Can't see cost in Dashboard - what am I doing wrong please?

[dark crypt]

Hello, I've integrated my Sonoff zigbee smart plugs (https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/sonoff-zigbee-smart-plug?variant=55695721857403) with HA, and can control them with automations. I'm now trying to do energy monitoring.

As a simple first step, I thought I'd get the basic energy monitoring working within HA. In the HA Dashboard I can see the Energy usage per Today, Yesterday and Month.

I've added the plugs to the Energy subset Dashboard but the problem is that although I can see the Energy usage the cost isn't automatically appearing and being worked out.

I'm wondering if the problem is how I'm adding the Energy Dashboard. If I go Energy > Electricity Grid > Add Consumption > Consumed Energy (I'm adding devices with the Energy Today specification, is that correct?) > Use a static price (I enter 0.2281 GBP/kWh here). Is choosing a static price correct? I presume that I do not choose "Use an entity tracking the total costs" or "Use an entity with the current price" because the smart plugs aren't "clever enough" or have the functionality to do that. But I want to track costs, so that's why I chose "static price" and entered the price as per my Octopus Energy bill - 22.81p per kWh.

And yet, I get £0.00 for the costs...? Even for previous days?
Any help getting this to work would be really great.

[deep sun]

The "Grid consumption" or " Return to grid" are not really ment for seperate devices.. That's for entities that monitor that, the full consumption/return (import/export) to/from the grid. Devices go under "Individual devices".

Having said that, if you don´t have a import/export meter for the grid, it should work to add them under "Grid consumption" with a price. Would display it a bit weird but should give you the price. But it does only calculate the price since the moment you added the price. So did you first add them and then added the energy price? If so, you just have to wait 🙂

[dark crypt]

Ok, thanks. If I add them as "Individual Devices" where I do I add the energy price GBP/kWh?

Ie, I can add each smart plug as an Individual Device, sure, but HA won't know how much the price of the energy is - where do I add that in, please?

[mint hollow]

there's no cost for individual devices

[dark crypt]

ok, then the question becomes, how is the cost calculated, since I want to see costs?

[mint hollow]

Cost is just grid consumption in kWh * kWh cost

[dark crypt]

Sorry, you took my question literally, understandably.
I want to see cost, as well as energy use. How do I practically implement that to see them, if I only populate individual devices? Can you give me instructions?

[mint hollow]

the only practical way is to add devices as grid sensors

[deep sun]

Yeah, you could add them as "Grid consumption" but that only works if you're not interested in the real house consumption.

This is, if you add solar, multiple tariffs or a battery to the mix it gets really hard to define the cost of running a single device.

[topaz badge]

I know it may some weird for simple set up but when you think about it more generally you cannot easily infer cost on individual devices.

You can have a complex set up with a peak and off peak tariff, a few battery and solar consumption.

As soon as multiple sources are consuming power it’s impossible to say where the cost goes.

So we allow you to track cost at the source level, but not at the individual devices level

[mint hollow]

You can make the assumption that cost is distributed proportionally. I think that will get you 90% of any potential insights it could give you

Then it's just simply calculating what device consumed what % of the total

[topaz badge]

Yeah I think this is the current idea indeed

But it's not on the product for now

Indeed

i also miss that to be fair