Australian Energy Integration

Hardware
#1

Hi people,

First post here after having read around but I can not find an answer. I want to measure and monitor my energy consumption. I am located in NSW, Australia. I can see how some people are doing it for Victoria but nothing for NSW.

Anyway. I have 3 phase power coming in. I have a 3 phase air conditioning unit (only heating and power hungry I think). I have solar which I wish to increase and probably push back out on all 3 phases so I can produce more than the 5Kw limit that is set (allowed to do 5Kw on each phase I believe). I want to keep an eye on all of these things. I can place individual monitoring modules on devices I wish to keep an eye on inside the house (eg, fridge) but I want the big picture.

I have tried to contact my Energy Provider (Essential Energy) and they said they have nothing to do with the smart meters. Contacted my Energy Retailer (EnergyAustralia) and they told me that I have a Comms4D smart meter and it should be cable of being monitored and the retailer who installs my monitoring system knows what to do but they have not heard of them being installed in NSW.

I was hoping to install something like the Eagle 200 and perhaps a Shelley 3em on the AC and solar to monitor them but I am not sure as I am just starting out and crawling through the rabbit hole.
So I am seeking some advice on how best to achieve a monitoring system. Any help appreciated.

Laurie

#2

Hi Laurie,

Sounds like my setup is similar to yours & I am doing the same thing at my place. I an AGL customer & i know they don’t provided any API that i know of for capturing the data via the clould. My preference is to always go for local control so i am bypassing the provider.

My solar inverter is a GoodWe unit & i am using the SEMS HACS integration for this - it’s excellent. This one is getting the data from the SEMS cloud service but i think there is another integration that might be able to use a local API. I have not planned to change anything at this stage.

For my 3 phase whole home monitoring i’m using a Shelley 3EM device (with it’s native integration) & that too is mostly excellent (just a couple of ‘ghosts in the machine’ where i had weird power usage values a couple of times, but fixable). It works very well & i am very happy with this solution so far. I have another ShelleyEM device to monitor my electric oven usage.

I also have many power monitoring plugs throughout the house to measure individual appliances. I have standardised on Tasmota based devices for this.

So far i am not separately monitoring AirCon unit. This is also a 3 phase system so i would need another 3EM device just for that specific power circuit. Maybe another time.

For me this solution is working well & gives me almost all the insight i would like.

I have a friend that is subscribed to Amber Energy & they do provide an API & there is also an integration for HA. While fully cloud based (i think) it does provide a one-stop-shop solution for solar & consumption.

Hope that helps

#3

I’m afraid you’ll probably have no luck with the Eagle 200. Although Essential Energy have washed their hands of providing any assistance - they are the ones who own the meter and have to grant you access to read it locally.

In my part of Victoria we have Ausnet. They do allow local reading but are a pain to deal with - my Eagle has currently lost connection for the 2nd time and you have to go through the full application process to get it reconnected.

As for Solar - what brand inverter do you have? Mine (Fronius) has a supported API - but before HA had that I was manually pulling data via Node-Red.

#4

Was about to say the same thing. Look at what your inverter can offer you.

I have everything pulled from my solaredge inverter.

If OP gets to this point, and for anyone else looking, I recently published this guide on calculating demand tariffs too.

#5

You might also like to look at the iammeter WEM3080T three phase energy meter. Ref: https://www.iammeter.com/ It cost me about AUD $230 delivered.

I am using one to monitor my single phase solar setup including my hot water diversion. You may need 2.

If you buy from IamMeter direct, it ships from Australia so you will have it in a few days. They have full instructions on how to integrate with HASS. Thy have awesome support and their cloud app is pretty amazing as it gives far deeper insight into your energy consumption.

They have just released MODBUS/TCP support and have articles, videos and config files on how to use it with HASS. This gives real time data to HASS and will be my next project!

Their product and support is first class and the reason why I have got involved with HASS in the first place!

#6

Thanks Guys,

I am really surprised about the NSW suppliers not providing access to the smart meters. Not really :rofl: I kind of got that message today after all my phone calls. I also got that impression after looking at the Eagle 200 suppliers web site. Victoria is the only state mentioned…

It looks like the Shelley 3EM and the IAMMeter do similar things but I will need to do some more research for differences. Glad to know what any of you might have found.

I was actually anticipating this might be the way I gave to go. On first glance the big difference appears to be physical size. The Shelley 3EM appears significantly smaller. I think I found a place where it is cheaper (100 euros)

It would appear I will need 3 devices . 1 for the power in/out of the whole system. 1 for my AC unit. Finally another one for solar being able to monitor each of 3 potential solar inputs. A bit at a time.

My solar inverter is old. SME ???. I know it has Bluetooth connectivity but I have not looked at if that is able to communicate with Home Assistant. I am runnning HA on a NAS that does not have Bluetooth and I am also not sure if they would be close enough to communicate even if I could get Bluetooth going via a dongle.

My electricity bills are big enough for me to justify it.

Thanks

Laurie

1 Like
#7

Rod,

The hot water system is very interesting. Currently have a solar HW system that I have not even considered incorporating, though I have been using off peak power more often this year to boost it, with limited sun.

Another cost benefit analysis.

1 Like
#8

Laurie,

I have an SMA Bluetooth inverter. The inverter data is now pretty much redundant with the iammeter. If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, you could run SBFspot on a raspberry pi near your inverter and it could send it back via wifi to HASS. I used to do this with a Pi2 and send data to PVoutput.org so no need for a powerful one. I have a hardwired Wireless Access point in the garage for this stuff.

What NAS do you have? I have a Synology. I would use MySql/MariaDB on your NAS for SBFspot.
I also run the docker local Iammeter app on my NAS and it sends the data to the Iammeter cloud and to MySql on the Syno… Iammeter really get energy management and it makes the HASS energy tab look like a toy. I think this alone would be worth the effort to use them. For your 3 power meters you could fit them in a 12 module enclosure which you can get from Bunnings for about $45 if you don’t have room in your switchboard. I am using an 8 module enclosure. Fortunately all my solar stuff is in the garage wall right behind the meter box.

HASS can read SQL. SQL - Home Assistant

Good luck!

PS. The HWS stuff probably has a payback of about 2 years. Our house does not have plumbing for a tempering valve but I have one here I might get installed one day. This could make our stored energy go further!

#9

Rod,

Also running Synology NAS.

Funny you should mention SBFspot I just read this:

My first thought for the SMA inverter was to fit a bluetooth dongle to the VM to see if it could access the data. I will be fitting a Zigbee dongle. - perhaps a small USB hub for the HA VM.

If that works my problem will be bluetooth connect distance. Distance about 5 meters but a couple of walls. SMA mounted on outside wall next to power meter box. Could play with a pi but bluetooth would be better. A WiFi connection would not be a problem as Access Point very close, though I am worried by the number of wifi devices I currently have. Hence bluetooth.

Meter box could fit 2 devices if required.

I will have to do some more research to see what they all can do. Bit overwhelming actually but enjoying it.

i have only JUST started using HA and have already restarted a number of times. I have also put my laptop in the cupboard, staying away from desktop and I am trying to use an iPad as my ONLY computing device. That is hard enough by itself. Anyway no complaints just more research.

Laurie

#10

I’m sure you won’t have any issues with bluetooth connectivity. I can connect from the other end of the house to the inverter through a few walls. SMA must use a strong signal!

Re wifi, if you have a DSL or cable modem, its best practice to put a real router behind it (I use a Netgear Nighthawk, Asus is also OK) and run the ISP provided router in open pass through bridge mode. (eg no firewall). The cheap ones the ISP’s use have very small routing tables which when they overflow (every few days) will cause the router to hang. Nobody tells you that! I run 2 WAPS on non-overlapping channels 6 & 11 configured to the same SSID. Its been flawless and I have lost count of devices on our network.

Like you I am only just getting going with HASS starting in June. I want to use some of the Shelly switches and their motion sensor to turn lights off and save energy. Also want to run our aircon on surplus solar during summer to remove some heatload and was hoping to use a Broadlink remote to do that.

#11

They also don’t tell you that most Wi-fi Access Points (particularly the ones built into the all-in-one ISP supplied modem/routers) only support 20-30 concurrent wi-fi connections. This used to be more than enough … and your IoT devices generally use little bandwidth to receive commands and report values … but they do tend to multiply in number like tribbles, causing them to drop of the network from time to time at random.

The solution is to purchase enterprise class WAPs (at enterprise prices), or setup multiple WAPs as you have done.

Welcome to the series of rabbit holes that is home automation :wink:

1 Like
#12

This link may help

#13

My understanding of the CDR was that you needed accreditation for your app/site to access data

#14

Hey guys , I’m an AGL user and i want to pull up info about the KW/H cost into HA , so I can get a daily cost of the energy consumption in my dashboard, does anyone know how to achieve this ?

Thanks heaps

#15

As far as I’ve just searched you’d have to import the historical data and edit the database.

I’d suggest the better option is buying something that can monitor your electricity in real time like an iotawatt

#16

I have a shelly EM and its giving me the consumption in KW/h or MW/h , so I just need an entity that gives me the kh/h or Mw/h cost in Australia , the openNEM shows the cost in MW only , not MW/h , so when I put that in the energy dashboard there’s an error in the unit of measurement.

#17

For anyone with an SMA inverter with a USB port, I have a project that can fetch data over USB ( RS232-over-USB actually ) and export it into CSVs. This is a part of a wider project for monitoring energy production, consumption, etc. Feel free to ping me … if there is interest I’d consider some kind of integration with HA.