Replies: 5 comments 17 replies
-
+1 A really great topic to streamline the vision. I indeed think a more general use of 'heat' is a better choice due to all the different possibilities to heat a home nowadays. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
I'm still trying to improve the proposal. The concept of utilities vs heating which was the main driver to drive into this is mentioned but not well explained. In added a section describing the Information layers of the dashboard. Hopefully this helps in explaining why heat management is still at a lower layer compared to electricity management and how both are part of energy management. It takes me a long time to explain a concept while keeping it (relatively) short, so updates are incremental. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
For reference also see this related proposal about renaming the title of this default dashboard from “Energy” to “Utilities” in the frontend/UI: +1 for “Heat as a utility” as I live in Sweden and here in Scandinavia district heating (also known as heat networks) where heat and cold is piped to most houses (as hot steam or cooled water) to a whole city is the mowt common heating method for residential homes and it is even promoted by all the districts councils, and that is a “Heat as a utility” which is payed per kWh or kJ usage each month (measured via a Utility meter from the Utility company). District heating uses residual heat from various resources to produce up to 75% of Sweden's heating demand. District heating is the most common form of heating for blocks of flats and commercial premises in Sweden. It is one of the most integrated and developed systems in the world, with the Scandinavian country leading the way in this field.
The only country further ahead in this area is Iceland due to their easy access to natural geothermal heat vents: |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
Evolving current "Energy dashboard" should consider the purpose of the dashboard.
Some utilities energy can be estimated but usually not measured, like domestic water heating energy usage can be calculated with hot water volume meter (it's 4.186 MJ per m3 per 1K and since cold water temperature is normalized you can assume 40K or just measure cold and hot water temp if you want to be more accurate) Especially interesting is energy carbon footprint. We already have Grid carbon footprint and "low-carbon electricity consumed". But having unified energy dashboard should allow to also compare different energy sources and it's impact on carbon footprint. And estimating carbon footprint cannot go without car fuel consumption (it's ~2.31 kg CO₂ per 1L of petrol/gasoline and ~2.68 kg CO₂ per 1L of diesel). We have car integrations that allow to do this estimation (BMW, Mini, Renault, Dacia, Subaru, Volvo in Core and a lot more with HACS). Evolved energy dashboard should include as many sources and consumers of household energy as possible and allow to compare amount of energy used and it's impact on environment. A few insight examples (electricity meter in kWh, district heat meter in GJ, hot water estimated from water meter in m3)
Carbon footprint - energy CO2 equivalent (estimated grid electricity and car fuel)
Those insights would not be possible without common energy unit and including as much sources as possible (even if it means estimating not measuring). And that's real knowledge and things I was not aware before putting everything into unified unit energy dashboard at it's current state (gas instead of heating etc). Simple "utility dashboard" below: it's useful only to monitor each utility separately and different unit makes it non-comparable at all |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Another idea: since a lot of HA installations have the same energy dashboard, could we have something like shared stats on this? Allow me to share my energy usage statistics and then segment the installations by total usage (like 3 or 4 segments based on total energy usage, or maybe something more if I want to share more data, like # of residents?). This would allow to show stats like "your household is using less energy then XX% of similar homes" showing the percentile for my segment. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
100% correct, but I don't think I said or implied that. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
External utilities are something you pay for as it comes into the house. Cost is only relevant when a utility enters or leaves the house. I'll clarify this in the external utility layer. Storage is part of the internal distribution layer. Devices in this layer have an input, output, capacity or a combination of these 3 things. This captures everything such as consumers (TV or sprinkler), generators (solar panels, rain water catcher) or batteries (home battery or water tank). AI generated image. Not perfect, but captures the concept: |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
If want to bring in possible future roadmap then missing ”district heating” in external utility layer, though that is not part on the current energy dashboard today: |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
There is a section showing the various sources of heating in Europa. Extending the utilities to Bio Fuel and District Heating would significantly expend the percentage of households covered by the energy dashboard. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
|
FYI, Open Home Foundation members talked quite a bit about the default energy dashboard in yesterday’s Home Assistant 2026.3 release party video and related to the discussions above they did mention both alternative heat sources such as district heating as well as some thoughts on moving heating metrics insights to a similar section in a climate dashboard. Check out their comments starting at around 1:02:02 time here: For reference, those comments was brought up in regards to some small improvements to the default Energy dashboard in the Home Assistant 2026.3 release that you can find listed in the release notes blog post for that: |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
Uh oh!
There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.
Uh oh!
There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.
-
Energy evolved
The energy dashboard supports gas, electricity and water as the most common household utilities. There are several proposals (such as #1311, #1313, #1347) for extending the energy dashboard. The goal of this proposal is to discuss the bigger picture and next steps for the energy dashboard, allowing other proposals to focus on specific improvements.
Goals
The energy dashboard describes the following goals:
💸 Utility cost
Overview of the consumption and cost of electricity, gas and water over time.
♻️ Sustainability
Steering user awareness and behavior through insight.
🧠 Energy management
Allow the user to make informed decisions and create automations through insight in supply, demand, solar utilization and solar forecast.
User's viewpoint
The goals can be translated to the following use cases:
This section consists of a list of commonly mentioned use cases. The goal is not to implement all of them but to allow the architectural direction and specific proposals to be matched to the most common use cases, while identifying other use cases as out of scope for the energy dashboard.
Use Case 1: Utility bill
As a novice user, I want to see my "utility bill" in home assistant of the consumed and produced utilities/resources so I can see where I spend money and adjust my behavior accordingly.
Examples: tracking the usage and cost of electricity, gas and water.
Future examples: tracking district heating, oil and biofuel.
Having insight in the utility bill is the current foundation of the energy management dashboard. It's easy to setup and understand, providing instant value to beginning users.
Use Case 2: Detailed usage
As a beginning user, I want to see how my utilities used, stored and produced in more detail, so I can see if everything works as expected, where I spend money and so I can adjust my behavior accordingly.
Examples: energy measurement per device, solar production and downstream water.
**Usa Case 3: Resource load utilization **
As a user, I want to see the utilities/resources load (power instead of energy) so I can control peak loads and optimize resource utilization (such as solar) though automations.
Examples are: tracking power.
Use case 4: Heating
As a user with multiple sources for heating, I want to see how the cost of the various utilities sources compare to each other so I can see where I spend money and adjust my behavior and automations accordingly.
Examples are: Hybrid heat pump or central heating in combination with a space heater.
When only one utility is used for heating, the relation between the device or utility is relatively easy to see. When multiple utilities are used, it is difficult for a user to understand how each source contributes to heating the house. Bringing the various utilities in direct relation to each other will give users meaningful insight and allow them to make better choices according to their cost and/or sustainability goals.
Use Case 5: Climate Control
As a user, I want to see the detailed usage of utilities in relation to climate control so I can see the historical correlation, anticipate and automate utility usage accordingly.
Heating and cooling accounts for a significant part of the consumed utilities. Having detailed insight in the internal distribution would be useful for many users to better control their climate to adjust their behavior or create automations to meet their financial or sustainability goals.
Additional information such as heating degree days, COP and insulation factor can be shown as KPIs. Heating needs can be predicted based on weather forecast.
Use case 6: Other utilities
As a user, I want to track essential utilities or resources such as salt (for water softener), garbage (for areas where you pay per kilo), fuel (for a car), bananas (to feed my minions) so I have a total overview of the cost and usage of these resources.
Logical viewpoint
Looking at how the dashboard is setup and described, the following layers can be distinguished:
🏠 External utility layer
Tracks the amount and cost of basic utilities such as electricity, gas and water coming into a house. The amount and cost are tracked by devices with the utility meter entity. This layer closely reflects the household's utility bill.
Provides details and context by tracking the consumption, production and storage by individual devices. A device needs an entity with the measurement class to track the input and/or output. Storage devices can have a capacity.
👀 Insight layer
Provides forecasts to predict production and/or consumption of utilities or KPIs for a specific utility. Forecasting services or historical data can be used for forecasting. Additional information about CO2 or the self consumption of solar are examples of additional insight provided by the energy management dashboard.
⚙️ Automate
Optimize the use and storage of utilities through automations, blueprints or integrations outside of the energy management dashboard.
What is missing
Consistency
Several concepts present for one utility can be extended to other utilities. Most notable:
External Utility Sources
Tracking the cost and usage of utilities coming into the house forms the foundation of the energy management dashboard. The physical utility meters forms the starting point for tracking electricity, gas and water, showing the resource consumption (and production) for a given timespan. Electricity, gas and water are currently supported by Home Assistant.
Looking at Europe (2023), the following utilities are commonly used for heating:
Currently, 56% of European households can track their heating using energy management dashboard.
Heat
The internal distribution layer consists of devices which are placed in a specific context. Solar panels, batteries and smart plugs are examples of devices which enrich the energy management dashboard. These devices have an input and/or output to track the amount (energy) of the consumed or produced utility. Some devices have additional information such as the utilitie's flow (power) or device's capacity (state of charge).
The same concept could be applied to other utilities such a sprinkler system, rain water tank or central heating system to measure the distribution, production and storage of water or gas. Conceptually, devices can have multiple input or outputs of the same or different utilities.
Resource predictions
"Today our energy dashboard is in phase 1: we show you the things. Step 2 is that we want to start predicting things, help you make decisions for your home based on things we learn from the data." - Paulus
The most notable metric absent for predicting resource consumption is the outdoor temperature. The temperature is a very significant factor to predict resource (electricity, gas, other) consumption to heat or cool a house.
Design principles
The energy dashboard needs to be:
It should be recognized that the principle to be simple for beginning users can conflicts with the flexibility more advanced users or niche households need. In such a case, simplicity seems to be preferred.
Solution analysis
Utility types
Several use cases can be expended upon by adding more utility types such as oil, biofuel and district heating.
History:
#1311 was created to suggest these additions. #1313 was created to discuss a subset. The discussion revisited the solution strategy which led to the creation of this discussion, separating the high level and specific proposals again.
The following options are commonly mentioned:
Option 1: Change gas to heat
Convert gas to a common unit energy such as kJ and allow addition utility meter entities to be added.
Pro:
Con:
Conclusion:
Option 2: Allow gas to be customized
Allow the user to select their desired units (and name) for the gas/heating section. Default is m3 gas. It can be switched to kJ or kWh. Home Assistant will take care of converting m3 gas to kJ or kWh.
Pro:
Con:
Conclusion:
Option 3: Add specific utility sections
Allow a user to add additional predefined utilities such as biomass or district heating. These utilities will work similar to gas, but with different units.
Pro:
Con:
Conclusion:
Option 4: Add wildcard utilities
Allow users to add custom utility sections where the user defines the name, units (kJ, kWh, trees, kg, bananas, ...) and icon. Matching utility meters can be added to be shown in the utility's section. The user can track the usage and cost of whatever they want.
Pro:
Con:
Conclusion:
Hybrid heating
Option 1: Heat as a utility
Allow users and integrations to provide heat utility meters. These entities can be added to the energy dashboard as one of the extended utility types discussed above.
Pro:
Con:
Conclusion:
This option is viable
Option 2: Dedicated Climate management
Provide a climate tab matching the energy tab. Both energy and climate (heating and cooling) can uses various from natural gas, heat-pump or space heaters.
Heat usage and heat distribution cards can be shown based on sources.
Heat production can show the forecast based on outdoor temperature and the house's (estimated) isolation factor.
Heat sources can show the heat produced and cost per source.
Gauge cards can show heating specific metrics such as carbon footprint, efficiency, passive heating percentage, etc.
Metrics related to cost, efficiency, carbon footprint and outdoor temperature can be shown on the climate control dashboard. The heating amount can be predicted based on weather forecast.
Climate entities might be used to show the heat flow or individual devices/rooms.
Pro:
Con:
Conclusion:
This option is preferred
Option 3: Do not support heat
Heating is out of scope of the energy dashboard
Conclusion
This option is viable
Backlog
Harmony and consistency
Certain things can be made more consistent. This section is reserved to capture those suggestions.
Cost improvements
The current dashboard does not show the relation between consumed energy and the (dynamic) cost of energy. This section is reserved to discuss improvement options.
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
All reactions