I have in my apartment additionally use heaters in all rooms and even on the balcony, well, this is a balcony-loggia in order to maintain the desired temperature, and it seems like I turned it on and forgot and did not think, that is, it is maintained stably there is no need to take any actions, everything works by itself and everything is fine, but there is sometimes the situation is that when you look at the electricity bill, it's a little big and I've had it for almost the last three months, the electricity bill was there for more than 4 thousand and it seems like it's not critical, but it's too much.

In general, I want winter to be over, but when it became -25� outside, in principle, such a topic arose that you can experiment with the current electricity consumption in general, and in general with heat losses, think about what you can do in general, and for this I just made this decision - turned off everything that is powered by electricity, all sorts of heaters, underfloor heating, various additional equipment, a warm mat that also consumes electricity, and as a result, there are no consumers left at all, and I have done this, consumption schedules are built in Home Assistant, there is such an Electricity panel, it is generally called Energy, that is, water is taken into account there, and different there, you can count gas, but anything, well, just there is such an algorithm for accumulating and counting, and displaying these resources consumed, well, electricity is the main one.

I made it so that all consumers who spend a lot, even including the kettle, I also connected through smart sockets, and I have in this panel, there are almost probably 10 or 15 of these smart sockets that transmit their consumption.

It was possible to make it easier, it was possible to take a single electricity meter, now there are branded ones, for example, from Tuya, which can simply be put in an electrical panel, it can also be up to 60 amps, well, they are like this, basically it is not invasive, that is, they are put on some conductor, or on zero, or to the phase, no matter, which enters the apartment and simply reads the current from it and then translates it into consumption there.

This parameter can be directly passed to the Home Assistant, but then there will be one value in this graph and it is not indicative, that is, it is not clear which specific device in which room consumed this electricity, but if, for example, such a counter and all the sockets are added, then it turns out that there will be a double consumption, that is, the counter will show It is also inconvenient to show the total amount.

Of course, something was not thought out here, as a result, it turns out that if only the sockets, and the meter is not turned on, do not add Energy to this panel, then all the consumption is still not visible, for example, there is a device that also consumes a lot, for example, even take the same computer, well, some system unit, quite powerful, gaming, then it can consume 400 watts, well, in fact, mostly less is somewhere around 300 Watts, this consumption is constant, and this is also in general, in fact, like a whole heater, it works in constant mode and this also affects the temperature in the room, and in general-then this, too, in theory, should be taken into account somehow, well, for example, you can also plug a computer into a smart socket and everything will be immediately visible.

There is also an electric stove, for example, which also emits quite a lot of heat, well, of course there is also an oven, for example, which is also less often used, but it is also desirable to take into account, that is, it will be quite difficult to collect the full consumption of the entire smart home simply using sockets, and if you collect it from a counter from sockets, then it is better to do so, for example, in Home Assistant, write a rule that will sum up the consumption of all sockets and then from the consumption that will come from the counter, subtract the consumption of sockets and as such a parameter, other will also issue, and it will also be displayed on the panel, but this of course will need to be supported, this solution, that is in order not to completely forget some outlet that will appear new, and they easily appear, I bought them there, plugged them in, and that's all, and they have already appeared, and the devices included in this outlet are already consuming electricity, and you will need to adjust this rule too, this is when you start manually editing something, then this is a lot of such actions, and it takes a lot of time to keep such a system up-to-date.

As a result, it is displayed on this panel, I did not divide it somehow by room, I just know that this is an outlet from such and such a room, this outlet from such and such a room, but let's say if there are two heaters, for example, a warm floor and a heater, or for example just two heaters they are standing there, in one room, well, on the balcony I have made two heaters, two convectors, and now there is a warm floor, that is, in theory, there are already three such sources, and they need to be monitored and taken into account.

Well, in the end, when I turned off all these consumers, it was very easy to track by the sensor how quickly the temperature in the rooms drops, and the most interesting thing is at what temperature it stabilizes, that is, for example, it is clear that I also have central heating in my rooms, it is usually not enough, well, because and the windows there are not very well insulated, I have windows by themselves, the aluminum profile is used and it turns out quite cool, that is, I measured the temperature of the frame itself, it is about 15° in total, that is, it is quite critical, and then the temperature drops and it is about 22 degrees approximately stops in the room and then you can already understand that if 22° means the consumption of additional electricity will be zero, if you set 25 there, and then you can see how much energy is consumed in total, for example, for a day or you can average it for an hour, and then it will be clear that you need to take some actions or not.

For example, in one room, there is an additional consumption at maintaining 25° was about 500 watts per hour, that is, it is certainly quite a lot, that is, the windows are not insulated, they are certainly adjusted there, but it still blows quite strongly, especially when it is -25 outside, the howl is certainly so terrible, that is, all the ventilation is there, it just pulls very hard, and of course it turns out cold air still comes in from the street through all sorts of cracks, through anything, and in the other room, there I made such a move to the knight, I generally wanted to experiment and in order to maintain CO2 at a comfortable level, I decided not to insulate the windows so that there is still an influx of fresh air, and this really works, and I have a normal CO2 content in the room there was always in the normal range, precisely because the influx of fresh air was provided through all these cracks, but in -25 it turned out that there was too much of this air and in -25 it turned out that the room is too fresh, and the CO2 level is very low, probably no longer necessary, we need to do worse.

As a result, I just sealed all the windows and looked at the consumption of how much I had in this mode, it is clear that the CO2 immediately began to go off scale, it is almost always more than 1000, only you enter the room immediately grows, well, it is clear that if you left for the whole day, then it is normal, it will fall there it is close to normal, and as a result, in this mode, when the windows are insulated there, there is a consumption of about 300 watts per hour to maintain a comfortable temperature, that is, when it is still -25 outside.

Well, the most interesting thing is on my balcony, I kept the temperature there also in the daytime 25°, well, it's clear when it became -25 I decided not to support anything, because even when it was about zero outside, I had a lot of consumption, that is, about a kilowatt per hour, I easily flew away, because the warm air from this balcony there comes into the room immediately, well, the windows there are not very well insulated, although they are about the same as in the rooms, but still such an influx of air, cold, is large and in fact the neighbors below and the neighbors above have a balcony that is not insulated and it turns out that this is also used for cooling, which is quite decent.

Well, in -25 I decided to lead such an experiment, I installed on the balcony so that the temperature of + 6° was maintained constantly, last winter I also had this mode set up there and there was one heater with Ten Stitch, that is, it is generally very cheap, but it basically coped normally, it turned on when the temperature was low it becomes less than 6° and accordingly turned off when it is more, I did not set up any hysteresis, but the Xiaomi humidity temperature sensor is used there, and by default the temperature change is recorded only when it changes by half a degree, and the humidity by 5%, that is, respectively, when the temperature drops by half a degree, it will work, and when if it grows back accordingly, then it will work again, well, either once an hour it sends, and in theory so that it cools down of course slower than it heats up, and because of this, the trigger occurs somewhere about once every half hour, this is also such a normal mode, that is, a smart socket it quite easily tolerates such frequent switching.

turning on, that is, I have actually had a smart socket working in this mode for several years now, it turns on, turns off, and there it is on the resource, and it does not affect the resource of the built-in relay in any way.

And to maintain the temperature on the balcony of +6, I also need about 400 watts somewhere, which is quite a lot, but when it's very cold outside, when it gets warmer, it's immediately noticeable that the consumption drops significantly, and when it gets warm outside, close to zero or already plus, then of course in in principle, the heater stops turning on, because from the side of the apartment through the walls, maybe due to the sun, when it shines through the window, it is already warmed up and works normally, that is, it is quite interesting in this way you can measure the current heat loss in the apartment, in the house and already take some more conscious decisions to control heating in a smart home.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.