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The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/vapescaped on 2025-04-24 10:12:44+00:00.

My smart plug controlled my ERV, which worked flawlessly for a long time.

The last few nights the switch started turning on by itself, and not shutting off via automation.

While I was bouncing around troubleshooting I saw my power consumption chart. My ERV draws about 140 watts when running(not variable). The history showed power output at 90 watts, 80 watts, 110 watts… Inconsistent.

Well, unfortunately for me, I’m autistic, and sometimes when my head is in another problem my brain sees something but cannot focus on it and glazes over it. It’s only later that I realize and understand the significance of what I saw(this happens a lot in conversations as well, afterwards and completely randomly I’m like “holy crap, they were talking about this!”)

I replaced the outlet with a z wave one I already ordered, then changed my automations to the new plug, and deleted the old plug(I wasn’t confident that deleting the device from an automation wouldn’t delete my automation, so I did it in that order)

But now I’m pissed I didn’t grab a screenshot of the history to share! If anyone knows how to pull historical data from a deleted device let me know please.

This realization is a little concerning to me. The outlet became a resistor essentially, and that could be dangerous. I will disassemble the outlet when I have time and see if I can notice anything off.

Moving forward, it seems wise to add an automation that warns me if my ERV power consumption is less than expected. That shouldn’t be hard, and it will give me a little piece of mind.

Figured I’d share. Thanks.