power-wheel-card

An intuitive way to represent the power and energy that your home is consuming or producing.

This component is a custom card for the Lovelace UI of Home Assistant. The component is discussed here on the Home Assistant forum. There's also a wiki on GitHub.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation instructions
• Configuration instructions
  • Power view
  • Energy view
  • Money view
  • View titles
  • Number of decimals
  • Icons
  • View toggling
  • Advanced configuration example
  • More styling
• BETA battery feature in power view
  • Configuration instructions battery feature
  • Known issues for the battery feature
• License
• Credits

Features

Features of the custom power-wheel-card:

• Displays the three values (solar, grid and home) in 'a wheel'.

• Has different views for showing power values, showing energy values and showing costs/savings: the power view, the energy view resp. the money view. The initial view can be set. Click the unit to switch between views.

• BETA: Has support for a fourth value in 'the wheel': battery). In power view only.

  What does BETA for battery support mean: expect issues! There are known and unknown issues to be solved. The values and arrows don't show correctly all the time. The layout isn't even worked on yet. It's just the same layout as before and the battery icon(s) have been placed (split up) in available space for now.

• Has options for a different card title per view.

• Can auto-toggle between views. Click the recycle icon to turn on or off the auto-toggle. You can choose the initial state of the auto-toggle. You can choose a custom period (in seconds) between views.

• Calculates the current power that you nett consume from the grid: grid power. Input for the calculation is the power that you consume from the grid and the power that you produce to the grid.

• Calculates the current power that your home is consuming: home power. Input for the calculation is the power that your solar panels produce and the power consumed from and produced to the grid.

• Calculates the energy that you nett consumed from the grid: grid energy. Input for the calculation is the energy that you consumed from the grid and the energy that you produced to the grid.

• Calculates the energy that your home is consuming: home energy. Input for the calculation is the energy that your solar panels produced and the energy that you consumed from and produced to the grid.

• Calculates the costs/savings for all the energy values. Takes into account different rates for consuming and producing energy from and to the grid.

• Displays the transition between these power, energy and money values as arrows. E.g. if your solar power panels produce power, the arrow from solar to home turns active. And if your solar power panels produce enough power to deliver some back to the grid, the arrow from solar to grid turns active.

• Arrows can have values next to them. Zero values are suppressed. And values on the arrows are visible only when relevant. E.g. on a sunny day when part of your produced solar panel energy was returned to the grid and the other part was consumed by your home.

• Has support for setups that don't have separated grid sensors for consuming and producing. In these setups arrow values and arrow coloring are not available in energy view and money view due to lack of input details.

• Optionally uses icons of your own choice, which can be set by card parameters or taken from your customize: sensor settings.

• Optionally colors the consuming icons yellow and the producing icons green. You can choose your own colors for consuming and producing.

• Works for default theme and custom themes that use standard CSS vars.

• Has support for HACS to install and check for new releases.

Installation instructions

Installation using HACS (recommended)

You can install the power-wheel-card using HACS in Home Assistant. In HACS click on 'Frontend' and then click on the big '+' icon in the right lower part of your screen. Search for Power Wheel Card and follow the instructions there to install the card.

Manual installation (advanced users)

Manual installation is not the preferred way, but sometimes necessary. E.g. when you want to install the development branch.

1. Download the file power-wheel-card.js from master or choose another branch.
2. Save the file in the www folder inside your Home Assistant config folder.
3. Include the card code in your configuration.yaml file and increase the v parameter to bypass any caching.

lovelace:
  resources:
    - url: /local/power-wheel-card.js?v=1
      type: module

Note. The actual number for the v parameter isn't relevant. You have to increase the number whenever updating the source code to avoid having to manually clear the cache of your browsers and mobile apps.

Configuration instructions

Power view

Please start with a simple configuration for only the power view. If you have the card running, and you can confirm correct values in the card, you can start fine-tuning (icon colors, number of decimals, etc.) and extending (energy view, money view, view toggling, etc.).

You can use a nett grid power sensor (A) or the couple of two grid power sensors: one for consumption from the grid (B) and one for production to the grid (C). Most setups will only have (A).

There are some requirements for all the power sensors in your configuration:

• The sensor has to have a unit_of_measurement, e.g. W or kW.
• This unit_of_measurement has the same value as the other power sensors. E.g. don't mix W with kW.
• The sensor state should always be parsable to a numeric value. E.g. unknown or n/a are not allowed.

An example start configuration:

- type: custom:power-wheel-card
  title: "Power wheel"
  solar_power_entity: sensor.YOUR_SOLAR_POWER_SENSOR
  grid_power_entity: sensor.YOUR_GRID_POWER_SENSOR
  debug: true

Energy view

The energy view itself is not required. As a result you don't have to specify any energy view related card parameters. You can't use the energy view without having configured the power view also.

If you set up parameters for the energy view you will have an extra view in the card next to the power view. You can toggle between view by clicking on the unit. You can enable auto toggling by clicking on the button in the upper right corner of the card.

1. Decide on the time frame and choose or create sensors accordingly

Energy is measured per time frame. You have to decide what you will show in the power-wheel-card. E.g. energy used in the current year, month or today. You could use your smart meter counters directly, but using self-made sensors for e.g. energy consumed or produced since last midnight could provide more meaningful information on your power-wheel-card.

2. Check if you can supply separate grid energy sensors

Since a nett sensor for grid energy doesn't give enough information, it's recommended to have a separate sensor for grid energy consumption (D) and for grid energy production (E). If you can supply both D and E, the card will have arrow coloring and arrow values in the energy view (and money view).

If you don't have the separate sensors D and E, you can supply a nett sensor for grid energy (F). But then you also have to supply a nett sensor for home energy (G), because it can't be calculated anymore.

You can easily distinguish between sensors that belong to the power view and sensors that below to the energy view. Power sensors are measured in (k)W. Energy sensors are measured in (k)Wh.

There are some requirements for all the energy sensors in your configuration:

• The sensor has to have a unit_of_measurement, e.g. Wh or kWh.
• This unit_of_measurement has the same value as the other energy sensors. E.g. don't mix Wh with kWh.
• All energy sensors should be defined for the same time frame, e.g. day, month, week.
• The sensor state should always be parsable to a numeric value. E.g. unknown or n/a are not allowed.
• Preferably the grid energy sensors get updated at the same time as the solar energy sensor. (If not, the calculated value for home energy can give strange results in between.)

Money view

The money view itself is not required. As a result you don't have to specify any money view related card parameters. The toggle functions to switch to the money view will be disabled. You can't use the money view without having configured the power view and energy view also.

Supply the card parameter energy_consumption_rate. If you have a different rate for producing energy back to the grid, you can also supply the card parameter energy_production_rate.

The power-wheel-card only has rates for the energy depending on whether you consume or produce it. If your energy rate is depending on the (time of) day, please supply the average rates for high and low tariff or choose to not use the money view.

View titles

You can override the title value per view.

Number of decimals

You can specify the number of decimals for all values. There is a parameter per view.

Icons

Color of the icons

Icons will be colored by default. The default colors work in a way that green is used for "positive"/"producing" situations. Yellow is used for "negative"/"consuming" situations. If there is solar power, the solar icon will be green. If your home is using power, the home icon will be yellow. You are producing to the grid? The grid icon will be green. You are consuming from the grid? The grid icon will be yellow.

The card uses theme specified colors for green (--label-badge-green) and yellow (--label-badge-yellow) if those are set in your theme. You can override default and/or theme colors of the solar, grid and home icon by supplying consuming_color and/or producing_color in your card configuration.

For the active arrow color the card uses --paper-item-icon-active-color which could be set in a theme. You can override the default and/or theme color of active arrows by supplying active_arrow_color.

Some people like another perspective for the coloring of the grid icon. They can use invert_grid_colors to invert the coloring behaviour.

Using the default icons

If you don't specify anything about icons, and your sensors don't have icons of itself then the default icons will be used. For the solar icon the default is mdi:weather-sunny. For the grid icon the default is mdi:transmission-tower. And for the home icon this is mdi:home.

Using sensor icons

If your sensors are set up with an icon, then that icon will be used instead of the default icon. You don't have to set up anything in the card configuration. If the card detects an icon in the sensor data, it will use it.

Using user specified icons

If you want to defer from the sensor icon or the default icon, you can specify your own icons in the card configuration. These will override any sensor icons and default icons.

Using dynamic icons (advanced users only, no support given)

Some advanced users have set up dynamic icons in their HA. For the power-wheel-card these dynamic icons will be seen as normal sensor icons. The dynamic behaviour is visible in the card. There was only one problem: not all sensors were present in the card configuration. E.g. the value of the home power is calculated, so there was no parameter for supplying the sensor. And because of that there was no dynamic behaviour of the icon.

For the sole reason of using the sensor icon for otherwise not configured entities there are some extra parameters. Please note that supplying these sensors in the config will not imply that their (power or energy) value is used. For home entities their (power or energy) values are never used.

View toggling

If you specified enough parameters in the card configuration, you can have multiple views: the power view, the energy view and the money view. The user can click on the unit in the center of the card to toggle views. The user can click on the auto toggle button in the upper right corner of the card to start or stop auto toggling.

There are some parameters to support the view toggling:

Advanced configuration example

A more advanced example for in the ui-lovelace.yaml file:

- type: custom:power-wheel-card
  title_power: "Power distribution"
  title_energy: "Energy distribution"
  title_money: "Energy costs/savings"
  solar_power_entity: sensor.YOUR_SOLAR_POWER_SENSOR
  grid_power_entity: sensor.YOUR_GRID_POWER_SENSOR
  production_is_positive: true
  solar_energy_entity: sensor.YOUR_SOLAR_ENERGY_SENSOR
  grid_energy_consumption_entity: sensor.YOUR_GRID_ENERGY_CONSUMPTION_SENSOR
  grid_energy_production_entity: sensor.YOUR_GRID_ENERGY_PRODUCTION_SENSOR
  energy_consumption_rate: 0.20
  energy_production_rate: 0.15
  money_unit: "$"
  solar_icon: "mdi:white-balance-sunny"
  grid_icon: "mdi:flash"
  home_icon: "mdi:home-assistant"
  power_decimals: 2
  energy_decimals: 2
  money_decimals: 0
  color_icons: true
  consuming_color: "#33ff33"
  producing_color: "#dd5500"
  invert_grid_colors: false
  active_arrow_color: "#ffff00"
  initial_view: "energy"
  initial_auto_toggle_view: true
  auto_toggle_view_period: 5

More styling

You can use another custom integration card-mod to change more of the styling of power-wheel-card. Don't forget to install card-mod separately. Then you can put more styling to the classes and id's in the power-wheel-card configuration.

Some classes to start with, are .icon (for the icons in the wheel) and .value (for the numeric values below the icons). If you want to style icons and values of arrows and positions separately you want to use .arrow-icon (for the arrow icons), .position-icon (for the icons of the positions Home, Solar and Grid), .arrow-value and .position-value.

Here is an example where e.g. the values and the position icons (Home, Solar and Grid) in the card have been styled. The values have a larger font and are separated a bit more from the icons. The position icons are larger. And there is more space in the bottom of the card.

- type: custom:power-wheel-card
  title: "Power wheel"
  solar_power_entity: sensor.YOUR_SOLAR_POWER_SENSOR
  grid_power_entity: sensor.YOUR_GRID_POWER_SENSOR
  style: |  # styled with card-mod
    .value {
      font-weight: 300;
      font-size: 20px;
      margin-top: 5px;
    }
    .position-icon {
      --mdc-icon-size: 56px;
    }
    .wheel {
      margin-bottom: 20px;
    }

BETA battery feature in power view

Battery support in the power-wheel-card is currently a BETA feature. Many people asked for it and many people helped during development. Thx!

What does BETA for battery support mean: expect issues! There are known and unknown issues to be solved. The values and arrows don't show correctly all the time. Expect things that work now will break in future changes of this feature.

Configuration instructions battery feature

If you want to use the BETA battery feature in the power view:

1. Comply to all the requirements of the power view first.
2. Supply the card parameter battery_power_entity.
   • The sensor state value should be a positive number when the battery is charging.
   • The sensor state value should be a negative number when the battery is discharging.
3. Supply the card parameter battery_soc_entity.

Known issues for the battery feature

For now battery support is implemented with a set of rules in mind. The ruleset is very basic and not complete.

1. Solar power is consumed by home first.
2. What's left of solar power (after home did consume) is used for charging the battery.
3. What's left of solar power (after home and battery did consume) is produced to the grid.

I think that the ruleset can be extended but possibly only by supplying an extra input parameter to the card. This is the point where extra rules have to take in account the behaviour of the battery depending on the state of charge. Possibly this behaviour is dynamic and not depending on a strict threshold of the SoC. And possibly the extra rules differ per battery make. Because I don't own a battery myself, further implementation gets a bit more difficult. I will watch recent and future issue reports to make changes.

For now battery support is implemented in the current layout grid. This is why the battery shows up in two different places and is visible only when in use. This however should be temporary. First priority is to get all the values and arrows right and improve later. If it functionally works with a battery completely, then it's time to change the layout into a better interface. Many suggestions for the final UI have been given.

License

This custom card is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Credits

• gurbyz