Some global configurations don't seem to work

[spiegeljb]

I just installed this over the weekend and have a few recessed ceiling lights using lutron switches added.

Before I add all of my lights I wanted to setup a proper global configuraton that makes the most sense. From testing the 3 lights I have so far I am not seeing any impact from the 3 global configurations below, whether true or false, they don't seem to work. After some testing it looks like none of these will change from the default setting even after properly inputting this code into the config file

powercalc:
create_utility_meters: true
create_energy_sensors: true
ignore_unavailable_state: true

I was able to confirm the utility_meter_types works as it does not create a weekly meter, but I have to manually select the utility meter when adding the lights, same with ignore_unavailable_state.

powercalc:
force_update_frequency: 00:01:00
create_utility_meters: true
create_energy_sensors: true
utility_meter_types:
- daily
- monthly
- yearly

Are other people seeing this issue? It may be a new issue but I could not find any similar results

[bramstroker]

I see the issue, but is not easily solvable.

The system is designed to make all individual sensor configuration override global configuration.

This works correctly for power sensors setup with YAML.

For example:

powercalc:
    create_utility_meters: true
    sensors:
        - entity_id: light.my_light
           create_utility_meters: false

In this case no utility meters are created for my light, regardless of the global config set to true.
When you omit create_utility_meters it will look at the global setting.

For the sensors made with GUI however the value of the toggle is saved to the configuration.
This is done for all sensors created with the GUI, so all of them actually have a value set for create_utility_meters (either false or true) thus overriding the global configuration.

utility_meter_types cannot be set from the GUI config flow, so that's why you don't have this issue for that option.

I will give it some thought today.

[bramstroker]

I have thought about it some more and came up with the following improvements.

• On create a new config entry with the GUI the fields will match the same value as you defined in global configuration. So when you have defined create_utility_meters: true in global YAML config the toggle in the GUI will also be enabled when creating a new entry. This will work for auto discovered items and when you create a GUI configuration manually.
  This currently applies to create_utility_meters, create_energy_sensor, energy_integration_method and ignore_unavailable_state.
• This will not solve the issue when you have existing config entries (in your case the 3 lights) or change the global config in the future. My idea is to add a service for that so you can batch edit all the existing config entries (or some of them) at once and set a given configuration setting.

Have a draft PR for this improvements #1870