just wondering if anyone knows if its possible to get any of this information from Southern California Edison into Home Assistant?
- peek, non-peak, and critical times
- my monthly energy usage
- my daily energy usage
- my real-time energy usage
Some how they were able to get approval from PUC to quit providing tier and pricing data in April of this year 2021 via smart meter messages, I am not sure how they were able to get authorization to do this. My stand alone Rainforest zigbee USB dongle continues to receive real time data from the meter, but I am not sure for the wording of the notification letter I received about stopping the sending tier data, whether they will continue to enable new zigbee HAN devices. As to their peak and summer rate notifications that they send out to mobile phones, I have never seen any public API to receive these messages in something like Home Assistant. Hope you can find something, my experience with the smart meter zigbee integration has been that getting real time whole house power usage has been useful, getting any further pricing info has been very limited (when they were providing it). Does not speak well for SCEās āsmart gridā future.
thanx. i live in an apartment and cant put anything on the meters, so i was hoping there was some kind of api that they offered to get the information. unfortunately, i havent been able to find anything that would seem to indicate there is a wayā¦ 
David,
Sorry for digging up an old thread. I am curious about how you are using your zigbee dongle to get the SCE meter readings. Based on your post, I understand those may not be transmitted in the open any longer and I am curious to see if mine are, but I donāt know how to capture them.
I appreciate any pointers or how-tos.
Thanks.
Stay well,
Tim
My meter continues to send real time whole house power use to the zigbee dongle and zigbee LCD console device that I have. As I said above, I no longer get tier change notices or anything else since the change. I do not know if SCE will āpairā zigbee HAN devices any more. Check their web site (which sux btw). Another problem is finding compatible zigbee dongle, link below is to the Rainforest Automation web site where I bought my units many years ago, there current products are listed in link, but the one you want (i think) is listed as out of stock. You might want to give them a phone call or email. Good hunting, hope you find something.
I bought the Rainforest Eagle and let me tell you what a piece of junk it was. Losing connection all the time, not updating often, etc.
I ended up getting Emporia Vue Energy Meter and connecting it. Itās been great and it was pretty cheap, especially after the $20 bill credit from SCE. I paid $39 for it, but itās now $29. No brainer as itās so cheap and the app and integration is great.
I donāt have the tier usage in, but I mainly use the watts being used entity. Lets me know if I left something on or if my car is finished charging.
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Welcome! Interesting find and finding! Thx for the update! Donāt know about you, but have seen a noticeable cost increase in my SCE power cost. So closer monitoring will probably become more broadly used.
Thanks for this! Seems inexpensive and frictionless. Definitely gonna give it a try.
Forgot to ask how you are integrating with HA. I donāt see Emporia on the list of Energy integrations.
TIA
Over a glass of wine, I looked at this topic again. I think there is a ālocalā home assistant solution with a net price USD 45 Rainforest device, the EMU-2. Iāve not tried it, but it looks to work the same way my device that been running 7 by 24 with Home Assistant for 5 plus years.
I took a look that this Emporia Vue product on their web site, and they pretty much say that they will NOT give you your raw data, not sure if @spudsmac is having different experience then what their FAQ saysā¦ Their cloud service does looks interesting, that said, and it appears that unlike Rainforest cloud service, there is no charge. Thatās good, but does raise eyebrows about viability for long runā¦
Does Emporia offer any APIs?
Not at this time. Offering an API is a feature that is on our roadmap, but right now we donāt have a specific release date. We are a small team with limited resources. We appreciate your feedback and hope you understand that weāre working very hard to prioritize the many enhancements that have been requested.
IMHO, it is best to stay away from the cloud stuff, or at least suck off the raw data from the smart meter locally. Process locally, and if useful pass data up to cloud services for further analytics. Where they are making their money on your data ā¦
Looks like there is a version of the unit I am using still for purchase and (fingers crossed) compatible with SCEās program. The other āworryā was that SCE had totally pulled the plug on enrolling new devices to connect to their smart meters. But from what @spudsmac indicates and this SCE web site, it looks like there are still possibilities. For USD 70 minus USD 25 rebate, the Rainforest EMU-2 looks like a workable local solution with Home Assistant. If you are āquickā with your enrollment process with SCE, if it fails you can hopefully get the device refunded from Amazonās returns program.
This github has not been updated for seven years (as of Jan-2022) however it looks like the serial api is the same as the unit I have been using for many years, their older RAVEn unit. They spit out XML formatted records from the smart meter. I have a simple python script that publishes this to MQTT. From there, I ingest it into Home Assistant and a long term data set.
Emu-Serial-API
Amazon has the Rainforest EMU-2 for USD 70.
SDGE at least has a list of compatible Smart Energy zigbee devices, which SCE does NOT have any list I could find.
https://www.sdge.com/list-compatible-han-devices
SDGE, SCE and PGE are all in the same sinking ship of being under the thumb of the California PUC. So it would be a good guess that info on SDGEās web site is possible SCE compatible.
some fairly recent info on the EMU-2 and others
https://mattwidmann.net/notes/monitoring-electricity-usage-at-the-meter/
this is the code I started from many years ago, written by a smart lady at UCSB:
Raspberry Pi - Rainforest EMU-2 - Python - Read time from SCE smart meter
I have SCE and use the Rainforest EMU-2 along with the following repository to track energy consumption (installed via HACS): ha-rainforest-emu2/custom_components/rainforest at master Ā· damienheiser/ha-rainforest-emu2 Ā· GitHub
It works without issue so far and is all local only. The range for the EMU-2 is surprisingly good.
The list of compatible SCE devices is on this page: Home & Business Area Network | Rebates, Incentives, & Savings Tips | Your Home | Home - SCE (click āViewā towards the bottom).
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Welcome! Thank you for sharing your experience with the EMU-2 unit, good to hear that there is still a product in production that generates the same XML data that my very old (in tech years) RAVen dongle does with SCE (and hopefully other US energy providers) does.
Question: @bigtoach are you getting any pricing data via the EMU-2? I was a bit miffed when SCE quit providing me with ābill to date cost numbersā and indicator when my usage moved between tiers. I have not changed billing programs since they introāed the TOU rate plans, again wondering if they send messages via meter when TOU different TOU rates go into effect. Thx.
No, there is no price data provided by the device at all. For a while I was setting it on the device, but I donāt have any use for that any longer.
Instead I have an automation that updates the price in HA for the different rates throughout the hour/day/month based on the chart here: Time-Of-Use Residential Rate Plans | Rates | Your Home | Home - SCE
Interesting info, thx! Iām glad to see a reasonably priced local unit, EMU-2, being sold and available. When I purchased their original RAVen USB dongle maybe 8 years ago, I thought it is a great tool. I have struggled to see the value that people get by buying the more expensive products that upload your data to their servers and in theory give you back some useful analytics. Maybe there is something useful there, but Iāve yet to hear a review of them saying such.
Now with the several TOU rate plans, it would be interesting, as you are doing, scraping the plan data. But scrape all the plans and have something running to give you cost comparison between the plans for your usage.
I see that they have a sms text service now:
Interested in getting text alerts to inform you of on-peak and or off-peak periods on your new rate plan? Sign up below and get notified of peak periods through your text messages.www.scetextalert.com
Iām trying to do something similar with my SDG&E rates, and it should be similar to what SCE has with different rates for Winter/Summer. Would you be able to share how you implemented this?
I created a helper to store the rate (input_number.current_energy_price, screenshot below) and have an automation that runs hourly and when home assistant starts. I then use that entity for the price in the energy dashboard.
- alias: Energy - Set Price
mode: single
trigger:
- platform: time_pattern
hours: '*'
minutes: '0'
seconds: '0'
- platform: homeassistant
event: start
action:
- service: input_number.set_value
data_template:
entity_id: input_number.current_energy_price
value: |-
{%- set hour = now().hour -%}
{%- set month = now().month -%}
{%- set day = now().weekday() -%}
{%- if month >= 6 and month <= 9 -%}
{%- if hour < 16 -%}
{%- set price = 0.30 -%}
{%- elif hour < 21 -%}
{%- if day < 5 -%}
{%- set price = 0.49 -%}
{%- else -%}
{%- set price = 0.40 -%}
{%- endif -%}
{%- else -%}
{%- set price = 0.30 -%}
{%- endif -%}
{%- else -%}
{%- if hour < 8 -%}
{%- set price = 0.32 -%}
{%- elif hour < 16 -%}
{%- set price = 0.29 -%}
{%- elif hour < 21 -%}
{%- set price = 0.43 -%}
{%- else -%}
{%- set price = 0.32 -%}
{%- endif -%}
{%- endif -%}{{- price -}}
Your jinja logic will need to differ based on month/weekdays/hours. Note that the day variable is 0-6 (Monday to Sunday respectively).
If SDGE publishes these rates online you can look into the Scrape Integration, SCE does not, so Iām stuck with manually setting the rates.
Helper config screenshot:
Helper used in the energy dashboard screenshot:
Cheers!
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Cool!
do you have something for the tiered plans by chance?
Thanks for sharing this.
Had a little bit of trouble getting input_number.current_energy_price setup (had to set it up via configuration.yaml vs UI to get it working), but itās now reporting the rate to the Energy Dashboard as expected.
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Sorry for the late reply. I use an integration through HACS.
Thanks! I found it :-).