Tiered Rates that adjust with time

[Bill]

I’m a commercial property owner and manager here in San Diego. Just installed 4 Vues in order to monitor usage between apartments that happen to share one meter. The plan is to use the info to allow the tenants to monitor their own usage and to more accurately bill two different apartments for their actual share of electricity usage.

A Simple feature that would make this a reality is if the app would allow us to enter different rates based on the time of day.  This would match the current tiered rate system at SDGE which has rates that fluctuate at different times of the day. We have off peak rates, peak rates and super off peak rates.

If we could achieve this, my tenants would be able to view real-time, accurate energy costs. And it would make our shared billing process completely automated.

Appreciate your thoughts.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[Marty @Emporia]

@Bill, thanks for you business and sharing with us how you are using the Vue’s.    Tiered Rates is a software enhancement that is on our development roadmap, and we planning on having this available to our customer later this year.   Thanks for the feedback!

[johnscotthughesjr]

An additional feature that I think goes with this would be to have a different rate depending on how many kwhs are used.  For example, the first 800 kwhs are charged at 0.11 but over 800 kwhs is charged at 0.12 per kwh. My utility changes based on gross usage this way.

[PGE-customer-SJC]

Yes, +1 . Pacific Gas and Electric in Northern CA also uses a combination of Tiers (3 tiers: baseline allowance, and then higher rate when over that up until 4 times baseline, then an even higher rate) – plus TOU (3 times lots: peak, part-peak, and off-peak rates) plus type of day (2 types: weekday and weekend). It would be really nice to add that this year 🙂

[blaks1shine]

This is the reason I bought emporia – and I’m not seeing how to easily see what is consuming power within a time window.

I’d like to see a pinch/zoom graphic (stacked bar) based on the circuits consuming the most power (grouped per hour)

For the PG&E example – time windows are 4-9p, or 5-8p, so if we could see the breakdown per hour, that would suffice. An aggregate so you could review this window (time of day) over week or month would be super useful as demands changes with seasons.

Same interface could be useful to see overnight consumption percentages per circuit for solar applications. This could help dimension storage systems, or optimize consumption.

 

[jbyrkit]

+1 for different rates. Duke Energy charges a different rate for the first 1000 kwh.

[HenryH]

I can add to this request. My power company is NS Power (owned by Emera Corp.) in Nova Scotia, Canada. Their time-of-day rate schedule is:

NS Power ToD rates

H: 19.961 ¢/kWh (high rate)
M: 15.603 ¢/kWh (medium)
L: 8.676 ¢/kWh (low rate

Mar–Nov (Spring/Summer/Fall—9 mo)

Hour M Tu W Th F Sa Su
07-23 M M M M M L L
23-07 L L L L L L L

Dec–Feb (Winter—3 mo)

Hour M Tu W Th F Sa Su
07-12 H H H H H L L
12-16 M M M M M L L
16-23 H H H H H L L
23-07 L L L L L L L

This will give you one data point for the complexity of supporting time-of-day rates. Unless this is implemented I cannot get accurate billing.

Thanks for your consideration.

[solarnerd]

I would love tiered rates! It would be great for this to also account for peak demand usage fees for solar users. My utility (SRP) charges a peak demand fee based on the highest 30 minute kw usage during weekdays in the month. These peak fees are steep so I would want to be alerted anytime I’m coming close as well (which I think the app can currently do)..

Example: the most kw used in a 30min period from Mon-Fri in a month is, say, 5.6kw. The peak fee for that would be about $140!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by solarnerd.

[2ndLeaf]

Is there any ETA on when the Tiered Rates will be available?

[Dom.emshur]

I would love to have this feature. I am with APS and they have a time of use plan.

[akballow]

Any update to this? This seams like a critical request to even be able to use this energy tracker accurately. Right now without this feature the only value that is of use is the current usage. Having historical usage does not mean much in terms of calculating costs because we can only specify one rate.

[Emporia Support]

Hi @akballow,

I just checked w/ the development team and this is a feature that is under active development. Very much a high priority item here at Emporia. I would keep a lookout for the Application update to be available early summer for this feature.

[EfficiencyNerd]

For anyone interested in doing this now, I’m currently doing this through Home Assistant and a custom integration. In Ontario where I am we have time-of-use rates that vary based on time of day and season. I rent one floor of a house and split the electricity bill 50/50 with the other tenants. I installed an Emporia Vue 2 in our panel, and within Home Assistant add up our circuits vs their circuits, mostly because I’m curious how much usage we each have.

There is a “utility meter” integration which allows for the switching of rates. It definitely takes a bit of work to set up (you need to buy some kind of mini-computer to run Home Assistant), but I’m able to accurately determine how much of each peak rate I’m using vs the other tenants (and subsequently get annoyed when they use craploads of energy during the most expensive hours… Grrrr).

 

If anyone is interested, I could post my setup to github somewhere and/or help point you in the right direction.

[solarnerd]

• Please, do share! I’ve got a linux server that I would love to setup tiered rate management. This will be super helpful when determining my actual peak consumption when it related to what my tiered rates will be once I get solar installed.

[Emporia Support]

Hey @efficiencynerd,

Would definitely love to see the repo for the tools you’re using. I’m currently working on organizing some community based resources to share with everybody. If you come across other tools, be sure to post ’em.

Emporia Support Team

[EfficiencyNerd]

I pushed up my config files to github here: https://github.com/efficiencynerd/home_assistant

 

Home assistant is a powerful beast for home automation. I’ve been playing with it for about a year, slowly adding more and more things to it. It’s a bit of work to set up but well worth it, and if you’ve got a linux server hanging around I’d assume you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.

 

Here are some things to point you in the right direction:

• Custom Emporia Vue integration, which pulls data into Home Assistant: https://github.com/magico13/ha-emporia-vue
• The aptly named “Integration” integration – This performs an integral sum calculation. In other words, if you feed this integration Watts, it will spit out a sensor in kWh (of course you have to set it to account for the “kilo” part, and I think by default it’s using hours as units) https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/integration/
• Utility Meter integration – this is how I set up the tiered rates, you can define as many “tariffs” as you want. You feed the Utility Meter a kWh sensor, either from the Integration integration above or directly from the Emporia Vue data. It then collects data into different named tariffs, resets at whatever interval you want (daily, monthly, etc) at whatever offset you want (3rd day, etc) https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/utility_meter/
  • I’m using the Emporia Vue monthly kWh, which updates every 5 minutes – I found the “Integration” calculations to be a bit less accurate
  • If the Emporia Vue data goes down, the monthly kWh will go to 0 and back, which causes false readings in the utility meter sensors. To get around this, I’m pushing it through a template such that if it reads exactly 0, I set the template value to it’s own “previous reading” (see my configuration.yaml, line 355 for an example)
  • The Utility Meter integration can be set to only count up, which is how I have it – this way when the monthly Emporia reading resets to 0 and starts over, it won’t reset my Utility Meter accumulation
  • For rates at each tariff, I just have some Input Numbers defined through the Home Assistant UI, which I then multiply by each respective peak to determine cost
• To switch tariffs, check out my automation/energy.yaml file. I’m triggering an automation at every hour the tariff could possibly change, every day (this could of course be done differently), and then checking some conditions to determine what rate to use:
  • If it’s nighttime or a non-workday as defined by Ontario stat holidays and weekends, set to offpeak rate
  • Otherwise, if it’s summer months during 11 am – 5 pm, or winter months and between 7 am – 11 am or 5 pm – 7 pm, set to onpeak rate
  • If neither of the first two conditions are true, set to midpeak rate
• You can define as many utility meters as you want. I have about 20, collecting data for various things…
• In my configuration.yaml file, electricity-related stuff goes from line 232 all the way to 831. Wow that’s a lot of code… feel free to steal any or all of it. Some of what I’m doing could have probably been accomplished via the UI, but I’m a software engineer so I haven’t minded learning a new code language.
• On the main page of my repo are some screenshots of how I’m displaying the data. The display cards were a bit hacky to set up the way I have them but I’m happy with it for now. Tomorrow I may decide to redesign the whole thing, who knows 🙂

 

Cheers

[Emporia Support]

Awesome. I’ll take some time to digest, but I love it. Thanks!!! (now I just need to find myself a linux box to leave “hanging around”)

[EfficiencyNerd]

Haha – a linux box was in reference to @solarnerd saying he had one. Definitely not the average user I would assume! But Home Assistant is trying to become more user-friendly, even though for now I think it’s mostly still DIY nerds like myself.

 

In case the Emporia staff/dev team is interested, the most recent update to Home Assistant software added the ability to share usage data for analytics – so as of right now, there are at least 30,000 installations of Home Assistant, and growing fast: https://analytics.home-assistant.io/  Personally I wouldn’t have bought an Emporia Vue if there wasn’t a custom integration that can pull its data into Home Assistant, but it would be awesome if you guys made a more “official” integration for it. Even better if it’s local and not cloud-based 🙂

[solarnerd]

Thanks so much for putting together the github page, @efficiencynerd! Looks like we’re both nerds when it comes to this stuff 🙂

I just spun up a Home Assistant instance and am playing with it for the first time. I’ve added your custom integration easy enough, but trying to figure out what to do after that. Do I need to manually add the 2 other items (Integration and Utility Meter), or are they bundled in with your package? From there, what’s the easiest way to modify the parameters for my utility tiers?

Thanks again for all your help and hopefully between the 2 of us, we can get some helpful guides put together for everyone else!

[EfficiencyNerd]

Great! Just to be clear, the “ha-emporia-vue” custom integration was not created by me – all credit to github user magico13, who wrote that integration (as well as the PyEmVue module it replies on).

 

Yes, you need to add at least the Utility Meter integration as well as optionally the Integration one – though the Integration one is not strictly necessary for what you want. I would start with just the Utility Meter, which needs to be added directly in your configuration.yaml file.

How do you have Home Assistant installed? Specifically – do you have the “Supervisor” on the left sidebar? This basically makes the whole thing more self-managed for installing/upgrading/etc. The reason I ask is because from the Supervisor Add-on Store you can install the File Editor addon, which allows you to edit the configuration and other .yaml files. This is how I do most of my editing.

I’ll try to make a short video tutorial in a day or two showing how I would first suggest setting things up….

[solarnerd]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>That would help a ton, thanks! I don’t have supervisor as it’s not compatible with my OrangePi clone, so I’ve got the container version. I’ll do some poking around on how to add that to my yaml file though since it sounds like that’s a step we need to take ourselves.</p>
After it’s added, how do you go about configuring the tiers? Are they handled in another yaml file, or are they managed on the web interface through an Integration?

Thanks again, you rock!

[7_2kW_in_Mesa_AZ]

This weekend I noticed that there is now an option to select your utility and rate plan and use an open source service called openEI.org for rate information.

[jamesh]

Is this feature going to be released soon? I see no option for Xcel Energy TOU rates or any ability to manually set rate tiers

[YK]

Let me add my volt on this feature request.

[Peter]

Great feature, especially that you can just pick the utility and rate you are on.

Hope we can see use breakdown by rate catagory soon.

I’m, with Wisconsin Public Service, and have a 3 tier rate: base, off-peak, peak; also week day/ weekend & holiday.

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Peter.
• This reply was modified 3 years ago by Peter.

[ctrlz]

+1 for this glaring omission.  I never even thought to check whether dual tariff was supported before buying my Vue 2.  Even the £10 plug-in monitor I replaced with the Vue 2 had it!

Without it, the displayed costs will never be accurate.

[filipes]

I just installed Vue in my house and realized tiered rates are not available. It is such a basic feature that I didn’t even check before buying.

I see an update from Emporia this would be available by the end of 2020 but today is March 05 2022.

Emporia, please could you provide us with an update?

As I might return the item to Amazon and find another solution.

Thank you

[warloofer]

Spain and other countris of Europe uses tiered rates, so this improvement is a must for most european users like me. Also, when we produce more solar energy than is consumed, we send it to the network and electrical companies pay us using a different rate for each kwh injected to the electrical network.

[TheFunkster]

+1 for tiered rates. In Melbourne (Aus) we have a weekday rate and a weekend rate, also with a separate solar feed-in tariff. At the moment my expense tracking is way off to the tune of about 50%. Emporia when will this be sorted, you said it would be done in 2020 and its now the end of 2022. Might think about going somewhere else if this is not fixed soon.

[timgfoley]

Any update to this?   We have Tier rates in Canada as well in various places, would love to see this!

[TM]

Hi, I wanted to check it Tiered tariffs were available yet so that if I purchase an emporia energy monitor I may track the cost of my day rate and night rate electricity usage.

[TM]

Just to let you know I received a response to my Query when asked through the Facebook page, please see below;

“Thank you for reaching out to us. Tiered tariffs are currently not a selection/feature that can be set in the app. We have sent that type of request to our development team to see if they can add that as a feature, but as of right now we don’t have an ETA on if and when that may be a possible feature in the app. Please let us know if you have any other questions.”

[bigntallmike]

I haven’t seen an update on this. Your own advertising mentions how tiered rates are important for monitoring but I can’t set my rates intelligently.

I’m in Ontario, Canada and we have two sets of tiered rates based on time of day and season.

https://www.hydroone.com/rates-and-billing/rates-and-charges/electricity-pricing-and-costs

Aside: even my Chevy Volt PHEV knew how to do seasonal tiered rates back in 2018 or earlier.

[justinbowditch]

Has this been done yet? Im in canada and can’t find my utility company

[PaulMcCarthy]

+1 for tiered rates. I’m in Ireland and I have 3 different rates depending on time of day. I have been using the Vue 2 for the last month and it is better in virtually every way compared to the Smappee I had before. The one exception is that it’s impossible to see my costs because of the limitation of the single rate. For clarity, it would have to be manually entered rates in the app, since none of our utilities support the API option. Thanks.

[danielcifuentes]

So, end of January 2024 and no tiered rates?

 

This is so basic I didn’t even check if this was possible.

 

Any ETA or information about this?

• This reply was modified 10 months, 4 weeks ago by danielcifuentes.

[emporiacs]

Hi, we’ve relayed your feedback to the team.

For now, the raw data in kW and kWh is available with the CSV files, so which you can use to calculate the dynamic rates outside of the app.

You’ll need to need to use the hourly file, and apply the cost of energy for that time of the day. Once you do that for the 24 hours of one day, you can copy and paste the info to the other days.

 

[jgood]

“For now” or forever? This thread started four years ago and it sounded like it was going to happen. Now it doesn’t, which is too bad. The data provided in the App is great, (please don’t misread…I’m a big supporter of all things Emporia) but without tiered rates it’s way less useful.

[Robert]

Using the CSV files after the fact is not difficult; however, I’d like to be able to see real-time cost. In Ontario, Canada, there is a significant rate difference for TOU, especially with the Ultra Low Overnight rate plan. (Ex: ~28 cents/kWh during peak compared to 2.8 cents/kWh overnight). Tallying the hours in an aggregate manner doesn’t give us much of an idea. It matters to me, in particular, because I’m running solar and I am credited with supplying the net at according to the same TOU rates. Knowing that generating 1 kWh at 4 pm pays for pulling 10 kWh overnight is nice, but I’d like to see that available in the app.

Is there an API or another way to grab the real-time data stream, without having to spy on the backend? If so, I’ll write my own app.

[schriss]

Smart Meters and Smart Tariffs are quickly becoming a standard, I should have researched before buying, it is quite surprising to see they are not supported.

[Author]

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