I just noticed in an earlier post that you mention your HEM was added as Node 2. In your debug log and screen shot, it is using node 4. I'm starting to think that your nodes might be messed up. It might be worth resetting HG to default and try again,. Just stop the service and copy all of the XML files from the original source (or try reinstall?).
Also, I've never seen someone with a HEM have it assigned to anything but node 5. It might not be an issue, but it could be a symptom.
If your HEM is saving the variables that you are setting (confirm by doing a get on the variable to see if it changed), then there is hope that the HEM is fine and its just a HG config issue.
Tomorrow, I will try to post some data from my node config file for comparison.