Best way to get the actual ac_power sensor value

[Robert-2669]

Hi Guys & (@WillCodeForCats ),

For an automation I'm working on (Restricted Export to the Grid), I need to get the actual solaredge_ac_power sensor value for correct calculations.

The automation Trigger is provided by the P1 meter every 5 sec providing the actual Power Consumption.

I force the update by using the standard *.update_entity action from HA:

 - action: homeassistant.update_entity
   target:
     entity_id: sensor.garage_solaredge_ac_power

However I see that the time to get the updated value is unpredictible and increases with successive requests (still just 1/5sec)
Setting the integration polling interval to 1sec works fine without errors, but is complete overkill for my usage.

Does/can the Integration provide any "poll on demand" option as alternative to HA's own *.update_entity action?

Best Regards,
Robert

PS: When done, I will share my automation here. It's fully documented :-)

[WillCodeForCats]

Yes, there is a refresh now button.

[Robert-2669]

Yes, there is a refresh now button.

Hi Seth,

Thanks, I tried that and I see exactly the same behaviour. If I trigger every 10sec the first refresh takes ~250ms and every succesive refresh takes again ~250ms longer and it's accumilative. If I pause the automation briefly, it starts again with ~250ms.

I have no clue on why this can be. I hope you do :-)

Thanks & Regards,
Robert

[WillCodeForCats]

Home Assistant schedules polling/refreshes internally. The integration doesn't control that.

The refresh now button tells the home assistant coordinator that we want to do a refresh immediately rather than wait for the next polling interval. When that actually happens is up to HA.

[Robert-2669]

Ok thanks. for your reply.

Then I see no way to implement an elegant solution for this. I'll then take the 1s interval route and see where it leads.

[WillCodeForCats]

Internally we are using the DataUpdateCoordinator provided by Home Assistant. All we do is tell HA the scan interval and HA will schedule polling using that interval. When the refresh now button is triggered we call the update function of the coordinator directly, but in practice it could take a second or two to actually run since HA is still in charge of coordinating that update.

[Robert-2669]

Thanks for the explanation. Clearly the coordinator needs to protect it's self from excessive uncoordinated requests. Nothing you can do here.
I see single requests mostly executed within ~250ms, but if I have a few repeats within 10s, the delay already exceeds 6s.

Thanks for your feedback.

PS: I tried 1s polling interval. That goes well until I start changing APL. 2sec works fine.