Consumption chart seems to be linked to time of sync, not time of usage

[maxw3l]

Version of the custom_component

f7e8b30

Describe the bug

The Total Consumption chart seems to be calculated based on the time of syncing the data, not the actual time of usage. This shows it fairly clearly:

Compare with actual usage per hour from Powerpal app:

Is this a bug or a limitation of the API?

[mindmelting]

Hey @maxw3l - thanks for using - in its current implementation this is not a bug - it evaluates total_watt_hours from the API (which is total consumption) every minute. This works fine if your Powerpal app is updating the servers with readings consistently - which means you need to have it running on a device that is connected to Powerpal 24/7 (I have mine running on an old iPad which I also use as a HA wall mounted dashboard)

Now there is also an API for getting historical usage - however I haven't found a neat way of getting that to play nicely with HA and the energy dashboard yet (will look at it again).

If all works nicely you should get a dashboard that is pretty close to what Powerpal reports - and within a few cents of what your bill shows for that day.

Let me update the documentation shortly to be clear on how this works internally!

[maxw3l]

@mindmelting cheers, thanks for the explanation.

As you thought, I'm using it on my phone which isn't connected full time, explaining the disconnect in the figures.

Awesome work getting HA to interface with Powerpal at all! Very clever.

[mindmelting]

@maxw3l I will relook into using batched historical data (which would more suit use cases where devices are not 24/7 connected) soon!