How to build a power monitoring dashboard with Shelly

Shelly devices are one of the easiest ways to get real, local power data into Home Assistant — but only if you buy the models that actually meter power. This trips people up constantly, so the most important step happens before you write any dashboard YAML: pick a Shelly with a power-metering channel. Get that right and the rest is quick.

Buy a Shelly That Meters Power (this is the part that matters)

Not every Shelly measures consumption. The distinction is in the model name: “PM” means power metering.

• The Shelly Plus 1 is a relay with dry-contact support. It switches a load but has no power metering — it cannot report watts, voltage, or current. It’s a fine switch; it is the wrong device for a power dashboard.
• The Shelly Plus 1PM is the single-channel device you want for one circuit. It adds embedded power measurement (and overload/temperature protection), reporting power, voltage, current, and energy.
• The Shelly Plus 2PM has two independently metered channels (up to 10A per channel), so it’s ideal where you want to monitor two loads from one device.

If your goal is whole-circuit or appliance energy data, choose a 1PM or 2PM. For metering at the breaker panel across both legs of a split-phase supply, Shelly’s clamp-based energy meter line (the Shelly Pro 3EM) is the dedicated tool, but a 1PM/2PM on individual circuits is the simplest starting point for most homes.

Add Shelly to Home Assistant

Home Assistant has a native Shelly integration, and setup does not involve scanning a QR code. Two paths:

1. Auto-discovery. Once your Shelly is on your Wi-Fi, Home Assistant usually finds it via mDNS and shows a “new device discovered” prompt under Settings - Devices & Services. Click Configure.
2. Manual by IP. If it isn’t discovered, add the Shelly integration and enter the device’s IP address or hostname (find it in your router).

Either way, assign each Shelly a static or DHCP-reserved IP in your router — the integration relies on a stable address, and a changed lease after a reboot is the most common cause of a device going “unavailable.” Note the protocol detail if you ever troubleshoot: newer Plus/Gen2+ Shellys talk to Home Assistant over RPC, while first-gen devices use CoIoT (which must be enabled on the device).

Once added, a 1PM or 2PM exposes entities for power (W), voltage (V), current (A), and accumulated energy (kWh) — that’s everything a dashboard needs.

Build the Dashboard

With metering entities flowing in, build the view in Home Assistant’s dashboard (Lovelace) editor:

• Live power — a gauge or entities card showing each circuit’s current watts.
• History — a history-graph card for recent trends; Home Assistant’s long-term statistics keep the data for longer-range views.
• Energy over time — feed the kWh energy sensors into Home Assistant’s built-in Energy dashboard to see daily/monthly consumption (and cost, if you enter a tariff) — see our Home Assistant energy dashboard deep dive for setup details. This is the single best use of Shelly PM data and it’s built in — no add-on needed.

For automations, trigger on the power sensor: e.g. notify when a circuit exceeds a threshold, or cut a non-essential load above a limit. For richer custom cards, HACS offers community dashboard components, but you can do everything described here with stock Home Assistant.

HomeKit and Hubitat

Shelly’s native fit is with Home Assistant. If you want Shelly power data visible in Apple Home, the realistic route is Home Assistant’s HomeKit bridge re-exposing the entities — and be aware HomeKit’s data model doesn’t surface arbitrary energy metering as cleanly as Home Assistant does, so expect a more limited view. On Hubitat, community Shelly drivers exist but generally expose less detail than Home Assistant’s integration. If power monitoring is your priority, let Home Assistant own the Shelly devices and bridge to the other ecosystems only for control.

Quick Verdict

The make-or-break decision is the model: a Shelly Plus 1PM (one metered circuit) or Plus 2PM (two metered channels) gives you the watts, volts, amps, and kWh a power dashboard needs — the plain Plus 1 does not meter power at all. Add it to Home Assistant by discovery or IP (no QR scan), pin it to a static IP, then route the energy sensors into the built-in Energy dashboard and add gauge/history cards for live and trend views. It’s an inexpensive, fully local way to finally see where your electricity is going.