Shelly Pro 3EM delivers wrong "Total active returned energy" (in germany)

[pure hound]

Hello everyone,

I’ve been using a Shelly Pro 3EM in my setup for a few months now, alongside a small PV system that produces under 800W. In Home Assistant, I’ve set up the Energy Dashboard to track both total active energy and total active returned energy.

Over the past few months, my PV output has generally been below 200W throughout the day, while my baseline home consumption has stayed above 300W. Despite this net consumption, the “returned energy” reading keeps increasing. I suspect this happens because the PV system is feeding power on one phase, while my home is drawing from a different phase, causing the device to log returned energy even though there’s no real net export.

Here in Germany, power meters usually work with saldierende (balanced) measurement, meaning any feed-in on one phase would offset consumption on another. But the Shelly (or perhaps its Home Assistant integration) seems to record these separately. For instance, the Total active power sensor never shows zero or negative values—indicating there shouldn’t be any actual returned energy—yet the total active returned energy value still increases.

I’ll share three screenshots:

1. The Total active power sensor between 9am-4pm (never dropping to zero or negative).
2. The returned energy sensor, which keeps rising. 9am-4pm
3. The Energy Dashboard for that day.
4. The pv production that day between 9am-4 pm

Has anyone else experienced something similar or found a solution? Could it be an issue with the Shelly Pro 3EM firmware itself, or how it’s integrated with Home Assistant? Notably, these “total” sensors don’t appear in the Shelly’s own web interface—only in HA.

Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

Here you see the single phases in that timeframe.
You see Phase A constantly has a low negative amount. While the remaining sensors all the time is bigger than the negative value even in the peak between 11:30 and 11:45

[low nova]

This might be a difference in terminology - could you clarify what you mean by "total active energy" and "total active returned energy" in terms of where the energy is going from and to?

[pure hound]

What exactly want you know?
The names are not invented by my own. That are the default sensor names of the shelly integration.

I would assume that total active energy is the real received energy by the public electricity network.
I would assume that total active returned energy is the real returned energy to the public electricity network.

But at least the second assumption is wrong. Maybe it is physically correct (I'm not really into the technical details) but at least a german power meter which is used to compute your energy costs to pay to your supplier does not count returned energy here, because the "returned" energy is consumed in the own house at the same point of time (on other phases). So no returnal happens (at least on billing base).

[low nova]

I'm not familiar with the exact sensor and shellys naming scheme which is why I asked
But anyway. Yes your electricity meter is a "net" meter (i.e. Calculates energy in - energy out) but the energy dashboard doesn't work like that

I'm on my phone right now but will write up a bit of an explanation when I'm back on my computer and see if that helps

[low nova]

So basically the way the energy dashboard works is looking at the "boundaries" between various energy sources and consumers - you have grid in and grid out (both constantly increasing through the day, if you are net exporting grid out should be increasing faster), solar to house, battery in/out etc
From the way you've described things, it seems like total active power is your house consumption (presumably there is a total active energy sensor you can use for grid in, otherwise you would have to integrate it) and returned energy/power sensor which relates to your solar generation.
From the fact that these are on different phases, you don't exactly "self consume" the solar, you pump it back into the grid and your electricity provider just counts that as "negative use" for the purposes of billing which is slightly awkward but manageable
I think the simplest method would be to make a pair of template sensors to be your total grid energy in and total grid energy out but it's not ideal because of the way the energy dashboard works (it can treat a sensor going down as a "reset" of the sensor - which can lead to big jumps when it next goes up and lots of nonsense data) - so a more robust way is to use the power sensors to make a pair of template sensors and then integrate them

1. Grid In Power: {{ max([states('sensor.active_power') | float - states('sensor.returned_power') | float, 0]) }}
2. Grid Out Power: {{ max([states('sensor.returned_power') | float - states('sensor.active_power') | float, 0]) }}
3. Make an integral helper for both of these to get an grid in/output energy sensor (left reimann sum and a max sub interval of 1-5 mins seems to be pretty reliable in my experience)
   Use the sensors from 3. in the energy dashboard for grid in/out and it should better represent what your electricity meter is actually displaying