Every now and then a HACS integration comes along that stands out from the crowd. This time it is an integration that helps to understand how you use energy in your home and helps to lower your utility accounts by showing your Energy Score! Let’s dive into this!

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Introduction to Energy Score

Energy prices are very high nowadays, so a lot of people are looking for ways to save on their utility bills. I already created two videos about how you can get more insight into your energy usage and how you can start your appliances when the energy prices are low. And now I can add another handy integration to my energy-saving series that gives you more insight into your energy usage and that helps to save money. This integration works very well if you make use of dynamic energy prices. You can monitor the total energy score and costs of your house, but also for specific devices. It’s called Energy Score and is created by Thorjan Knudsvik and can be installed using HACS. If you haven’t got HACS installed yet, then please check this easy-to-follow video on how to do that. I will show how you can use this integration plus how you can use the utility meter integration in Home Assistant to store the total energy consumption if your provider does not provide you with this data.

Store the total energy consumption

First, we are going to make sure that your total electricity consumption is stored in an entity in Home Assistant. It might be that your energy provider already delivers this value. In that case, you can skip this step, but in my case, I only got the daily electricity consumption and I wanted to know the total electricity consumption. the Energy Score integration does support daily consumption as well, but I will explain how to create a total electricity consumption sensor just to make sure that this tutorial works for all of you.

Install Studio Code Server

To do this, you need to edit your configuration.yaml. You can do this by installing an add-on in Home Assistant which is called Studio Code Server.

• Go to Settings -> Add-Ons and click on Add-On Store.
• Search for Studio Code Server.
• Click Studio Code Server and click Install.
• After installation is finished, click Show in Sidebar and click Start.
• Now go To Studio Code server

We will now make use of the utility meter in Home Assistant. If you want to know exactly how the utility meter works, then visit this page for more info. The link is in the description below.

Edit the configuration.yaml

When you opened Studio Code server, you see all the files on your Home Assistant server on the left side. We are going to edit the configuration.yaml file. Depending on your setup, your configuration.yaml might look different than mine but don’t worry. That’s perfectly normal.

• Click on the configuration.yaml file
• Add the following lines:
• What you see here is that I start with defining the utility meter integration
• Then I am defining a new sensor which I called total_electricity_consumption
• And I am defining the source which in my case is zonneplan_p1_electricity_consumption_today
• This can be a different entity in your case.
• I am not defining a cycle here because I want our new sensor to contain the total electricity consumption.
• Now save the Configuration.yaml file.
• and restart Home Assistant by going to Settings->System, clicking on the power icon in the right upper corner en selecting Restart Home Assistant.

Now check the value of our new sensor.

• Go to Developer tools
• and select the states tab.
• Enter the new entity in the entity field and you will see the value of our new Total Electricity Consumption sensor.

Install the Energy Score Integration.

Now that we’ve prepared our total electricity sensor, let’s install the Energy Score Integration,

• Go to HACS.
• Go to Integrations.
• Click Explore and download repositories.
• Search for Energy Score.
• Click Energy Score.
• Click Download and click download again.
• Now Restart Home Assistant again.
• Now add the integration to Home Assistant by going to Settings -> Devices and Services.
• Click Add Integration.
• Search for EnergyScore.
• Click Energy Score.
• Now Enter a Name for the EnergyScore sensor.
• Select the Energy entity. This is the total energy sensor that we’ve just created or your own total electricity sensor if your energy provider’s integration provides that.
• Select the electricity price entity that you get from your energy provider.
• And click submit.
• Click Finish.

Check the Energy Score values

• If you click on the device you will see the following sensors:
  • The cost sensor displays the total electricity costs for today. In the beginning, it will show the value Unknown because it gets updated at certain intervals only. If you wait a bit, this will contain a value.
  • The EnergyScore sensor will show a percentage. This percentage is high if you used your appliances mostly when the price was low during the day. It will probably start at 100% but will change over time.
  • The Potential savings will show the, eh well, potential savings that you could have made if you turned on appliances during cheaper hours. This value will be filled over time as well.
• If you click on Configure in the Energy Score Card, you can tweak the energy score integration bit by setting the Energy Threshold and rolling hours to determine the energy score. I left them on default which means that the energy score is determined daily.

I created an energy score device now for the total energy, but you can also create separate energy scores for your appliances if your appliance is connected to a smart plug that stores the total electricity usage too. This way, you can create multiple energy score sensors for all your appliances in your home.

Add the Energy Score to a dashboard.

Now that we installed the Energy Score integration, we can add it to our dashboard. I use default cards for it in Home Assistant, but you can spice it up yourself using Mushroom cards and ApexChart cards from HACS if you like.

• Go to your Dashboard.
• Click on the three dots in the right upper corner.
• Select Edit Dashboard.
• Click Add Card.
• Search for a grid card.
• Search for a Tile card.
• Select the score cost entity.
• Click appearance.
• Select vertical and give it a name.
• Click on the Plus sign.
• Search for the Gauge card.
• Select the Total Energy Score entity.
• Give it a name.
• Select Define Severity and enter values for the three severity levels.
• Select Display as needle gauge.
• Click on the Plus sign again.
• Search for a tile card.
• Select the potential savings entity.
• Click Appearance.
• Give it a name and select vertical.
• Click Save.

You defined your Energy score sensor now and it’s visible on your dashboard. Here’s an example of how I implemented it on my dashboard. If you’d like to know how I implemented all my energy cards on my dashboard, then watch my other energy videos in the series. The links are in the description below.

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I will see you in my next video!

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