Devices
Power Insight works with the devices you tell it about: one for each grid connection, PV system, battery and consumer. For each one you pick the Home Assistant sensor that reports its power, plus a few details such as your electricity price or what the hardware cost.
Add a device with Add device on the Power Insight integration page, and change it later with its Reconfigure button.
Your import/export meter and electricity price. Exactly one is needed.
A solar array or inverter. Add one per system.
A home battery. Add one per battery.
An appliance, EV charger or heat pump with its own power sensor.
Created for you: totals for the whole home.
Each device page has two parts: Settings, what you enter when adding the device, and Sensors, what Power Insight then creates for it. Which sensors are created is chosen once per device type in the integration's Options; see Sensor options & presets.
Which settings are required?
Only the power sensor is always required. Other settings become required once you turn on sensors that need them. For example the grid electricity price entity is only required once you enable any cost or savings sensor, and the lifetime values are only required once you enable any levelized sensor.
If you enable an option that a device is missing data for, the options flow tells you which devices need attention:
These devices are missing values the selected sensors need: … Open Reconfigure on each device to add them (e.g. a price sensor for costs, lifetime values for levelized sensors), then save again.
How device settings are stored
Each device is a Home Assistant config subentry of the main Power Insight entry. Its configuration is split into:
adapter.config— the device's own settings (power entity, price entity, export compensation, charge sources, and the derived LCOE/LCOS).- top-level
data— the raw lifetime inputs (lifetime_production,lifetime_cost,co2_footprint) used to derive levelized costs, the moment Power Insight started counting the device (counting_since), and its carried-over history as entered (history).
You do not edit these directly — the config flow does it for you — but it explains why some fields (lifetime values) behave differently from the rest.