I want to start tracking my electrical demands in the Octopus Agile emoncms App to see if it will be cheaper for me to switch to Agile or not.
Am I best at tracking real time info or pulling data historically through the Octopus API?
I am feeding real time data into an Influx Database through Home-Assistant from my SolaX Inverter. This comes from a ModBus SDM230 Energy Meter Directly attached to the Inver and the readings from the Inverter itself.
As I have battery storage as well I don’t know how relevant the PV Power is by itself.
I have the following data points:
(These are real time updated per second)
PV1 Power
PV2 Power
PV Toal Power (Just a simple add the two together)
Battery Power (Positive = Battery Charging, Negative = Battery Discharging)
Measured Power (Positive = Export to Grid, Negative = Pulling from Grid)
I also have Imported Grid Power from previous day. Due to limitation on Octopus API.
How am I best formatting this data into the required fields for the app? As I really don’t know where to start with emoncms.
I have emon running locally on a PI as I can’t get a docker version to work. I don’t have any CT clamps attached to the PI.
Hello @wills106 are you logging the readings listed in emoncms?
For the agile app (with agile expord calculation) you need:
import (power in watts)
import_kwh (cumulative kWh imported)
use_kwh (cumulative total home consumption kWh)
solar_kwh (cumulative total solar generation kWh)
The creation of these feeds for non battery systems is covered by the Solar PV application guide here: Solar PV - Guide | OpenEnergyMonitor your system is a type 2 configuration.
So for your system, using the emoncms input processing, multiply ‘Measured Power’ by -1 and then use ‘allow positive’ to isolate the import component only. Log the result to a feed called ‘import’ and also add a power_to_kwh process to create a cumulative kWh feed called ‘import_kwh’.
For solar, log PV Total Power to a feed called ‘solar’ and add a ‘power_to_kwh’ process logging to a feed called ‘solar_kwh’.
Im struggling a bit with how to work out ‘use_kwh’ as the battery system is complicating things a bit. Maybe the app needs an option to use an ‘export_kwh’ feed. Or just grid_import_export… it would probably make things a bit easier… I could add this as a development item, but I’ve got a bit of a backlog at the moment so might take a while
Ok, so in the processing, I am pushing the input to a Feed PHPFINA 30 mins, and just logging it? What is the best way to accumulate it (or do I not need that for this)?
Just selecting the import_kWh and use_kWh as the imported data feed it does not let me continue - it wants the import as well
@wills106 I wrote a blog post on how I compared the cost of Octopus agile with Ecotricity: Domestic data science – energy use – scottishsnow. As far as I understand it, you only need to compare import to get an estimate of potential savings, this is without behaviour/technological change. If you can reduce/eliminate the peak price load (e.g. with solar/battery) these will be additional savings on top of the straight cost difference.
@miker
Even though I saw the R Tag at the bottom of your post I didn’t put 2 and 2 together realising R is the language it’s written in!
I’ll have to have a read at some point as it does seem an interesting subject (Data Science in general)
I have to say Home Automation has taken down a Rabbit Hole so far. Having to learn the basics of Python, so I have a vague idea what’s going on and yaml as well.
If I had home automation hardware to play with while at Uni I probably would have a better understanding and ability to program.
@borpin
I only have about 4 Days worth of Data in emoncms so far.
But I have the output of the half hourly data going back to end of Sep 2019.
I’m still learning what to do with this data and how best use it.
All this came about from wanting to control my Central Heating better while working shifts!