Meter Areas
Some homes have more than one electricity meter. A rental unit, an annex, or a cabin often has its own meter and its own grid tariff step (effekttrinn). Meter areas let PELS treat each of those parts of your home as a separate capacity budget: it counts a part's devices against that part's meter and keeps each one under its own limit, instead of lumping everything together under one whole-home cap.
Everything not placed in a meter area belongs to the Main home, which keeps working exactly as it always has.
When you'd use this
Set up a meter area when a part of your home:
- Has its own electricity meter that Homey can read, and
- Has its own capacity limit you want to hold, most often its own grid tariff step, billed separately from the main house.
The classic case is a rental unit with a separate meter and a separate bill. Without meter areas, a busy evening in the rental would eat into the main house's available power (and the other way around). With a meter area, each part stays under its own cap on its own terms.
If your whole home is on a single meter, you don't need this. One meter is the Main home, and the hourly hard cap already covers it.
A meter area can be somewhere else entirely
The parts don't have to share a building. A cabin at another address works too, as long as its devices are cloud-connected (Wi-Fi or cloud integrations, controlled over the internet), so your Homey Pro can manage them from afar. Only devices on a local radio (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, 433 MHz) need the Homey physically nearby, so a cabin whose devices are all cloud-connected can be run entirely remotely.
What you'll need
- Homey Energy as your power source. Meter areas rely on each meter reporting its own live power to Homey. This is the Homey Energy setup, not the Flow-driven power source: a Flow power reading has no meter identity, so PELS can't tell which area it belongs to.
- A meter for the area, already added to Homey. Each meter area is built around one power meter that Homey reads as that area's total: a HAN/P1 meter reader or another sensor-class power meter. An ordinary metering smart plug or appliance won't appear in the picker, because PELS only offers real whole-area meters, so it never mistakes one device's draw for the area's total. Add the meter to Homey first, then pick it here.
- Your zones set up to match. PELS assigns devices to a meter area by Homey zone: you point the area at the zone that part of your home lives in, and every device in that zone and its sub-zones counts toward that area. A tidy zone layout (for example, an "Apartment" zone with the rental's rooms under it) makes this a one-click choice.
Setting up a meter area
Open Settings → Multiple meters and choose Add meter area. You fill in three things:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Meter | The meter that measures this area's power use. PELS lists the whole-home and sensor-class power meters it found in Homey. |
| Zone | The zone this meter covers. Devices in this zone and its sub-zones count as part of the area. |
| Name | What you'll call it: "Rental", "Annex", "Cabin". |
As you pick a zone, PELS shows how many devices fall into the area ("4 devices in this zone and its sub-zones") so you can check the sweep before you save. It also pre-suggests a zone based on where the meter sits, and warns you if the meter you picked sits outside the zone you chose, usually a sign the zone is too narrow.
When you save, the area appears in the list with its meter, zone, and device count. Its devices are now assigned to the area and measured against its meter right away. Actually limiting them is a separate, deliberate step: a new area only simulates until you turn on control (see below), so nothing in it is turned down the moment you save.
The Main home is automatic
You never configure the Main home. It's simply everything that isn't in a meter area. Add a rental as a meter area and the rest of the house stays the Main home with no extra steps. Remove a meter area later and its devices move straight back to the Main home.
Setting each area's limit
Each meter area gets its own limit under Settings → Limits & safety. At the top of that page, the "Set limits for" switcher lets you pick the Main home or any meter area, and the controls below apply to whichever you've selected:
- Hard cap (kW): that area's grid tariff step. PELS keeps each hour's average power under this, the same way it does for the whole home.
- Safety margin (kW): the buffer below the cap where PELS starts easing off, so you approach the cap gently rather than bumping into it.
Below those, a readout shows where the safe pace starts each hour (the hard cap minus the safety margin), so you can see the effect of your numbers before you leave the page.
Turn on control when you're ready
A new meter area starts in simulation: PELS watches and plans for it, and holds off on turning anything down. A single switch, "Control devices in this area", is what makes it live:
- Off: PELS only simulates this area. Nothing in it is limited. This is how every area starts, so you can set the cap and watch how PELS would behave before it touches a device.
- On: PELS limits devices in this area to keep each hour under its cap, for real.
While an area is simulating, the page says so plainly and points you at the switch. Flip it on once the cap looks right, and PELS begins holding that area to its limit.
Simulate first
Simulation is the safe way to trial a new area. Leave control off for a while and watch the area's own status on its Limits & safety card (power now, and what PELS would limit to hold the cap), then turn control on with confidence. In this version the Usage tab shows whole-home figures.
Giving the Main home its own meter
If you've added meter areas but haven't told PELS which meter belongs to the Main home, it falls back to reading the combined total of every meter, and then the Main home's devices get limited to make room for the meter areas' usage, which isn't what you want.
The fix is a one-time pick: set the Main home's own meter under Settings → Limits & safety → Whole-home meter. PELS nudges you toward this whenever meter areas exist without it. Once the Main home reads its own meter, each part (the Main home and every meter area) is measured and limited on its own.
What a meter area governs
A meter area is about capacity and safety for its own meter. Each one has its own hard cap and safety margin, and its own real-time limiting and resume on that meter.
Which devices give way first follows your existing device priorities. You set those once per operating mode and they apply across your whole home; inside a busy meter area, its own lower-priority devices give way first, and a device keeps the same priority wherever it lives.
Your whole-home features stay whole-home. The daily energy budget, price-based load shifting, and smart tasks plan your Main-home devices, while each meter area runs on its own cap, safety margin, and priorities. Smart tasks currently run on Main-home devices, and PELS tells you if you set one on a device that lives in a meter area. Flow cards apply to PELS as a whole.
Tips and troubleshooting
- "Meter not found" / "Zone not found" on an area. The meter device or zone it was built on no longer exists in Homey (renamed away, removed, or a device swapped out). Edit the area and re-pick the current meter or zone.
- The apartment's devices aren't being limited. Check that "Control devices in this area" is on for that area; a new area simulates until you turn control on. Also confirm your power source is Homey Energy.
- PELS says it's reading the combined total. Set the Main home's Whole-home meter (see above) so each part is measured on its own.
- A device is in the wrong area. Devices follow their Homey zone. Move the device to the right zone in Homey, or adjust the area's zone, and the device re-homes accordingly.
See also
- Configuration: the hard cap and safety margin, explained for a single-meter home.
- Using Homey Energy with PELS: the power source meter areas build on.
- How PELS decides: what "limiting" and "safe pace" mean in practice.