Over a glass of wine, I looked at this topic again. I think there is a ‘local’ home assistant solution with a net price USD 45 Rainforest device, the EMU-2. I’ve 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 says… Their cloud service does looks interesting, that said, and it appears that unlike Rainforest cloud service, there is no charge. That’s good, but does raise eyebrows about viability for long run…
Does Emporia offer any APIs?
Not at this time. Offering an API is a feature that is on our roadmap, but right now we don’t have a specific release date. We are a small team with limited resources. We appreciate your feedback and hope you understand that we’re 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 …
Looks like there is a version of the unit I am using still for purchase and (fingers crossed) compatible with SCE’s program. The other ‘worry’ 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 ‘quick’ with your enrollment process with SCE, if it fails you can hopefully get the device refunded from Amazon’s 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 SDGE’s 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