[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….

[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 🙂

[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

[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.

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