// the find
bramstroker/homeassistant-powercalc
Home Assistant Custom component to calculate estimated power consumption of lights and other appliances
PowerCalc is a Home Assistant custom component that creates virtual power and energy sensors for devices that can't measure their own consumption — mostly lights, fans, and media players. Instead of buying a smart plug for every bulb, it estimates wattage from brightness, color temperature, and fan speed using lookup tables built from actual hardware measurements. It's for Home Assistant users who want energy dashboard coverage without wiring every device through a metered outlet.
The LUT (lookup table) strategy for lights is genuinely well-done — gzip'd CSV files mapping brightness/color/hue to measured wattage means estimates are based on real data, not guesses. The profile library is massive and community-driven, with a proper validation pipeline (JSON schema checks, LUT validators in CI) that keeps contributed profiles from being garbage. Strategy flexibility is good: fixed, linear, LUT, playbook (time-sequenced), WLED, and composite — you're not stuck with one model. The auto-discovery system can detect supported devices from the HACS library without manual config, which matters at scale when you have 40 Zigbee bulbs.
Estimates are still estimates — a Philips Hue bulb at 50% brightness running a warm color profile will be close but not exact, and the component has no way to tell you how far off it is for your specific unit. The profile library coverage is uneven: common Ikea and Philips devices are well-covered, but anything less popular gets a generic fixed-wattage fallback that's barely better than a guess. Config flow complexity has grown significantly; the UI is functional but not friendly, and YAML configuration has had breaking migrations that bit users on updates. No direct support for non-light high-wattage devices like HVAC or EV chargers — the cookbook has workarounds but they're manual.