Energy and prices

The energy widgets show what your home uses and what it costs: today’s total, the top users, solar and the battery, and the cheapest hours to run the dishwasher or charge the car. They work from two things you set once per Homey: what energy costs, and which meters to count.

Open Settings with the gear beside your name at the bottom of the sidebar, then Energy, or use the hint on an energy widget. The settings are for the Homey you are looking at, and every change saves by itself. They are in four tabs: Electricity, Today, Gas and water and Meters. The tutorial Set up your energy prices and meters goes through it with pictures.

Electricity price

What a kWh costs, hour by hour. The widgets colour prices by it, work out costs and find the cheapest hours. Pick one of three sources:

From your Homey: the price your Homey has, which is where every Homey starts. That is Homey Energy’s dynamic prices, with your supplier’s surcharges and tax already in (a Homey Pro (2023), Homey Pro mini or Homey Cloud with Homey v12.6 or later, in the countries Homey has them), or else the fixed price set in Homey’s own Energy settings. When your Homey has no price at all, the page says No price yet and your dashboards use the fixed tariff under it until it has one.
Day-ahead market prices: your country’s hourly market price, plus your Supplier’s markup, Energy tax and VAT. Pick Your country or zone; an example line shows what a market price becomes per kWh. Tomorrow’s prices come in around 13:00. They are European markets only.
Fixed tariff: One price; Day and night, a day and a night rate with the hours of the night, and Weekends at the night rate if your supplier does that; or Time of use, as many American utilities bill it.

With your Homey or market prices, If it can’t be reached holds a fixed tariff to fall back on. When the source stops answering, the Today tab gets a mark and says so, and your dashboards show that tariff until it is back.

Every Homey used to start on Dutch market prices, wherever it was. A Homey outside the Netherlands that still had them now uses its own price, and the page says so once.

Time of use

A time-of-use tariff has up to three periods, such as Peak and Super off-peak, and a price for All other hours. Each period has its hours on weekdays and on weekends (switch either off when the period isn’t on those days); hours may run past midnight, like 23:00 to 06:00. Switch on Different prices in summer to give every period a summer price, and pick the months summer runs (June to September at first; a summer over new year works too). The strip on top shows a weekday and a weekend day in the colours of how dear each period is, so a mistyped hour shows at once. Changing to another kind of tariff keeps your periods for when you come back.

Feed-in and currency

Feed-in price, per kWh, for power you send back. Left empty, it earns what a kWh costs that hour.
Prices and costs in, under Another currency at the foot of the electricity card: the currency, from your Homey’s country unless you pick another: the euro, US, Canadian and Australian dollar, Mexican peso, pound, Swiss franc, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish krone and Polish złoty. Market prices are converted from the euro with the European Central Bank’s rates; a price you type is in the currency you chose. Where your Homey is comes from its own location when it shares it, otherwise from your browser’s time zone.

Today

Today’s prices previews the day: the price now, the bars, and the low, average and high.

Cheap and expensive

Each price is coloured by how it compares with that day’s average: Cheap at 10% or more under it, Expensive at 15% or more over it, and Normal in between. A price below zero has its own colour. On a day where the prices are less than 2 cents apart, all of them are Normal. With a fixed tariff the night rate is Cheap and the day rate Normal.

Gas and water

Gas and Water, all in, in the unit your bill uses: pick it under Priced per. Gas can be per m³, kWh, MJ, therm or CCF (100 cubic feet), water per m³, litre, kL, 1,000 gallons or CCF. A new Homey starts on the units of its country, such as therms and 1,000 gallons in the US. Leave gas empty to show no gas costs.

Your Homey’s gas and water meters count m³, so Tiledash turns your price into a price per m³, and the line under it shows what that is. How much energy a m³ of gas holds differs by supplier and month, so for kWh, MJ and therm a field asks for it: kWh per m³ or MJ per m³ (the calorific or heating value on your bill), or the Therm factor (therms per CCF). Left empty, a typical value counts.

What the energy widgets count

Tiledash finds your meters on your Homey by itself: Electricity, Gas, Water, Solar, Home battery and Car. Each row says whether it was Found by itself or Chosen by you, or has None. Change lets you pick another device, or several for solar, the battery and the car (up to 8), or leave one out.

The meters’ readings are recorded, so the widgets can show today’s totals and compare with earlier days. That starts by itself the first time an energy widget is shown or you save these settings, and counts towards your plan’s recordings (25 on Free, 250 on Pro), the most useful meters first. When the plan is full, the widgets still show live values, but no totals or comparisons. A recording you stop stays stopped. Recordings at the bottom of the section opens Settings › Recordings, which shows how many places the meters take.

The energy widgets

All of them are free on every plan. The widget gallery has each one with its settings. Apart from Energy flow and Energy house they are Tiledash’s own in the community: the widget picker has them on its Community tab, and adding one installs it.

Prices now and next, Price badge and Cheapest time: the price now and ahead, and the cheapest hours for a task that takes a while.
Energy today, Energy so far and Compare: what you used and what it cost, against yesterday or an earlier week or month.
Top users: the devices that used the most today, with their share and cost.
Energy flow, Solar, Home battery today, Car charging, Gas and Water.
Energy house: your home as a picture of a house, with its solar, grid, battery and car pointed out on it, and any other reading at a place of the house (the boiler upstairs, the heat pump, the meter cupboard, the garden). The tile shows one of your houses, made under Settings › Houses (below): start one from one of Tiledash’s five pictures (a detached house, a terraced house, a semi-detached house, a bungalow or a flat with a balcony), or a picture of your own home. On Tiledash’s pictures the panels, the car, the battery and the heat pump are only there when your home has them. The tutorial show your home’s energy on a house sets one up.

Your own house

The Energy house shows one of your houses. Make one under Settings › Houses (the tile’s settings link there):

Its sides. A house has up to six sides, each its own picture: the front, the back, the garden side. A side can start from one of Tiledash’s houses, with its spots placed already.
Make it in Tiledash. Make it in Tiledash makes the picture of the side you have open, for one credit: it asks a few questions about your home, takes a photo of that side if you have one (or a description in your own words), and makes the picture in the style you pick. Under Extra help for the AI you can add photos of other sides or at an angle, and your other sides’ pictures so the new one matches them; they only show the AI more of your house and aren’t drawn. Its spots come placed for you: check them, drag one where it belongs, or drop it. Every try stays with its side, so you can go back to an earlier one, and a thumbs up or down tells us how it turned out. A picture that fails gives your credit back. Your photos are uploaded as you pick them and sent to our image model’s provider to make the picture; Tiledash keeps them 30 days to check the result, then deletes them. Refine or remake on a side’s tries opens the questions again: say what should change (move the car onto the drive) and only that changes, or make a new one. Credits come in packs under Settings › Plan and don’t expire; Pro comes with 5 to start, the first time you subscribe.
Or upload one. Upload a picture you made yourself: a PNG, JPEG or WebP of up to 10 MB. A big photo is made smaller in your browser first.
A picture in Tiledash’s style. Write a prompt for your own ChatGPT or Gemini asks what is at your home (solar panels, a battery, a heat pump, a car and which one), whether you attach a photo of the side you have open (or describe it), which other photos and sides’ pictures you attach to help, and which style you like, and writes the prompt. What your Homey has comes ticked already. Copy the prompt into your chat, then upload what it makes. The house keeps your answers for its next side.
The styles. Making it in Tiledash and writing a prompt both offer thirteen styles, each with an example, in three groups. For light dashboards: Tiledash soft 3D, True to life (like a photo of your house), Clay miniature, Flat illustration, Painted (ink and watercolour) and Line drawing, made for e-ink. For dark dashboards: Modern dark, Blueprint, Digital twin (a glowing wireframe with the energy parts in orange) and Cyberpunk night. Playful, for any dashboard: Low-poly, Voxel blocks and Pixel art.
Crop and spots. Crop the picture to the house, so the values sit beside it. Then place the spots: open one in the list, choose Place it, then tap the picture, and drag a pin to move it. Add spots of your own, like a pool.
What the spots show. The house holds what its spots show, so every tile showing it shows the same. Solar, the grid, the battery and the car follow your energy meters until you choose readings for them at their spot; the house works out what it uses itself. Any spot can show values of its own, up to four at one place: a reading, a Logic variable, an energy or price value, who is home, or readings added up (the meter without the washing machine). Today’s totals sit under the house. Values read the house’s Homey, so a house is set up from that Homey.
On the tile. Pick one of this Homey’s houses in the tile’s settings, which sides show (all of them at first; take off the ones you leave out, down to one) and how to move between them: swipe, dots or tabs, and whether they turn by themselves on a wall panel. On the house switches off what this tile leaves out; what you add to the house later shows up by itself. The Look tab hides the title and the price for a house that fills the tile. E-ink shows the first side.

Free has room for one house, Pro for five. Step by step: start from a Tiledash house, a photo of your house or your own picture, then show it on a dashboard.

A heading’s summaries, a single reading and the History widget can show prices and costs too: see Edit a dashboard.