Add an Power Consumtion Value on the Overview

[Slys1403]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I often find it inconvenient that there is no quick, centralized overview of the current power consumption of my system. I have to rely on separate tools or sensor readings to estimate energy usage, which makes it harder to monitor efficiency at a glance.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to see a real-time power consumption value (in watts) displayed directly on the main overview/dashboard in Proxmox. This value should aggregate available sensor data and present a clear, up-to-date estimate of total system power usage.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Using external monitoring tools (e.g., Grafana + Prometheus + exporters)
• Checking power usage via IPMI or UPS interfaces separately
• Running manual sensor queries via CLI (e.g., sensors, ipmitool)

These approaches work but are not as convenient as having it integrated directly into the overview.

Additional context

This feature would be especially useful for:

• Homelab users monitoring energy efficiency
• Systems running 24/7 where power usage matters
• Users optimizing workloads or hardware configuration

A simple aggregated value (even if estimated) would already be very helpful, with optional detailed breakdowns in the future.

[Meliox]

Hey,

The OS (proxmox) can only report what the hardware exposes. Most often GPU is watt usage is available, but that also it. Many systems does not expose any reading for rest of the hardware and there is no API for it so this cannot be implemented.

[Slys1403]

Thanks for the clarification — that makes sense regarding hardware limitations and lack of a universal API.

What I was thinking about is slightly different: on many server systems (especially enterprise hardware), total power consumption is available via out-of-band management interfaces like Redfish or IPMI, exposed by the BMC (e.g. iDRAC, iLO, etc.).

Since Proxmox typically runs on such systems as well, it might be possible to optionally query these interfaces locally (if accessible) to retrieve power metrics like current watt usage. This wouldn’t rely on standard OS sensors, but instead on the system’s management controller.

Of course, this wouldn’t be universally available across all hardware, but perhaps it could be implemented as an optional feature when such interfaces are detected or configured.

I think this could provide a lot of value especially for users running Proxmox on server-grade hardware, where accurate power readings are already available but currently not integrated into the UI.

Just an idea — appreciate your work on the project!

[Meliox]

I see. Yes that may make sense. Currently ipmi is not supported, but that may be something I could look into after version 2 is pushlished. It is much easier to expand and maintain. If you could share the the command and output of ipmi that would be helpful for potential future implementation. Thanks

[Slys1403]

Hi @Meliox,

on systems that expose it via the BMC, you can usually just pull total system power over IPMI/DCMI.

ipmitool dcmi power reading

Example:

Instantaneous power reading: 142 Watts
Minimum during sampling period: 135 Watts
Maximum during sampling period: 165 Watts
Average power reading: 148 Watts

Or via IPMI sensors:

ipmitool sdr type "Power"

Example:

Pwr Consumption | 142 Watts | ok

Sometimes also:

ipmitool sensor list | grep -i watt

From what I’ve seen, dcmi power reading is usually the cleanest if it’s supported.

Not all hardware exposes this though, so it’s a bit vendor/BMC dependent.

[edenallen]

This would be great!

The output for an IPMI-compatible system (Dell PowerEdge T440) for me is as follows:

$ ipmitool dcmi power reading

Instantaneous power reading:                   113 Watts
Minimum during sampling period:                  1 Watts
Maximum during sampling period:                302 Watts
Average power reading over sample period:       93 Watts
IPMI timestamp:                           04/19/2026 04:03:12 PM BST    Sampling period:                          00000001 Seconds.
Power reading state is:                   activated

For a non-IPMI compatible system (HP ProDesk consumer PC), the output is:

$ ipmitool dcmi power reading

Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory

I have three IPMI-enabled systems (Dell T420, R730xd, T440). An IPMI device is present on all three, before ipmitools is installed - on the two Linux boxes this is at /dev/ipmi0.

Because ipmitools doesn't create that IPMI device itself, it should be a reliable check to see if the host system is IPMI compatible by checking for /dev/ipmi0, /dev/ipmi/0, or /dev/ipmidev/0 before recommending the installation of ipmitools

[edenallen]

This awk syntax returns just the current wattage number cleanly:
$ ipmitool dcmi power reading | awk -F: '/Instantaneous power reading/ {gsub(/[^0-9]/,"",$2); print $2}'

116

[Meliox]

I'd like to have the full IPMI output as the structure in version 2 will allow to build a standard JSON output that can be presented in the webui. That is if such a thing exists - I need to reserch IMPI more. Thanks.