Load balancer stops working on startup if P1IB sensor values (MQTT based) are unavailable

[Ventilgummi]

When I reboot my server and all my containers (including home assistant and MQTT), the EVSE load balancer seems to expect immediate readings from the P1IB smart‑meter integration.
Because the P1IB only publishes telegrams every ~10 s and Mosquitto/HA may not be fully started yet, the entities used by the load balancer (e.g. sensor.p1ib_active_power_plus_l1) return unavailable at startup. The integration logs show warnings such as:

"Available current for phase 'l1' is None.Cannot proceed with balancing cycle."

Missing states for one of phase Phase.L1: consumption: None, production: None. Are the entities enabled?
Missing states for one of phase Phase.L2: consumption: None, production: None. Are the entities enabled?
Missing states for one of phase Phase.L3: consumption: None, production: None. Are the entities enabled?

Failed to parse state unavailable for entity sensor.p1ib_active_power_minus_l2: could not convert string to float: 'unavailable'
Failed to parse state unavailable for entity sensor.p1ib_voltage_l2: could not convert string to float: 'unavailable'
Failed to parse state unavailable for entity sensor.p1ib_active_power_plus_l3: could not convert string to float: 'unavailable'
Failed to parse state unavailable for entity sensor.p1ib_active_power_minus_l3: could not convert string to float: 'unavailable'
Failed to parse state unavailable for entity sensor.p1ib_voltage_l3: could not convert string to float: 'unavailable'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/config/custom_components/evse_load_balancer/meters/custom_meter.py", line 87, in _get_state
return float(state_value)
ValueError: could not convert string to float: 'unavailable'

These messages come from the CustomMeter implementation, which I believe returns None when the consumption or voltage sensor states are missing.

Expected behavior:
If the EVSE load balancer starts before the P1IB publishes its first reading, it should either use the last known reading or wait for valid sensor data before starting the balancing loop. The EVSE should not stop working because of a brief unavailable state.

Actual behavior:
On startup, the EVSE load balancer attempts to read the P1IB entities, finds them unavailable, logs multiple warnings about missing states, and then stops balancing until I manually reload the integration or restart HA. This happens consistently whenever HA or the container is restarted.

Huge thanks for the work on this load balancer, when it's working it's working great! In essence I guess it my fault that it's not working as intended since I reboot my server with crontab and automate updates via watchtower...

Let me know if you need any more debug logs etc!

[dirkgroenen]

Thanks @Ventilgummi. I did a quick draft implementation in #71 but haven't tested any of it yet. I have no time left this weekend to do so, but hopefully/maybe I have some spare time this week to look at it.

Feel free to give it a try yourself and report your findings. If it doesn't work (which I wouldnt be surprised of) feel free to dump the debug logs so I can have a look at them.

[Ventilgummi]

Hi Dirk,

I've yet to try #71 since I successfully created "sticky helper entities" for my P1IB entities. Can confirm that sticky entities help - no more warnings in the logs.

Example of "sticky entity" if anyone else has the same issue and wants a workaround:

name: "House L2 Active Power Plus (sticky)"
        unique_id: hus_l2_active_power_plus_sticky
        unit_of_measurement: "kW"
        device_class: power
        state_class: measurement
        state: >
          {% set v = states('sensor.p1ib_active_power_plus_l2') | float(default=None) %}
          {{ v if v is not none else (this.state if this.state not in ['unknown','unavailable', 'none', None] else 0) }}

[dirkgroenen]

@Ventilgummi glad to hear you got it working. Would you mind having a look at #71 to see if that solves the issue as well? If so I'll merge that for anyone stumbling on this issue out of the box.