[UK] Smart Plugs, Power Monitoring

[cloud lantern]

Hey folks. I need to get a view on my power usage for kitchen appliances: fridge freezer, washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer and wondered what the simplest, cheapest and easiest entry point is? I'm happy with simply electric work if needed. I don't have ZigBee yet so it'll have to be WiFi if possible. Essentially we moved house and the appliances are quite old I think so want to get an idea on their usage and plan out a replacement strategy to reduce bills!

[cedar wedge]

for appliances that have a high inductive load which includes your examples. you should not use anything that has a relay (is switchable) in it.
you mention that you are happy to do some "simple electric work". I suggest that you get and wire in some "Shelly EM Mini Gen4" devices inline with your appliances. you can just wire them inline on the appliances flex. if the appliances are on a fuse spur then putting them behind the spur on the load side connections is also a great option.
if wired inline then put it in some kind of sensible electrical enclosure (Example that i have used on wiring inline on a dishwasher.)
shelly website but you can get from other places too - https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-em-mini-gen4

the gen4 series from shelly is both wifi and zigbee compatable. so whilst you are not using zigbee now. if you did want to switch to it down the road you have an option.

another option if you really do want a "smartplug" form factor is a no-relay smartplug which do exist but are not very common. However Athom Make one HERE

athom do also make a tasmota version instead of esphome if you prefer that although i tend to lean towards esphome

[cloud lantern]

My man! You are awesome 😀 both perfect solutions for me actually. I like the idea of the Shelley's as they are hidden. I'm not sure what ESPhome or Tasmota is tbh

[cedar wedge]

esphome and tasmota are opensource firmwares that run on esp microcontrollers which are the main controller of various iot devices. some people really like tasmota but ESPHome is a bit easier to integrate with HA.

the shelly has a bunch of benefits yeah, i tend to lean that way but i also understand why the smartplug form factor is nicer for people that are less confident in wiring them in.

[cedar wedge]

just remember that you want the shelly wired AFTER a fuse (be it in a spur or in a 13A plug) so its protected correctly. you don't want to wire it directly onto a ring because then its only protection is the MCB/RCBO on the circuit which is likely 32A and over its max.

"if you are gunna do it then do it right" 😛

Something else to keep in mind. if you are getting replacement appliances down the line including fitting and removal of old. remember to take your device off the flex before they take it away. 😛

[cloud lantern]

This is so helpful, thanks Michael! For some of the appliances they are plugged into a 2 gang socket, so for these you'd suggest inline after the plug, if it's on a fused spur I could wire it into the load side of the FCU and if needed get one of those plugs using ESPHome. Is the ESPHome integration easy enough, wifi etc?

[cedar wedge]

yes, wire it inline on the flex after the plug
socket-plug-flex-shelly-flex-device
this way its protected by the plug's fuse.
if its on a spur then puttiting it on the load side means its protected by the fuse in the spur.

and yes the esphome integration works great. i believe those plugs are set up so they host a wifi network when not connected to a network which you can connect to. access a webui and set your wifi creds. then it will hop on the network and home assistant should automagically find it (worst case you manually add it by ip but you shouldn't need to)

[cloud lantern]

That's fab, fully understand!

All part of the how to make sure Wife is onboard journey 😄

[cedar wedge]

shellys work the same way for provisioning. although you can also use the shelly app if you wanted to.

with newer esphome based devices using a later ESP chip. they can if set up support provisioning over BT instead of the wifi which is even easier. but this the linked plug uses an older microcontroller so wifi network is the baseline.

hopefully they will drop a new version of the plug at some point with some more compatibility but tbh its not like its hard to do it over wifi anyway.

[cloud lantern]

Do you have some of those plugs?

Sounds all nice and easy tbh just got to figure out which for which appliance

Thinking plugs for plugs rather than inline as it saves cutting cables not that its a huge problem either way

[cedar wedge]

I don't personally have those specific plugs. but I have similar devices and have looked at the firmware config of them.

[cedar wedge]

that is a pretty reasonable position to take. although remember if socket is behind appliance you will be "making the plug bigger" so ensure you have any required additional space.

[cloud lantern]

Great point

Assuming they are China based and not UK? Would be nice to find a UK company doing something similar but appreicate thats likely wishful thinking

[cedar wedge]

I thought about using one of the plugs on the dishwasher but it would have meant taking the (built in) dishwasher out to get at the plug so I just cut and wired onto the flex which i could get at instead.

[cloud lantern]

yeah that mames a lot of sense tbh, I might have to do something similar for the washing machine

[cedar wedge]

they would most likely still be using the same whitelabled Chinese hardware anyway

[cedar wedge]

for me washing machine was on an accessible spur so that was easier

knowing various options and then adapting depending on how stuff is set up is really handy with this kind of thing.

[cloud lantern]

good point, might as well go straight to the source

Yeah I think I'll end up using a bunch of each tbh, I'll map out what I have and then map out a shopping list

I really like the idea of the shelleys tbh

[cedar wedge]

whilst i havent used those plugs. i haave had a bunch of stuff from athom and its all been decent enough.

[cloud lantern]

but those plugs could end up being a bit more cost effective

first world problems I'm dealing with ere as you can tell 😄

[cedar wedge]

yeah, they are a little bit of extra work but have a bunch of extra options.

[cloud lantern]

The Shelley range is quite confusing I wont lie, they have millions of items and I have no clue what does what 😄

[cedar wedge]

whilst it doesnt help you right now. when the usualy sales are on. prime/blackfriday etc... you can usually pick up shelly device multipacks at a good deal. I tend to keep "stock"

[cedar wedge]

yeah, shelly have a massive range. and have options for various situations.

I have a bunch of both shelly and ESPHome based stuff 😛

[cloud lantern]

ooh thats good to know

oh wow thats pretty awesome

you should do an overview of what you have setup would be cool to reference and see whats possible

[cedar wedge]

I considered doing it but it would be pretty extensive if i did it for my whole setup 😛

I have done a bunch of stuff with UK wiring though and know the regs decently (although not actually qualified) so if you have questions on stuff in the future feel free to tag me in any threads.

[cloud lantern]

Damn this is epic!! So cool - what do your dashboards look like? I'm trying to figure out what I can make from a UI perspective. Currently I only have the weather as I have no smart devices 😄

[cloud lantern]

Love it, thank you - I've just checked the wiring for fridge, washing machien and dishwasher and they are all plugs into a socket, so I'm thinking of going the simpliest route right now with the ESPHome plugs

[cedar wedge]

I have a few dashboards for different purposes but this is my current main landing page

some minor redacting was needed 😛

some of the stuff is a bit broken currently. I have been meaning to redo stuff a bit but haven't gotten around to it as of yet.

energy tracking can be fun 🙂

[cloud lantern]

Oh this is so good, I need to take of of these for myself, what card styles are these? and how did you get the bin day stuff? That's a gold mine

[cloud lantern]

This is great! Wife just approved a few smart plugs, so once I have them could I start to do something similar? I have the octopus integration setup, its not perfect as I don't get live data its a day or two behind

[cedar wedge]

Cards are Bubble Card and bin day data is gotten from Waste Collection Schedule both of which you can get from HACS.

[cedar wedge]

yeah when you add stuff to the energy dashboard you set stuff to be a parent device to make sub things on the sankey chart

[cedar wedge]

I have one of these - https://shop.glowmarkt.com/products/display-and-cad-combined-for-smart-meter-customers
you set it up so its linked with your meter. its basically like the cheap ones the providers give you but this one connects to wifi and can send data to mqtt server so you can integrate with HA. this will give you live data directly from the meter.

you can also get a ct clamp based tracker from shelly and clamp incoming power cables to pull your own data. i have some ct clamp stuff inside my consumer unit.

[cloud lantern]

How did you get the bin day one to show as a button with the upcomgin dates?

[cedar wedge]

I created helper entities to show the data i wanted then i displayed those as sub-buttons in bubblecard.

[cloud lantern]

I defo need to look into this. I have an issue where my gas smart meter doesn't report back because 'its too far from the electric meter' so thats annoying

[cloud lantern]

out of my depth 😄 Will have to do some reseasrch

[cedar wedge]

oh thats awkward. gas meters talk to electric meters and electric meters do more stuff so they can do reporting. its to keep surplus electronics away from the gas for obvious reasons.

[cloud lantern]

yeah that make sense, there must be a way to extend the reach of the leccy meter though, its quite annoying I basically have 0 visibility into Gas usage

[cedar wedge]

tbh i set it up years ago at this point. i cant really remember much of the details myself.

[cedar wedge]

so... meters "sort of" use zigbee. its not standard zigbee its a customised version of it. so you can talk directly using zigbee hardware but conceptually its the same sort of thing. so i dont see any reaosn why they couldnt make a router/repeater device that you could place inbetween. but it would have to be customised and linked to your meters.

[cloud lantern]

Thats good to know, I'll get on the phone to them and see what my options are

[cedar wedge]

I would be surprised if they have no options for this as i feel its got to be a problem that crops up.

as i say, conceptually its definetly something that could be done. but i guess it depends on how often this happens.

is it worth making/supporting the solution.

[cloud lantern]

I feel like it must be something that comes up a lot

[cedar wedge]

yeah exactly. its just a matter of exactly how much I guess.

also electric meters are all gunna change soon anyway most likely anyway so there's not really much incentive for companies to put too much work into expanding options for current designs.

i guess gas stuff might have to change down the road for that too.

the current plan is for 3-phase to become standard for residential and as part of that meters are moving to bee in a box on the property boundary. the old incoming cable will be attached to one of the phases. and old meter removed and bypassed. then if you want to make full use of 3-phase its down to you to rewire as needed on your side of the meter.

plan is not finalised yet but some people are already doing their nut about having a box on the boundary.

[cloud lantern]

Ooh thats very interesting, thanks for sharing thats good to know