Australian Energy Integration

Hardware
21

If there are still people interested in this thread, I have successfully got information from the Victorian Smart Meters in other parts of Australian Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)Smart meter using the local ZigBee HAN bus. Every meter in Victoria, Australia is capable of this. Smart meters in other states are probably capable, but many meter providers did not install the communication module. If you ask for the functionality, I think they are obliged to change your smart meter for one that is capable.

  1. Gateway Device. Rainforest Eagle Unit https://www.rainforestautomation.com/homeowners/ The unit comes with a US/Canadian PS but the unit in a Mini USB so any PS of about 1.5A is OK.
  2. Gather Information from your Meter and previous electricity Bill, NMI Number, Meter Serial number
  3. Gather Information from the side of your Rainforest Eagle, Cloud ID, Mac Address and Install Code
  4. Determine who your Electricity Distributor is: Find your energy distributor
  5. Go to your Distributor’s Website and create an account for yourself
  6. Power Up the Rainforest Eagle and allow it to do its software update across the Web.
  7. Go to your distributor’s account and begin the pairing process between the Rainforest Eagle and your meter. You will need the numbers collected earlier.
  8. Wait, sometimes up to 24/48 hours. The Eagle last Red Led will stop flashing and become steady when it has paired.
  9. In Home assistant install the Rainforest Eagle Integration, You will need the IP address, and some of the numbers gathered earlier.
  10. That is it, you should have access to three entities now, Total Import, Total Export and Current Flow. Graph Display, do what you like. You can set up the Energy entry for automatic graphing etc. If you have Solar, you may need to gather its production from your Inverter’s API.

Hope that helps someone. I am not a big fan of gateways in general but because of the security requirements of talking to the meter means that standard Zigbee will not work easily, security keys etc etc So best to use a manufacturer’s gateway.

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