How do I add a solar production forecast to the Home Assistant Energy Dashboard?

The Energy Dashboard supports forecasts natively: install a forecast integration, then in Settings → Dashboards → Energy edit your solar production entry and tick the forecast option provided by that integration. The dashed forecast line then overlays your actual production — turning the dashboard from a rear-view mirror into a plan for the day.

Why the dashed line matters

Without a forecast, the Energy Dashboard tells you what already happened. With one, two new uses appear. First, planning: the morning glance shows whether today is a laundry-and-EV day or a grey one — and every automation can read the same sensors the dashboard uses (see the self-consumption answer). Second, health monitoring: actual hugging the forecast means the system is fine; actual persistently sagging under it is the earliest visible sign of shading, soiling or a fault (see the system-check answer in K2).

Forecast quality decides how much you can trust both uses. Simple models estimate from location and panel geometry alone; physics-based services layer weather-model (NWP ensemble) irradiance data and calibrate against your system’s real history, which narrows the error enough that a 15% shortfall is a signal, not noise. The comparison guide walks through the options available as HA integrations.

What to do

1. Install the integration via HACS, configure your array (location, orientation, tilt, kWp) and check new sensors appear (today/remaining/next-hour energy).
2. Add the forecast in the Energy Dashboard — edit the solar source, enable the integration’s forecast; the dashed line appears on the production graph within an hour.
3. Sanity-check for a few days — a forecast wildly off in clear weather usually means a wrong tilt/azimuth entry, worth fixing before any automation trusts it.
4. Reuse the sensors beyond the dashboard — the same entities drive the morning-planner automation and the overnight battery target; the dashboard is just the visible tip.