Virtual sensors for night light

[davidepozza]

Hello,
can someone help me understand how to configure a virtual entity representing a light which powers on at sunset and off at sunrise? I'm a bit confused...Thank you

[bramstroker]

You could create an input_boolean helper and use that one as source for the virtual power sensor you setup with powercalc.
Choose fixed strategy when creating the power sensor. Supply the power when the light is on, i.e. 20W.
toggling the input_boolean to on will set the power sensor to 20W and toggling off to 0W.
Now create an automation to toggle the input_boolean on sunset / sunrise. Done.

Alternatively you could create a template which returns 20 when between sunset and sunrise and 0 otherwise. Than use this template as input for the virtual fixed power sensor. Don't have an example for this, but should also work.