Sensor reference
Power Insight creates sensors on one Home Assistant device per thing you set up: one for the grid connection, one per PV system, battery and consumer, plus a Combined device for the whole home. The full list for each lives on its device page:
Totals for the whole home, and the base load without its own sensor.
Import, export, import cost and export earnings.
Where your solar power goes, and what it saves and earns.
Where the discharge goes, what charges it, and what it saves.
Which sources power an appliance, and what it costs to run.
Which sensors appear depends on what you turn on in the integration's Options. Every sensor's card says which option creates it. Total costs + Levelized means the Total costs toggle, with the cost method set to Levelized or Both. See Sensor options & presets.
Power Insight is in beta, so entity names may change until version 1.0.
Reading the sensor names
A handful of words come back in almost every sensor name. Once you know them, the names explain themselves.
Where power goes
The power-flow sensors on the grid, PV and battery describe where that device's power goes, never what the device itself uses. They read Import to …, Production to … or Discharge to …, followed by one of four destinations:
| Destination | Means |
|---|---|
| home consumption | your household appliances, with or without their own sensor |
| batteries | charging a battery |
| system standby | the idle draw of your energy equipment, such as PV inverters at night. Not appliances on standby. |
| grid | export |
So a battery's Discharge to system standby is battery power feeding, say, a PV inverter at night, not the battery's own standby draw.
Ratio and share
Both are percentages, but they divide by different things:
- A ratio divides by the device's own power. A PV system's Production to grid ratio of 40 % means 40 % of its production is exported.
- A share divides by a total for the whole home. The same system's Share of grid export of 80 % means it supplies 80 % of everything your home exports.
Rate and total
- A sensor ending in rate is money per hour right now (
EUR/h), like a speedometer. - A Total adds that rate up over time (
EUR) and keeps counting across restarts, like an odometer. Totals work with Home Assistant's statistics and can be put behind a utility meter for daily or monthly figures.
Standard and levelized
Money sensors come in two flavours, chosen in the options:
- Standard values electricity at your live grid price. Power from your own solar and battery counts as free.
- Levelized also counts what your hardware cost (purchase, installation, maintenance), spread over every kWh it delivers over its lifetime. It answers "is my solar or battery actually paying off?"
See How it works for the details.
Savings, avoided cost and financial return
- Avoided cost is what your own power kept off your grid bill.
- Cost savings is avoided cost minus what the device costs to run.
- Financial return is cost savings plus what exporting earned.
Units and currency
Power is in W, energy in kWh. The docs write money in EUR for brevity:
your sensors use your Home Assistant currency instead ($/h, £, …).