Something cloud based like scraping the web like e-distribuzione’s or areti’s web portal or portale dei consumi? I don’t know if there are any APIs
I am approaching the subject for the first time, and I am a bit lost. Given that Shelly and similar devices with CT clamps can accurately measure the power, except for the price, why would one choose to buy the Alpha device over a Shelly or similar?
I am evaluating the two solutions and I can’t find real functional differences except maybe that the Alpha is more plug and play while with a Shelly more configuration is involved to collect the data, plot it, make alerts for imminent detach for over draw etc.
A device capable of the Chain2 protocol (Alfa, Chain2Gate…) can talk directly with the power meter and get information from it (energy reading, split into time tariffs, detach alert…). And can work without Home Assistant.
Apart from that, you can reach a similar set of functionalities with a clamp meter, with the help of HA and its automations, helpers, energy management and so on.
Moreover, if you have photovoltaic, you need a “double clamp” meter to read two different values of power, while Alfa reads the consumed and produced values directly from the meter, giving “official” values (the ones you’ll find in your electrical bill).
L.
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I haven’t checked myself yet, but e-Distribuzione provides a CSV on their website with 15-minutes energy values.
There’s an integration to import CSV data into the statistics db, but it requires hourly data and total increasing values (not just partials).
See here: Help in developing custom e-Distribuzione integration - Development - Home Assistant Community
Also, does somebody know anything about these?
Apparently their API is fully documented, I think I would be able to write a script to post their data over MQTT (or even better an integration, but I haven’t had the time to learn async python yet 
)
But I can’t find any info on whether they are still available/how much they cost/how to get them…
They are only for System Integrator, not for users. Right now I’m using one of them and it’s pretty good. I also wrote an integration in order to bring data inside Home Assistant and have instant consumption plus all the metrics they share.
With some time and study(for the integration in order to import data from csv) I could try to write the integration for the e-Distribuzione in order to have only the history imported in HA.
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