Status: DRAFT Version: 0.1 Date: 2026-07-11 Authors: Don Jackson
energy.ebus.capability.status — a device's operational health: its overall fault state, the health of its communication link, and any active alerts, plus device-specific diagnostics.
Node type: energy.ebus.capability.status
This document is the canonical property catalog for the status capability. Data-model documents that use it (bess, water-heater, distribution-enclosure, utility-meter, pdu, and others) reference this catalog and document only their device-specific role and additions.
status is the most widely reused eBus capability after meter: nearly every device type publishes some operational health. It has a small common core that every publisher can speak, plus room for device-specific diagnostics that only some devices expose. A consumer can rely on the core across all device types, and read the device-specific properties for the devices it understands.
The core answers three questions any device can answer: is it faulted, can it communicate, and does it have active alerts. Everything beyond that, network-interface health, component runtimes, relay state, configuration echoes, integration sub-states, is device-specific and optional.
| Property ID | Datatype | Req | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
fault-state |
enum | MAY | Overall fault state: OK, FAULT, UNKNOWN. Publishers MAY extend the value set via $format for device-specific fault categories. |
communication-state |
enum | MAY | The publisher's view of its own communication / link health, to the device it represents (for a proxy) or to its backhaul (for a native device): OK, DEGRADED, LOST, UNKNOWN. Orthogonal to whether the eBus publisher is currently reporting to its consumers. |
active-alerts |
string | MAY | Human-readable current alert(s), when the device exposes them. |
A publisher MAY add status properties specific to it, advertised on its device and documented by its device model. The catalog defines only the core above; a device narrows or extends it. Established examples (each MAY, outside the core):
- network-interface health (a distribution enclosure):
ethernet/wifi(boolean),wifi-ssid,cloud-connection; - configuration echoes (a distribution enclosure):
postal-code,time-zone; - relay state (a distribution enclosure with a whole-panel relay):
relay(OPEN/CLOSED/UNKNOWN); - component runtimes (a water heater):
compressor-runtime,resistance-runtime-{upper,lower}(hours), and vendor refrigerant-cycle diagnostics; - integration sub-states (a proxied device such as a BESS behind an adapter):
authentication(OK/FAILED/EXPIRED/MISSING),discovery(OK/NOT_FOUND/SERIAL_MISMATCH).
These are illustrative, not exhaustive; a publisher documents its own set in its device model.
Which core properties are published, and which device-specific ones, is a device-model decision. A utility meter may publish only communication-state; a water heater fault-state + active-alerts + runtimes; a BESS communication-state + fault-state + its integration sub-states; a distribution enclosure its network / relay / configuration set. See each device model for its subset.
Absence of the status node means the device does not expose operational health. Absence of an individual property is the usual "not reported". A device that cannot determine a core value publishes UNKNOWN where the enum offers it, rather than omitting, when it wants to positively signal "unknown".
Operational health is neither a measurement (meter), an identity fact (info), nor a control surface. It is the is-it-well signal a consumer polls to decide whether to trust and use a device. Its own capability, reused across device types, lets a consumer check health uniformly.
Any device that reports operational health: today the distribution enclosure, BESS, water heater, utility meter, and PDU, and by design any device type. The core contracts above apply unchanged to any conformant publisher; device-specific diagnostics are documented per device model.
- Electrification Bus framework specification
- bess, water-heater, distribution-enclosure, utility-meter, pdu data models — publishers of this capability.
- Electrification Bus capability-type registry — the index this catalog is referenced from.