Smart Home & Automation

Analyze real-time energy consumption from your Home Assistant instance. Identifies the highest consumers, groups usage by room/area, and generates actionable automations.

When to Use

• "What's drawing the most power right now?"
• "Show me energy usage by room"
• "Generate an automation to turn off high-draw devices"
• "Which device is consuming the most electricity?"
• "Create a power threshold alert for my laundry room"

When NOT to Use

• Turning devices on/off directly (use HA automations for that)
• Managing HA scenes, scripts, or dashboards
• Setting up new HA integrations or devices
• Non-energy Home Assistant queries (temperature, locks, cameras)

Prerequisites

• A running Home Assistant instance accessible via network
• A long-lived access token (Settings > People > your user > Security > Long-Lived Access Tokens)
• Power monitoring entities with unit_of_measurement set to W or kW
• Areas configured in Home Assistant for room-level grouping

Configuration

Set the environment variable before running:

export HA_TOKEN="your-home-assistant-long-lived-access-token"

The skill reads smart_home/skill.yaml for all other settings:

home_assistant:
  url: "http://homeassistant.local:8123"   # Your HA URL
  token: "${HA_TOKEN}"                      # Resolved from env var

units:
  power: ["W", "kW"]
  energy: ["Wh", "kWh"]

rules:
  - name: "High Power Shutoff"
    threshold_watts: 2000                    # Trigger above this
    time_window: { after: "06:00", before: "22:00" }
    require_occupancy: "off"                 # Only trigger when unoccupied
    action: "turn_off"                       # turn_off, turn_on, or notify

outputs:
  default: ["summary", "table"]             # Formats produced when none specified

Config Options

| Field | Default | Description | |-------|---------|-------------| | home_assistant.url | Required | HA instance URL | | home_assistant.token | Required | Long-lived access token (use ${HA_TOKEN} env var) | | rules[].threshold_watts | 2000 | Power threshold for automation triggers | | rules[].time_window.after | "06:00" | Automation active after this time | | rules[].time_window.before | "22:00" | Automation active before this time | | rules[].require_occupancy | "off" | Occupancy state required for trigger | | rules[].action | "turn_off" | Action: turn_off, turn_on, or notify | | outputs.default | ["summary", "table"] | Output formats when none specified |

Output Formats

Three formats, selectable per request. Request by name: summary, table, automation.

summary — Text Insight

A 2-3 sentence human-readable energy snapshot:

Laundry is drawing 2,200W — 57% of your total 3,842W. The Dryer is the single highest consumer at 2,200W. No anomalies detected.

table — Markdown Comparison

| Area | Device | Consumption (W) | |------|--------|-----------------| | Laundry | Dryer | 2,200.0 | | Kitchen | Fridge | 180.5 | | Unassigned | Smart Plug 3 | 45.0 |

Sorted by consumption descending, grouped by area.

automation — HA Automation JSON

Generates a JSON payload ready for Home Assistant's automation.create service:

[
  {
    "alias": "High Power Alert - Laundry",
    "trigger": {
      "platform": "numeric_state",
      "entity_id": "sensor.dryer_power",
      "above": 2000
    },
    "condition": [
      {
        "condition": "time",
        "after": "06:00:00",
        "before": "22:00:00"
      },
      {
        "condition": "state",
        "entity_id": "binary_sensor.laundry_occupancy",
        "state": "off"
      }
    ],
    "action": {
      "service": "switch.turn_off",
      "target": { "entity_id": "switch.dryer" }
    }
  }
]

Conditions are generated based on your config rules:

• Power threshold — only devices exceeding threshold_watts get automations
• Time window — always included from time_window config
• Occupancy — auto-detected: looks for binary_sensor.<area>_occupancy in your entities. Omitted if no occupancy sensor exists for that area.

How It Works

The skill runs a three-stage pipeline:

FETCH          ANALYZE              FORMAT
HA REST API →  Filter energy   →   Summary
/api/states    entities            Markdown table
Area registry  Normalize kW→W     Automation JSON
Device reg.    Group by area
               Rank consumers

Entity detection: The skill identifies energy entities by checking for a numeric state value and a unit_of_measurement of W, kW, kWh, or Wh. Power values are auto-detected from the entity state, falling back to power, current_power, or power_consumption attributes.

Area mapping: Entities are mapped to rooms using the Home Assistant device and area registries. Entities without an area assignment appear under "Unassigned".

Read-only: This skill never modifies Home Assistant state. The automation JSON is a draft payload for you to review and apply manually.

Troubleshooting

| Problem | Cause | Fix | |---------|-------|-----| | "HA_URL is not configured" | Missing home_assistant.url in skill.yaml | Add your HA URL to smart_home/skill.yaml | | "HA_TOKEN is not configured" | Env var not set | Run export HA_TOKEN="your-token" | | "Cannot reach Home Assistant" | Network or URL issue | Verify HA is running and URL is correct | | "No energy data available" | No matching entities | Ensure devices report unit_of_measurement: W or kW | | All devices show "Unassigned" | No area registry data | Assign devices to areas in HA Settings > Areas | | Automation JSON is empty | No devices exceed threshold | Lower threshold_watts in config |