Home Assistant Core Updates: Fixes for EnergyZero Pricing and Hive Authentication Improvements

Overview of Home Assistant Core

Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform designed to provide local control and prioritize user privacy. It integrates with a wide variety of smart home devices and services, enabling users to automate and monitor their homes efficiently. The platform is popular among developers and tech enthusiasts for its extensibility and active community support.

Release 2026.9.2 Highlights

Released on September 11, 2026, this update focused on stability and functionality improvements across several integrations and dependencies:

• Hive Integration: The authentication process was refined to normalize usernames before login, addressing potential login issues for Hive users. This change improves reliability when connecting to Hive smart home devices. (hive docs)
• Roomba Integration: Fixed an issue where the module-level SENSORS list was mutated, which could cause inconsistent sensor behavior. (roomba docs)
• Openhome Players: Resolved a problem where Openhome players became unavailable between polling intervals, enhancing media device stability. (openhome docs)
• Vizio Soundbars: Fixed authentication requirements for Vizio soundbars, allowing smoother control and integration. (vizio docs)
• Remote Calendar and Local Todo: Improved error handling and encoding specifications to better manage calendar events and todo lists. (remote_calendar docs, local_todo docs)
• Security Enhancements: Credentials are now redacted from go2rtc server log output to protect sensitive information. (go2rtc docs)
• Dependency Updates: Various integrations received dependency bumps to maintain compatibility and performance, including waterfurnace, python-roborock, and ZHA.

This release also included multiple smaller fixes and improvements to integrations such as Tesla Fleet, Nest climate, and UniFi WAN latency reporting.

Release 2026.9.3 Highlights

Published on September 18, 2026, this patch release addressed a significant regression and other integration-specific fixes:

• EnergyZero Integration Fix: A critical fix was applied to the EnergyZero integration, which provides dynamic energy and gas prices primarily for users in the Netherlands. Since version 2026.9.0, the integration was incorrectly returning only a single current price value instead of the full 24-hour price forecast. This update restores the expected functionality, allowing users to track hourly electricity prices accurately and optimize their energy usage accordingly. (energyzero docs)
• Private BLE Device Configuration: The integration now requires the Identity Resolving Key (IRK) during the configuration flow, improving device identification and security. (private_ble_device docs)
• Bond Integration: The known Bond host is retained when zeroconf continues to announce it, enhancing device discovery stability. (bond docs)
• Shelly Devices with Matter Protocol: Fixed an issue where cover entities were not created if the tilt attribute was null, improving device compatibility. (matter docs)
• Google Tasks and Alexa Integrations: Improved error handling and state reporting to prevent crashes and erroneous error messages. (google_tasks docs, alexa docs)
• Security and Privacy: The AirVisual API key is now redacted in debug logs to protect user credentials. (airvisual docs)
• Backup Encryption: Supervisor backup archives (supervisor.tar) are now encrypted and decrypted during backup rewrites, enhancing data security. (backup docs)

Additional dependency updates were made for integrations like Lutron, WaterFurnace, Alexa Devices, and Reolink, ensuring continued compatibility and performance.

Impact and Community Response

The fixes in these releases address both functional regressions and security concerns, which are critical for a home automation platform where reliability and privacy are paramount. The correction to the EnergyZero integration is particularly important for users relying on dynamic pricing data to manage energy consumption and costs.

Home Assistant's active developer community continues to maintain and improve the platform with frequent updates that respond to user feedback and upstream changes in device APIs and protocols.

Users are encouraged to update to these latest versions to benefit from the fixes and improvements, especially if they use the EnergyZero or Hive integrations.

References

• Home Assistant Core 2026.9.3 Release Notes
• Home Assistant Core 2026.9.2 Release Notes
• EnergyZero Integration Documentation
• Hive Integration Documentation