you order them from Ali Express they have a weird faceplate that caters to a variety of different countries rather than just the UK. Not a massive obstacle, and could come in handy in the future, but I don’t think Mrs Jim will be too impressed.

Again as we rent our home I don’t think we’ll be going with these as I’d need to replace each and every socket in the house with these to get accurate readings and then do it all again when we move out.

I tried to find an energy monitoring light switch too but so far have had no luck finding one that does not need a neutral wire, and looks like a standard light switch (very important for Mrs Jim.

Finally, I came across a couple of devices from Hildebrand.

They offer two products that are really cool but you are kind of limited to which one you can have by what type of Smart Meter you have.

The first is an In-Home-Display that replaces the one you will have received from your energy supplier. It’ll give you all of the same details but most likely look a hell of a lot better. The unit also connects to your WiFi enabling you to get real-time usage data via MQTT. The only downside is that the Display only works with the SMETS2 Smart Meters at this time.

The second one, the Glow Stick, is similar to the first in that it will connect to your wifi and give your energy usage data via MQTT but it does not have a screen and work with the SMETS1 Smart Meters.

The great thing about the glow system is that Hildebrand has a partnership with the DCC so the data is literally the data your smart meters send off to your electricity supplier, it’s actually how they work but you don’t have to do anything except giving them a few details when you order your device.

At this moment in time, I think I’ll be buying one of the Glow Sticks mentioned above. It’s a really simple and elegant solution for getting our usage data into Home Assistant. The great thing is that if we ever move all I have to do is let the Glow team know before we move and they’ll get the connection swapped to our new address, so long as we have the same type of smart meter.

If we do buy a house the glow stick wouldn’t go to waste either as Home Assistant’s new energy dashboard allows you to pick individually monitored items and monitor them too. This would let me have the glow stick as my main energy monitor then I can get more granular by replacing sockets, switches (when I eventually find some), the smart bulbs themselves for their smart equivalents or adding those energy monitoring relays into our fuse board. This would give us the added advantage of being able to check if our figures match what the smart meters say.

What do you think of my energy monitoring plans? Do you have an energy monitoring solution you use that I may not have considered? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll certainly look into them.