Making sense of home energy data
Use meter readings, tariffs and generation data to decide what to change at home.
Begin with the decision
Energy dashboards often begin with whatever the meter makes available. A more useful starting point is the decision you want to make: shift a load, change a schedule, investigate an anomaly or simply leave the system alone.
That question determines the resolution, context and confidence the data needs. It also prevents a project from becoming an attractive collection of graphs with no owner.
Build a trustworthy baseline
Normalise timestamps, tariff periods and missing readings before comparing days. Separate imported energy, exported energy and local generation instead of compressing them into one number.
A baseline does not need to be sophisticated. It needs to be stable enough that a change in the chart usually means a change in the home.
Automate only the obvious part
Recommendations are a useful intermediate state. They expose assumptions and make exceptions visible before a rule is allowed to act on heating, charging or another household service.
When automation is justified, keep a manual override and record why the action happened. Explainability is part of reliability.