Amber Electric (Australia) Custom Component

[markpurcell]

Great, would like to see Blueprint.

[rohan3au (Ro)]

Hey @madpilot still can’t seem to get any sensors except the single Price Spike one. Any ideas?

[rohan3au (Ro)]

Dug into my logs and have this error for the Amber integration:

" 2021-12-04 17:05:39 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.sensor] Error while setting up amberelectric platform for sensor

Traceback (most recent call last):

File “/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/helpers/entity_platform.py”, line 249, in _async_setup_platform

await asyncio.shield(task)

File “/config/custom_components/amberelectric/sensor.py”, line 201, in async_setup_entry

description = SensorEntityDescription(

TypeError: init() got an unexpected keyword argument ‘native_unit_of_measurement’"

[madpilot (Myles Eftos)]

Ah, no need to use the custom component anymore - it’s now an official
Integration. Remove it from HACS (or remove the directory in custom_components) and restart. Then re-add the integration

[markpurcell]

@madpilot Any prospect of inclusion of a smart shift in the amber HA integration?

SmartShift™

[madpilot (Myles Eftos)]

Unsure yet. It’s designed to allow it, but there are some hurdles to over come first.

[markpurcell]

@madpilot I have just started a new thread on SmartShift functionality:

Running Devices When Energy is Cheaper and Greener

HA seems to be a good choice to run devices when energy is cheaper and greener, but I couldn’t find any specific automations to assist with this task. What are you doing to time shift your devices to the ‘solar soak’ window to reduce costs and maximise consumption of renewable energy? I quite like the execution of Amber Electric Smart Shift, but it isn’t available where I live so I have pulled together some Automations to deliver the same outcome. As these Automations are not specific to Amber…

[ThirtyDursty (Adam)]

any chance of getting the sensor to populate into HomeKit for use in HomeKit Automations?

Many other items from HA populate as sensors (my action que aircon zones, switch states etc).

[madpilot (Myles Eftos)]

I’m not sure how HA propagates sensors to Homekit, but as Homekit doesn’t support price sensors I’d wager than it’s not possible (without some janky work around - I’ve heard of people exposing it as a climate sensor, We 1c = 1 degree).

You should be able to see the price spike sensor, though, as that is just a regular binary sensor.

[scotta]

Myles, any suggestion on how to best display the forecast price. A statistics graph and sensor graphs only seems to show historical prices.

[madpilot (Myles Eftos)]

Not really - Home Assistant doesn’t really handle forecasts. I’ll need to developer a custom UI component at some point, I think.

[scotta]

Lovin’ the existing feed.
I’ve set up a ESPHome ESP32 light that runs the light template to show Cyan, Green, Yellow, Red depending on pricing.
Plus I’ve got a set of automations that turn of the aircon units if there is a price spike as well as flash red the status light.

[ThirtyDursty (Adam)]

I just started a post on this…but then saw your reply here.

Does that mean that Forecast Data would difficult or impossible to use as is current?

Use Amber Electric Forecast to Optimize what hours are selected for pool pump each day

Hi Like a bit of advice or ideas about how I could use Amber Electric’s Energy price for picking the best 8hours each day to run the pool pump and heater. Essentially replicating their smart shift technology…but for whatever I want I’m using Astral Pool’s Connect10 for the pool automation and already have some triggers that ensure it operates the heater pump when it is day time, less than a static preset price for electricity checked against the current price and the pool’s temperature (once p…

[madpilot (Myles Eftos)]

Display and automations are different beasts. I was talking about displaying forecasts.

I’ll head over to the other thread.

[scotta]

I have figured a way to graph the forecast data. Not very refined yet but working.
Using a HACS frontend card ApexCharts-card. Below is my yaml code.

type: custom:apexcharts-card
graph_span: 24h
span:
  start: minute
header:
  show: true
  title: Amber Electricty Forecast
  show_states: false
  colorize_states: true
series:
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    stroke_width: 1
    name: range min
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), entry.range_min];
      });
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    stroke_width: 1
    name: range max
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), entry.range_max];
      }); 
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    color: blue
    name: price kwh
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), entry.per_kwh];
      });
yaxis:
  - min: 0
    max: ~0.40
    decimals: 2
    apex_config:
      forceNiceScale: true

[scotta]

A bit nicer looking, price only and some bands

type: custom:apexcharts-card
graph_span: 24h
span:
  start: minute
header:
  show: true
  title: Amber Electricty Forecast - $/kwh
  show_states: false
  colorize_states: true
series:
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    color: cyan
    stroke_width: 1
    show:
      legend_value: false
    name: Low Price
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), 0];
      });
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    color: green
    stroke_width: 1
    show:
      legend_value: false
    name: Average Price
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), 0.16];
      });
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    color: yellow
    stroke_width: 1
    show:
      legend_value: false
    name: Medium Price
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), 0.25];
      }); 
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    color: red
    stroke_width: 1
    show:
      legend_value: false
    name: High Price
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), 0.4];
      }); 
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    color: blue
    show:
      legend_value: false
    name: $/kwh
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), entry.per_kwh];
      });
yaxis:
  - min: 0
    max: ~0.40
    decimals: 2
    apex_config:
      forceNiceScale: true

[ThirtyDursty (Adam)]

@markpurcell has come up with a great way to identify the trigger or condition value for “Best X number of hours” in the next 24hours.

Gives the KW/hr rate likely to give you X hours based on current forecast (obviously changes)

I’m using this to run my pool heatpump heater in the best hours of the day and will probably automate the circulation pump and chlorinator. Try and get it to wait till best period, and also not have to seasonally adjust a static value.

I’ve set up a heap for different run times

-sensor
      amber_daily_forecast_best4hr:
        friendly_name: "Amber Forecast Best 2hours"
        value_template:   >-
          {{ (state_attr('sensor.amber_general_forecast', 'forecasts') | map(attribute='per_kwh')|list|sort).4}}

  - binary_sensor:
      - name: "Amber Cheapest 2 Hours Trigger"
        state: "{{ states('sensor.durst_home_general_price')|float(0) <= (state_attr('sensor.durst_home_general_forecast', 'forecasts') | map(attribute='per_kwh')|list|sort).4}}"

Use Amber Electric Forecast to Optimize what hours are selected for pool pump each day

Hi Like a bit of advice or ideas about how I could use Amber Electric’s Energy price for picking the best 8hours each day to run the pool pump and heater. Essentially replicating their smart shift technology…but for whatever I want I’m using Astral Pool’s Connect10 for the pool automation and already have some triggers that ensure it operates the heater pump when it is day time, less than a static preset price for electricity checked against the current price and the pool’s temperature (once p…

[scotta]

3rd version (and final … i promise) - using experimental feature of colouring the curve

type: custom:apexcharts-card
experimental:
  color_threshold: true
graph_span: 24h
span:
  start: minute
header:
  show: true
  title: Amber Electricty Forecast
  show_states: false
  colorize_states: true
series:
  - entity: sensor.amberelectricity_general_forecast
    float_precision: 2
    color_threshold:
      - value: 0
        color: cyan
      - value: 0.16
        color: green
      - value: 0.25
        color: yellow
      - value: 0.4
        color: red
    name: price kwh
    data_generator: |
      return entity.attributes.forecasts.map((entry) => {
        return [new Date(entry.start_time), entry.per_kwh];
      });
yaxis:
  - min: 0
    max: ~0.5
    decimals: 2
    apex_config:
      forceNiceScale: true

[markpurcell]

Good work.

Never call anything final, release 3 is fine as there will be future iterations.

I have a price spike coming up this afternoon, which really distorts the graph.

[scotta]

Mark, the ~ in front of the 0.5 set the scale to 0.5max unless it goes above this figure. If you remove the ~ it will have a fixed scale and the peak will just be above the display area.
Some pretty wild price swings - the wholesale pricing max is particularly volatile