phrozenpenguin:

 

I've only vaguely been following the trend to flashing Tuya devices, but from what I can gather it is a bit hit and miss, with often now needing to dismantle the device, solder flying leads onto tiny chips in order to serial flash them if you can get the right timing on bootup. Is this correct? If so, I would be loathe to do that especially for a "high" power device.

 

I use both the Z-Wave devices you are thinking of avoiding, and a "Currentcost" setup that does the power load in my house as well as numerous plugs. But I don't think this is readily available any more, and needs a bit more setup in HA.

 

You tend to aim for an OTA updatable device.  The brilliant (non power monitoring) that I linked to, can be flashed in this method.  First one might take a little set up to get the process going, but after that I found it really simple.