Control device self-consumption and appliance consumption

[michalk-k]

The two possibilities comes in mind (from experience)

1. smart switch without power measurement (ie Shelly 1) and a bulb
2. smart switch with power measurement (ie Shelly 1 PM) and a bulb

We can consider a dimmer (with or without power measurement) controlling a bulb as a variation of both. An example of one with power measurement is Shelly Dimmer.

Considering that the device profile provides self-consumption only, how should we approach that?
Add one from PC profile and another one, with numbers specified by a user for an appliance.

Note, that discovery seems to be suppressed if the PC entry for appliance power has already been added before.

[bramstroker]

I'm not 100% sure of your question, but powercalc provides possibility to only provide self consumption and/or allow the user to input the value of connected appliance (for smart switches without built-in powermeter) directly in the discovery flow.

Both for dimmer and smart switch.
Did you actually read the docs on it?
https://docs.powercalc.nl/library/device-types/smart-switch/
https://docs.powercalc.nl/library/device-types/smart-dimmer/

When it's not clear from the docs please suggest how to improve.

[sgiffhorn]

I'm not sure but maybe michal-k has a similar problem to what I have: To be able to consistently create Powercalc instances for different kinds of switches/dimmers (with or without powermeter) while also taking standby/self-consumption (that also includes different values for switch on/off) into consideration.

I think there are basically 3 scenarios:

1. You do not care about standby/self-consumption: -> All is good, you can create a Powercalc sensor for switches/dimmers without power measurement and provide this as virtual power using different strategies (in most cases fixed). All other is already covered by the switches/dimmers which have a power measurement. You can also easily create a custom model for this.
2. You care about standby, but you want to have this as separate device entities (i.e. "Device Power/Energy"): -> This can easily be achieved for devices with power measurement, you just create a model with "only_self_usage": true, "standby_power": XX, "standby_power_on": YY. However this does not work for devices with no power measurement. When you use "only_self_usage": true for the model, then you can't add the virtual (fixed,...) appliance power and have to create another Powercalc instance just for the appliance power. If you use "only_self_usage": false you won't get separate device power/energy entities, as the standby power will be added to the appliance power.
3. You care about standby, but you want to have the standby values (off/on) added to the appliance power/energy: -> This is the opposite of (2). It works for devices without power measurement but not for devices which already measure the appliance power/energy.

Do you see a possibility to achieve scenario 2 or 3?

For (2): Wouldn't it be possible to to add a (model or GUI) configuration option that would allow to have the standby values as separate entities instead of adding it to the appliance value?
For (3): Wouldn't it be possible to add a GUI configuration option to reference a real power sensor, add the standby values to it and add that combined sensor to the device (of course also calculate and add the combine d energy)

[aqwserf]

I also had the same wondering and after struggling for a while to come up with a simple method, I took that approach: as PC only allow creating a sensor for the device self consumption (for smart switch with power meter in my case) based on library, I'm creating a custom power/energy sensor like this for every plugs:

create_energy_sensors: true
create_utility_meters: false
disable_extended_attributes: false
disable_library_download: false
enable_autodiscovery: false
energy_sensor_naming: "{} powercalc energy"
energy_sensor_friendly_naming: "{} Powercalc Energy"
include_non_powercalc_sensors: false
power_sensor_naming: "{} powercalc power"
power_sensor_friendly_naming: "{} Powercalc Power"
# Plugs
## tuya TS011F_plug_1 / TS011F_plug_3
  - unique_id: sensor.plug_1_pc
    entity_id: switch.plug_1
    fixed:
      power: "{{ states('sensor.plug_1_power') | float + 0.39 if states('sensor.plug_1_power') | is_number else 0 }}"
    standby_power: 0.13
  - unique_id: sensor.plug_2_pc
    entity_id: switch.plug_2
    fixed:
      power: "{{ states('sensor.plug_2_power') | float + 0.39 if states('sensor.plug_2_power') | is_number else 0}}"
    standby_power: 0.13
...
## Nous A1Z
  - unique_id: sensor.plug_4_pc
    entity_id: switch.plug_4
    fixed:
      power: "{{ states('sensor.plug_4_power') | float + 0.4 if states('sensor.plug_4_power') | is_number else 0 }}"
    standby_power: 0.1
...

this way, I can track the overall consumption (self-consumption + appliance) and add it to the energy dashboard. It's maybe not ideal as I need to search for every plug on the profile library website but I don't add plug very often.

Ideally, PC would add an option to create an overall sensor if it detects that the smartplug/dimmer has power measurement and the ability to add static/whatever strategies for others.