I’m wanting to add a bunch of energy monitoring stuff so I can both track costs, and maybe implement automation to turn stuff on and off based on power costs and timing.

I’m using some TPlink based plugs right now which are like, fine, but I’m wanting to add something like 6 to 10 more monitoring devices/relays.

Anyone have experience with a bunch of shelly devices and if there’s any weird behavior I should be aware of?

Assume I have good enough wifi to handle adding another 10 devices to it, but beyond that any gotchas?

  • @corrodedEnglish
    2•6 months ago

    Depending on how accurate you need your energy usage data to be for individual devices, you might be able to get away with just using a whole-house energy monitor. I’m using one of these:

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LV8DDFP

    I already have a large number of Zigbee plugs, so by looking at the power usage from my energy meter before and after one switches, I can get a general estimate of how much power a device is using. Of course, the rest of your home is going to to skew the results, but you can mitigate this a bit with some of HA’s statistics functions. It’s been a while since I tried this, but I did test it with a 3.5kW heater a while ago. I took a median from a certain number of samples before and after the heater switched on (I think 10 seconds worth of samples), and the result was generally accurate to within about 100w.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•6 months ago

      Oh sorry; my goal here was for individual metering. I’ve got an Enphase solar system, so the Envoy is already doing whole-house monitoring.

      I’d like to be able to identify and ultimately be able to lower my load to stay under what the solar panels are generating, but that needs data I mostly don’t have, and specific equipment to actually turn things on and off.