E7 Calculations

Posted on
Sun Mar 25, 2018 1:42 pm
petematheson offline
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Location: Southampton, UK

E7 Calculations

Hiya,

Quick question - I'm on Economy 7 Electricity - where we have a different rate for electricity usage overnight than during the daytime.

Is there a way this can be included within the plugin somehow?

Also - what is the best way to get a Cost per Day / Per Month to show as a variable in Indigo?
I'd like to show the calculation on the iPad we have in the hallway to keep an eye on electricity cost.

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 2:38 am
autolog offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

I'll add the E7 requirement to my ever growing list - not sure how soon I can get round to looking at it though.

The daily/monthly cost is something I would like to do, at some point.

In the meantime, you could probably run a script at just before midnight to capture the daily cost. The script could add this to a monthly total. :)

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 2:57 am
petematheson offline
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Location: Southampton, UK

Re: E7 Calculations

Ah no worries - Thanks for replying so quickly.

Any way of doing a manual workaround?
Perhaps 2 Variables (for 2x E7 rates) which increase the number when the KW Reading increments. Then do a calculation at the end of the day to take each reading and multiply it by the rate to give me a running total?

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:00 am
durosity offline
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Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne, Ye Ol' England.

Re: E7 Calculations

petematheson wrote:
Hiya,

Quick question - I'm on Economy 7 Electricity - where we have a different rate for electricity usage overnight than during the daytime.

Is there a way this can be included within the plugin somehow?

Also - what is the best way to get a Cost per Day / Per Month to show as a variable in Indigo?
I'd like to show the calculation on the iPad we have in the hallway to keep an eye on electricity cost.


Out of interest are you on an E7 now because you've got a tesla? If so does it make a big difference to your costs? I don't charge at home that much, there's some CYC chargers very close to where i work that i use but it's becoming harder to use them thanks to ICEing on a regular basis (I actually got so fed up with them a few weeks ago i blocked one car in so i could charge)

autolog wrote:
not sure how soon I can get round to looking at it though.


Excuses excuses. What could possibly be more important than your indigo plugins? You plugin developers are all alike.. it's as if you believe you're actually allowed to have a life outside of this forum.

Now go and code. I want a working Stella-Z v3 plugin beta in my inbox by 9am Wednesday morning.

Computer says no.

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:50 am
petematheson offline
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Location: Southampton, UK

Re: E7 Calculations

:D

Yep exactly that - I switched to E7 because of charging the car. Although since we've had a charger put in at work I'm actually charging there as much as possible, and Tesla also installed a Supercharger about 15 minutes drive from my house - so that's handy too ;)

Other than that, I've started looking at the smart tariffs such as Tide and another one (can't remember the name) where the rates change every 30 minutes, but basically means you pay 5p/kwh all day except between 4 - 7pm where it jumps up to 20p. It also has open API access which means you could tie it in with Indigo and schedule everything to run outside of the peak charges - really useful!

Managed to bag myself a free Tesla Powerwall too from handing out my referral code on the Facebook groups so I'm also looking at getting Solar installed at the same time as the battery, although it's still fairly costly.
I'm chomping through around £120 of electricity each month right now so was hoping to use this to keep track of the overall usage a little more. I find SMAPPEE okay but fairly useless with it's ability to detect individual devices.

Facebook groups are full of ICEing pictures, even at the Tesla superchargers, although it's more rare and Tesla will actively speak to site owners to ensure they are trying to stop it from happening.

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 4:20 am
durosity offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

Nice! It'd be lovely if the Tesla plugin was updated to take into account the powerwall too. Hopefully at some point in the future there'll be more functionality on the powerwall to force it to be the primary source during certain times (and allow it to work as a UPS in the UK if the mains power goes out).

And yeah ICEing is horrible. I often charge at a spot nearish to where i live right next to a take away and i ALWAYS block people trying to park next to me in the other EV bay. They always say 'it'll just be a second' and i explain why to an EV driver that is such a nightmare. Some move, some refuse. I take pictures of their car while they can see me and tweet them to Newcastle city council. That makes a fair few move too. Not that NCC ever do anything about it.

I also hate EVholes.. people with a ev or hybrid who park in an EV bay and don't charge.

I'll have to look at Tide. Sounds like it might be quite handy.

Computer says no.

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 8:10 am
petematheson offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

Octopus Energy - that's what the other one is called!

The Tesla plugin unfortunately is old and fairly broken within Indigo - a number of the commands don't work anymore :(
I believe you already can do that with the PW - Scheduled charging and use as a backup UPS for the house !

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 10:39 am
durosity offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

Oh, good. Last time I investigated the system it couldn’t be used as a UPS due to legal reasons for safety.

And yeah so I’ve seen.. perhaps you could convince one of the resident plugin devs to update it and add features. And they’ll likely need someone else with a Tesla so get one for me and I can be a secondary Guinea Pig!

I’ll have a look into them later in the year when my electric contract is up!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Computer says no.

Posted on
Sat May 12, 2018 3:11 pm
petematheson offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

petematheson wrote:
Ah no worries - Thanks for replying so quickly.

Any way of doing a manual workaround?
Perhaps 2 Variables (for 2x E7 rates) which increase the number when the KW Reading increments. Then do a calculation at the end of the day to take each reading and multiply it by the rate to give me a running total?


Any ideas if this is possible?
I could create 2 separate variables and increment those at the various times in the day for cheap / peak tariffs.
Then multiple those variable values by the cost to give me the daily / monthly running costs?

Posted on
Sat Jul 28, 2018 2:57 pm
petematheson offline
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Location: Southampton, UK

Re: E7 Calculations

So after speaking to Smappee and seeing their latest app update, they've informed me they are removing E7 / Dual Rates entirely from the system!
The only rates they will have are for Grid Electric and Solar.

On that basis, is there any way to get something included within this plugin to get a meter reading or anything I can use to track units in Indigo? Then I can do my own calculations based on time of day etc..

Posted on
Sun Jul 29, 2018 7:17 am
autolog offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

Updating this plugin is low down on my priority list at the moment - I have too many other things on. :|

However, you could do something manually. :)

If you set-up a trigger on Device State Changed, select the Smappee Electricity device and the state Total Usage (kWh), then whenever this changes you can run a script to capture the data e.g. indigo.devices[<Smappee Electricity device id>].accumEnergyTotal. This will give you the current kWh = current number of units.

So if you are polling say every 5 minutes you will get an ongoing update of the value.

The values get reset at midnight to zero as they represent daily totals.

Hope this helps. :)

Posted on
Sun Jul 29, 2018 11:38 am
petematheson offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

Awesome! That works really well thanks :)

Working this out - my only question is how do you do basic sums in Indigo?

My E7 hours work out to be 1.30am to 8.30am BST.

So I need 3 Variables to log the values.
Morning (From Midnight to 1.30am)
'Night' (From 1.30am to 8.30am)
Day (from 8.30am to Midnight)

I have 3 Triggers which log the current total kWh to each variable between the various times.
So, since these values will show the total cost at the time, I need a running calculation that does:

Night kWh reading minus Morning kwH reading (Store as E7 kWh Variable)
Then
Day kWh reading minus night kWh reading (Store as Day kWh Variable)

All I need to do then is x the E7 kWh Variable by the Night Rate, and x the Day kWh Variable by the Day Rate, then add them together.

Have I over complicated it? :)

Posted on
Wed Aug 01, 2018 4:16 pm
petematheson offline
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Joined: Sep 14, 2014
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: E7 Calculations

Quick question if I may after having Solar added today!

Could you clarify what the following devices are for?

Solar PV2 (Total 24.337 kWh) - Total Generated Today
Solar PV Used V2 (Total 6.178 kWh) - Total used Today
Solar PV Exported V2 (Total 18.159) - Total Exported to Grid Today
Saved Electricity V2 (Total 6.178 kWh) - Same as PV Used?
Net Electricity V2 (Total 7.223 kWh) - Total Electricity used from Grid Today
Electricity (Total 13.401 kWh) - Today Electricity used from combined Grid and Solar today.
Values all reset each day?

So If I'm calculating how much my electricity is costing me, I need to do my sums based on the Net Electricity V2 device?

Fanks :)

Posted on
Thu Aug 02, 2018 6:24 am
autolog offline
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Re: E7 Calculations

petematheson wrote:
Quick question if I may after having Solar added today!

Could you clarify what the following devices are for?

Solar PV2 (Total 24.337 kWh) - Total Generated Today
Solar PV Used V2 (Total 6.178 kWh) - Total used Today
Solar PV Exported V2 (Total 18.159) - Total Exported to Grid Today
Saved Electricity V2 (Total 6.178 kWh) - Same as PV Used?
Net Electricity V2 (Total 7.223 kWh) - Total Electricity used from Grid Today
Electricity (Total 13.401 kWh) - Today Electricity used from combined Grid and Solar today.
Values all reset each day?

So If I'm calculating how much my electricity is costing me, I need to do my sums based on the Net Electricity V2 device?


Your descriptions are correct. :)
Total Used = Total Saved. The only reason to separate them out is that the custom states have different values that are relevant to saved and used.

Yes - your total electricity used is equal to the total of what you have drawn from the grid and what you have used from your solar.

The values are reset at midnight.

Net electricity is what you will be charged for.

I have a Control Page set-up for my Smappee info:

smappee control page.png
Smappee Control Page
smappee control page.png (160.84 KiB) Viewed 5060 times

Posted on
Sun Aug 12, 2018 4:53 pm
petematheson offline
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Joined: Sep 14, 2014
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: E7 Calculations

Awesome, got it all going now - thanks for the help!

One more question for now - what is the name for the State ID for the Current Load (Watts). I'm trying to pull this out to text me whenever we're exporting to the grid so I can determine how many 'spare' watt's we have, thus what devices I can turn on to make use of the extra. At the moment I just have a percentage.

Thaaanks

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