chicagoskiguy Posted January 17, 2014 Share Posted January 17, 2014 Was looking into some power monitoring options, and went to the 4store to see what was supported. I was pointed to Eragy, When I went to their website (http://www.eragy.com/) I got this message: Control4 recently acquired technology from Eragy, Inc. to form the basis of some exciting new products and features for the Control4 platform. Has this been previously announced? Has anyone integrated power monitoring with Control4? If so, how does it work, and what route did you go? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I hope C4 is cooking up some great integration. We have record power prices in Illinois because of a variety of factors (cold weather, propane shortages, etc). There is a lot of opportunity here. For example, I have hourly pricing and net metering. I have Solar. I also have Geothermal, which actually works against some of this, because with Geo, you are only supposed to let the temperature fluctuate a few degrees. Otherwise it won't catch up and emergency power kicks in, which is expensive. Basically turns into completely electrical heating at that point. In theory, the hourly pricing should allow me to schedule events based on the power pricing, if it was integrated correctly with the breaker panel (which Eaton was working on those but I think they dropped the ball), I could prevent that electrical emergency from kicking on at all, or time it during a low price period. That's just one example. There are probably more things you can do during the summer. Eragy never supported my pricing model so I never paid for their services. If they did, I could do a lot of stuff. At least in Illinois, usually there is only a few cents difference between the peak time of the day and the non-peak. Right now its about a quarter different between non-peak and peak. That could add up. This is the power prices today in Illinois. These are like 200-500% higher than normal during the winter. With solar and net metering, at least during the middle of the day I can generate power and get good pricing for that power. 12:00-1:00 AM 14.31:00-2:00 AM 10.12:00-3:00 AM 10.43:00-4:00 AM 11.34:00-5:00 AM 15.25:00-6:00 AM 22.66:00-7:00 AM 32.97:00-8:00 AM 33.98:00-9:00 AM 30.89:00-10:00 AM 29.310:00-11:00 AM 29.211:00-12:00 PM 27.9 12:00-1:00 PM 21.41:00-2:00 PM 19.62:00-3:00 PM 16.73:00-4:00 PM 204:00-5:00 PM 275:00-6:00 PM 33.46:00-7:00 PM 34.27:00-8:00 PM 28.88:00-9:00 PM 28.29:00-10:00 PM 24.710:00-11:00 PM 18.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdepaola Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I'm actively working on a driver that will grab that pricing info so you can program against it, Im on ComEd Real Time Pricing and in the same boat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 That's great. I think it was a big joke Eragy claimed they didn't have the resources to support adding that as an option. Still need a breaker that can be controlled by C4 and I would be good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSDave Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Up here in Winnipeg we pay about 6.7 cents per kW/h. All day, everyday. I can really see the benifit of programming around peak times! I never knew there were hourly price structures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdepaola Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Up here in Winnipeg we pay about 6.7 cents per kW/h. All day, everyday. I can really see the benifit of programming around peak times! I never knew there were hourly price structures. Yes, we have several pricing options here in Illinois. The standard averaged structure, where price is the same day in and day out. Then we have the Residential Real Time Pricing program, where pricing fluctuates through the day, on average its about 4 cents per kW/h but it can go much higher like today and I've seen it dip as low as 0 cents per kW/h and once or twice its gone negative. We also now have communities doing aggregation where the city negotiates with the power company for a lower rate. I like real time pricing but it takes some work on our part to watch pricing and work around it. Thats why I'm putting this driver together to watch it for us and send us alerts and turn things on and off as needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Start the dishwasher and the oven when it's negative, for sure... RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFUG Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Just get a 2nd job to pay your PoCo... I learned a few years back not to mess with the boss here by turning-off things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Start the dishwasher and the oven when it's negative, for sure... RyanE Yeah, I wish, that hasn't happened, maybe one time for one hour, in the 3-4 years I've had hourly pricing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 We also now have communities doing aggregation where the city negotiates with the power company for a lower rate. Not a fan. These aggregation deals claim to save money, but there is no hourly pricing option with any of them. There was a big writeup in the paper here about our city signing on and hourly pricing was not even mentioned as a current option to save money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I'd imagine the only time it'd *regularly* "go negative" is if you had a solar system, and then, you'd probably still do best to only run appliances, etc. when you're on cheap power, not when it's negative. RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 The problem during the winter is the time when you have the sunshine, if you are lucky to have a day when you have bitter cold and sun (yesterday was one), isn't going to be the same time for the extreme prices. The pattern has been when people are getting ready for work and in the evening are the extreme prices. During the summer is better because the time of the day when prices are highest is usually also when the solar generation is highest. But of course they have the net metering and the hourly pricing setup, you don't really end up coming out ahead because you don't get full price for the power you sell back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdepaola Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Not a fan. These aggregation deals claim to save money, but there is no hourly pricing option with any of them. There was a big writeup in the paper here about our city signing on and hourly pricing was not even mentioned as a current option to save money.Unfortunately 2014 could be a bad year for real time pricing as the capacity charge is going from approximately $.80 kW hour to $4.10 kW hour. Aggregation customers may well end up with overall lower prices. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 If I can't beat aggregation with RTP, solar generation, geo, and net metering (and for that matter maybe some home automation to enhance all that), something is wrong and that would be a temporary situation I would bet. I don't even think the aggregators offer net metering do they? I think I looked into it at one time but I can't remember if it was RTP, net metering, or both they couldn't/wouldn't do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdepaola Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 No RTP under aggregation, bit most towns around me are getting deals of around $.05-.08 per kW hour. That's fairly good but we could beat it on RRTP prior to the huge capacity charge jump this year. Now they may get the better pricing Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 I need to know more about this capacity charge thing--Google isn't helping me much. Do you have any links that document what is going on? With net metering, variable pricing could still be my friend. Price jumps go both ways (to a certain extent) for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted February 8, 2014 Share Posted February 8, 2014 fire/medic...any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted February 11, 2014 Share Posted February 11, 2014 Ok, here is what I got from Power Smart Pricing on this issue: All customers will need to have capacity purchased for them, regardless of supplier. This is an annual process/purchase, which is coming up in late March for the MISO (the regional grid operator) planning year June 2014 - May 2015.For customers with Ameren as their supply, including Power Smart Pricing participants, Ameren will just pass those costs straight through, with no mark up. The mechanism for Power Smart Pricing participants results in a cents per kWh charge that stays the same from June 2014 through May 2015. The Ameren fixed rate customers have capacity costs included (not separately listed) in their cents per kWh charge, and so they will most likely see an effect that is similar to the PSP customers. The HSS customers (large non-residential customers) have a capacity cost that is based on their Peak Load Contribution(PLC) times the annual cost of capacity expressed as a daily cost per PLC times the number of days in the bill.For customers with a party other than Ameren as their supplier (this would include the municipal aggregation customers), those parties, the Alternative Retail Electricity Suppliers (ARES) have to procure capacity for their customers too. Whether to, and how, the ARES pass those costs along to the customers, is up to each individual ARES. My guess is the ARES either are going to eat the increase, and they are treating it as a loss leader, or they've got some fine print in their agreements that would allow them to mark up the price no matter what the original contract price was with the municipalities. I don't know about you, but I don't trust my municipality to be smart enough to avoid passing on legitimate price increases to me. Why is this any different than the game cable companies used to play? To get their exclusive contract, they come in with all this fancy stuff like a local TV station for producing local high school sports--10-20 years later all you've got is stations full of static and an aging infrastructure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicagoskiguy Posted February 28, 2014 Author Share Posted February 28, 2014 fire/medic - did you ever have any luck with that Comed RTP driver? I just started RTP last week, and was thinking it would be cool to have the LED's of my 6 button display different colors based on current real time pricing, and estimated prices for next hour. Seems like the driver you talked about could help in that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdepaola Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Well I had stopped as I was being told by a ComEd rep that was on the RRTP team that an API was going to be released to access this and other data. However it does not look like that going to happen in the near future. Currently out of town, so give me a few days to get back home and rip into this. You'd like to see both Current and predicted price for the next hour? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicagoskiguy Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 I think that would be the most useful. Getting current price could assist in immediate decisions, and knowing the predicted price for next hour would assist in making a decision on say starting your dishwasher, or start a load of laundry. Here is the URL that the site uses to get the day by day pricing tables:https://rrtp.comed.com/rrtp/ServletFeed?type=pricingtabledual&date=20140228 If you look at the URL, the last parameter is the date which is fairly self explanatory. The URL itself returns the html rows and columns of an html table, but does not contain anything more (even the actual <table> tags are missing) Just my ideas, You and others probably have a few better ideas too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicagoskiguy Posted March 3, 2014 Author Share Posted March 3, 2014 Here's another URL that may help: http://www.frugalnerd.com/app/comed/dashboard.html This guy seems to have his act together on his calculations. He incorporates a base cost, and grabs the Last 5 minutes cost as well. Here are the URL's ComEd's site uses for data:https://rrtp.comed.com/rrtp/ServletFeed?type=instanthttps://rrtp.comed.com/rrtp/ServletFeed?type=instantpredictedhttps://rrtp.comed.com/rrtp/ServletFeed?type=instanthourly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicagoskiguy Posted March 21, 2014 Author Share Posted March 21, 2014 fire/medic - Any progress? If not, maybe post what you have and see if I or anyone else can help out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chicagoskiguy Posted May 6, 2014 Author Share Posted May 6, 2014 Does anyone know of a good driver to use as a base for this? It's looking like this idea has died, and although I've never written a driver, figure I may as well find one similar and give it a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.