Cumulative energy with ESPHome plug

magicbeing

Your blog says:

Unfortunately, ESP home does not have a cumulative total for energy devices. However, you can replicate this functionality in home assistant using a utility meter helper.

I’m new and just learning but reading about ESPHome it does support this using using the SensorStateClass.TOTAL.

Can you confirm Local Bytes ESPHome plugs now support this?

RebeccaH

Hi @magicbeing

Thanks for stopping by. The link you’ve shared is for Home Assistant, rather than ESPHome. If you have a comparable resource for ESPHome, I’d be interested to hear. 🙂

magicbeing

RebeccaH my apologies, I messed up the link. I’ll try to find the correct one and update. While looking I came across this reply on the HA forum which also appears to contradict the assertion that ESPHome flashed plugs don’t store cumulative energy.

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/where-is-the-smart-plug-energy-data-stored-and-how-long-is-this-retained/680518/6?u=magicbeing

I found others as well, but the above is confirmed as correct in the subsequent reply from Adam Allport.

Maybe Adam can clarify whether ESPHome is an issue here, and also whether his ESPHome and Tasmota flashed plugs provide cumulative energy use (and more precise details of possible).

AAllport

magicbeing Maybe Adam can clarify whether ESPHome is an issue here

Happy to help!
The short answer is it could do it, but we’re not going to configure it that way.

Originally, when we adopted the ESPhome config, we kept many of the default options for restoring states, including the daily counter.
Some of our community, understandably, saw this as excessive and wearing out of the flash.
[Github / LocalBytes/esphome-localbytes-plug#PR10] disabled “restore” on the counter.

ESPHome doesn’t have a specific “Lifetime” counter (like the daily total), but it has a recommended code block for using an integrator. [ESPHome Docs / Total Daily Energy / Lifetime] to achieve this effect.

To quote the reasoning in PR10 that we agreed with:

We would only lose up to one day’s worth of stats which can be argued as being insignificant
- neilmartin83 on PR#10 at Jan 3, 2025

So whilst “Unfortunately, ESP home does not have a cumulative total for energy devices” is technically correct. it should probably read “We have not configured a cumulative total for our ESPHome Plugs”
(We’ve scheduled a review for next week to update that accordingly)

I believe that wording is also a carryover from before the energy dashboard existed in Home Assistant.
The total_daily is configured in Home Assistant to ignore resets, per the SensorStateClass.TOTAL_INCREASING class.

I appreciate that there is an asymmetry to Tasmota here, which is worth pointing out.
Tasmota presents a “Energy Today”, “Energy Yesterday”, and “Energy Total” in its telemetry

The Tasmota devs decided that daily usage should be volatile.
For total usage, they persist a register at midnight, and then add the daily total on-demand (eg, when producing telemetry messages).

There’s a good discussion on [Github / arendst/Tasmota#17825] with their reasoning.
If you’re interested, the relevant source is: [Github / arendst/Tasmota#xdrv_03_energy L294-L303] and [Github / arendst/Tasmota#xdrv_03_energy.ino L412-L436]

Could we do something similar in ESPHome? Yes, it’s not a bad shout.
Will we do something similar? Honestly, it’s unlikely.
We often see ESPHome used as a “periphery to Home Assistant”, and since Home Assistant now has a very comprehensive dashboard, we just don’t see much value in multiple on-device registers.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t! If you (or anyone) wants to add it to your config, go ahead, and feel free to put the YAML here for others!

I know that turned into quite the essay for what started as a clarification, but feels like useful context for future reference 🙂

magicbeing

AAllport thanks for the “essay.” I value the detail and appreciate you taking the time to respond comprehensively.

All this is great learning for me.

AAllport

magicbeing All this is great learning for me.

You’re not the only one… I was under the impression Tasmota was doing an hourly write, etc.
Something I forgot to mention is that, yes, we could add a “total” usage using the integrator but not persist it.
The reason we’re not taking that direction is that it’s too easy to trigger a reset without communicating it correctly.

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
- Attributed to Charles Babbage

At least “daily” sets a reasonable expectation, and Home Assistant will handle resets gracefully. But seeing a low “total” could convey incorrect information.