I have been using Electricity Maps to calculate my carbon footprint, but it doesn’t offer the granularity of energy production that we actually have in San Diego. Last year we moved a community choice aggregator that allows us to choose 100% renewables for our energy. Is there a way to incorporate this into HA in place of Electricity Maps? I guess since all of the energy we import from the grid is renewable there is probably a way to just hardwire the input entity to 100% but I’m not exactly sure how to do that. Any suggestions?
That isn’t supported at the moment in the energy dashboard.
I played with that scenario and had coded something up but never went to the effort to to get that integrated in to the HA core.
See Carbon footprint sensor? - #7 by brodykenrick
However, are you sure that you aren’t using the local grid at whatever carbon intensity it has at that moment and paying for your net energy used to be renewable? I.e. Are you getting all of your overnight instantaneous power from a renewable sources (like a battery at 2AM)?
If you don’t have instantaneous power matching that would mean that HA is accurate and you have created the fossil fuel emissions as per the HA dashboard. You are in addition purchasing offsets for energy used in those other times (a very good thing IMO).
I tried to cater for emissions, offsets and displacement in emissions in what I had done.
Let me know your thoughts on that other thread as I was thinking about reviving it just the other day.
That’s a fair point. My read of how it works is that they buy 100% of my energy use from renewables even if the actual flow to my house isn’t always that same energy. I guess that is basically an offset. Here’s how they describe it:
"As a Power100 customer, the energy that will flow to your home is not necessarily the energy that a particular solar or wind farm produced specifically for you, but is likely energy from multiple sources. When you opt up to Power100 service, we are required to purchase the amount of energy you use from 100% renewable sources on your behalf. To the extent that customers choose SDCP’s 100% renewable option, the renewable content of SDCP’s aggregate supply portfolio will further increase.
The $0.0075 per kWh charged for Power100 service reflects SDCP’s cost for procuring the related energy supplies and contributes to the growth and development of local renewable generating projects. By opting up to Power100, customers are contributing to 100% renewable energy advancement while helping to spur the development of renewable sources to help us achieve our goal of entirely clean and renewable electricity by 2035 or sooner." (source: FAQs - San Diego Community Power).
So, I think you are correct. While the utility is required to buy as much as I use from renewables, if I use electricity during the day I am probably having a using a greater mix of renewables to begin with. Thanks for helping me think through this!
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