Integrating electricity meters with Home Assistant: Simple instructions and tips

Have you bought a power reader and now want to seamlessly integrate it with your Home Assistant? Great idea! In this article, I'll show you step-by-step how to do it easily. You can find the video tutorial at the end of this post or directly on YouTube.

Before you begin, please make sure your stromleser (Tasmota device) is already connected to the internet. You will need the local IP address of the stromleser and your Home Assistant system. If you don't know the local IP of your Home Assistant, simply install the handy " Local IP " extension from the Home Assistant Store – this will help you find it quickly.

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Step 1: Install MQTT Broker

In order for your electricity reader to communicate with Home Assistant, you need a Mosquitto MQTT Broker .

• Open your Home Assistant
• Go to Settings → Add-ons
• search for Mosquito Broker and install it
• Activate the options “Start at boot” and then click on "Start"

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Step 2: Create a user for MQTT

Now create a user with which your stromleser can access MQTT:

• Go to Settings → People → Add Person
• Name: mqtt-user
• Password: Choose a secure password
• Click on Create

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Step 3: Restart Home Assistant

To ensure everything is correctly adopted, restart your Home Assistant:

• Settings → System → Hardware → Restart

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Step 4: Set up MQTT integration

Now we make sure that MQTT is configured correctly:

• Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration
• search for MQTT , click on it and select reconfigure
• Enter the following data:
  • Brokers: core-mosquitto
  • Port: 1883
  • User name: mqtt-user
  • Password: the password you set
    
    Then click on  memory
    

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Step 5: Add Tasmota integration

Now you can easily integrate Tasmota:

• Go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration
• search for Tasmota and add it

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Step 6: Configure the Tasmota electricity reader

Now we switch to the interface of your stromleser (use its local IP address):

• Open the Tasmota web interface ( http://<stromleser-ip> )
• Click on Configuration → Configure Other
• Give appropriate names, e.g.:
  • Device Name: Stromleser_home
  • Friendly Name: Stromleser Home
• Be sure to activate Enable MQTT (Check box!)
• Confirm with Save

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Step 7: Configure MQTT in Tasmota

Now connect your stromleser with your MQTT broker in Home Assistant:

• Go to Configuration → Configure MQTT
• Enter the following:
  • Host: local IP address of Home Assistant (which you found through the plugin)
  • User name: mqtt-user
  • Password: your chosen password
• Confirm again with Save

Done! Your electricity reader is now connected to Home Assistant. 
You can now find it clearly at Settings → Devices & Services → Tasmota .

Frequently asked questions and quick solutions:

Here are a few quick tips if something doesn’t work right away:

Home Assistant doesn’t automatically recognize your device?
Go to Tasmota Tools → Console and enter:

• SetOption19 0

Your device should then be recognized.

Data transfer too slow/fast?
Adjust the data transfer interval in the Tasmota console. For example, every 60 seconds:

• TelePeriod 60

Here you can watch our step-by-step instructions in video format.