Energy

Recipes for spending less on power. The Energy app holds the meters, the hierarchy and the cost (Energy Monitoring); these recipes add the rules that act on it.

Switch off a room when it empties

The question: The meeting rooms are left with lights and air-conditioning on after the meeting ends. Can they switch off by themselves?

Part	Setting
Hardware	A presence radar in the room (it sees people sitting still, which a PIR does not), and the light or AC reachable from a smart-home hub (Home Assistant / Matter)
Before the rule	Connectors → the smart-home connector, and the light or AC mapped on its Mappings page. Only mapped entities appear in a rule
Rule watches	The room's zone
Condition	Area Empty For (radar) greater than 9 (empty for at least 10 minutes)
Between	Office hours (08:00 → 19:00), so cleaners at night do not keep switching the room
Repeat at most every	30 minutes
And, for a meeting room	Minutes Until Next Booking (meeting room) greater than 14
Action	Home Assistant (Matter / Smart Home) → the room's light → turn off; a second action for the AC

Pitfall: switching off just before a meeting. A meeting room that empties at 13:50 and is booked again at 14:00 should stay cool. The second condition only lets the rule act when the next booking is more than a quarter of an hour away. A walk-in the sensors noticed counts as a booking, so it reads 0 while the room is in use.

Pitfall: a PIR is the wrong sensor here. A PIR goes "empty" when people sit still, so a quiet meeting gets its lights switched off. Use a radar, or set the interval to 20 minutes or more if a PIR is all you have.

Do it the other way too, carefully. "Switch on when someone walks in" is a Becomes rule on the radar's or PIR's occupied. Leave the AC out of that one; a person walking through to fetch a chair should not start a 30-minute cooling cycle.

Power left on out of hours

The question: What is still drawing power at night and at the weekend?

Part	Setting
Hardware	Energy meters or smart plugs (CT clamps, Home Assistant plugs), set up in the Energy app
Rule watches	The venue (all its top-level meters) or one meter
Condition	Power Draw Now greater than the building's real night-time base load, plus a margin
Between	22:00 → 06:00; a second rule for Saturday and Sunday all day
Only after it has held for	30 minutes
Repeat at most every	24 hours
Action	Email to the facilities manager: {{venue.name}} drawing {{value}} W at night

Find the base load first: the Energy app's day view on a quiet Sunday shows what the building draws with nobody in it. Set the line above that, or the rule fires every night.

A meter that stops reporting has no value, not zero, so "less than" never fires on a dead meter. Watch dead meters with the Gateway status or Device Status recipes instead.

A floor using more than usual

The question: Tell me early in the day when a floor is on its way to an expensive day.

Part	Setting
Rule watches	The venue (the floor)
Condition	Energy Used Today greater than a normal day's total
Checks	Real-time; repeat at most every 24 hours
Action	In-App Alert, and Email to whoever can walk the floor

Energy Used Today is the net since local midnight: sub-meters are not counted twice, and solar is subtracted. A floor that exported more than it used shows a negative number.

Pair it with a data table if you want the history. Add a second action, Add a row to a data table (Energy overruns: kwh number · floor zone), and the monthly report shows which floors overran and how often.