I’m attempting to modify the source code of a smart app that I found on GitHub. I would like this app to monitor the power consumption of a fridge, but having trouble finding exactly which data point to read.
Looking at the device itself on the SmartThings Groovy IDE, the fridge has a data structure called powerConsumption, with some sub-properties called deltaEnergy, power and energy. However the deltaEnergy and power properties are always zero, while the energy property has a fixed number that has not changed at all in the past 48 hours (since I started looking at it).
Note: I am reading the powerConsumption property by looking at any devices which have the powerConsumptionReport capability.
Does anybody know what is the right way to look at power consumption?
Doesn’t look like my device exposes powerMeter. Is there some flag I should enable for it to be exposed?
To expand on what I said before: the app can read powerMeter just fine, and I know that because I can see power from some smart plugs, but that’s all. The fridge is not exposed when listing for powerMeter.
Ok, as I understand, you already have the fridge installed in the SmartThings app but the values shown in IDE don’t make sense.
Have you checked the device status using the API?
I checked your fridge status, I see that the power attribute is not being read. So, I need to open an investigation to find out why. Please, send an email to build@smartthings.com with this information:
Device model
How did you install the device? (through the app, or another method)
I’m new here. I have a similar problem with reading and understanding my power consumption values. I have installed the SmartThings integration in Home Assistant and want to display the power consumption of my fridge on my dashboard. The “power” entity that the integration is providing gives me an abnormally high value. Sometimes this value is 435W, sometimes it shows 1500W, and on rare occasions, a peak of 3500W is displayed.
So, I know that the power value is measured periodically, roughly every 15 minutes.
This is written here in the official documentation and also visible as the time between the “start” and “end” values from the json picture which can be seen a little further down:
But how is this power value displayed in the first place? Is there a measurement every minute about the current wattage and are all values summed up together?
My fridge is only exposing the powerConsumptionReport. No powerMeter or any other value.
Just for comparison, I plugged in a Zigbee smart plug which can also measure power consumption and updates every few seconds if a change in power is detected and shows significantly lower values.
If my fridge were really drawing 3500W of power, shouldn’t the fuse trip or get burned?
Power (powerMeter.power) is the instantaneous usage – how much electricity a device is using right now. Doesn’t matter if it reports this every second or every hour. Measured in watts (W) or kilowatts (kW). Kind of like a speedometer.
Energy (energyMeter.energy, powerConsumptionReport) is the total amount of electricity used over time. Measured in watt-hours (Wh) or kilowatt-hours (kWh). This is more like your odometer.
So if your smart plug or fridge says 100W, that’s what it’s using at the moment. If it says 2500 Wh, that’s how much it used over, say, a day or week.
Older fridges use a lot of power (Watts) for a short time to start the motor and that’s why you see these spikes.
My “AWA” is having issues since a week, so I have to use an old screenshot where you can hopefully see the difference:
Had a look at your screenshot. The deltaEnergy is the energy used between start and end (/timestamp). energy is usually the total since the last reset of the device.
