Release: Data storage, Energy/Temp/Humidity Graphs and energy optimization back to you

It’s not always the case, but “Smart Meters” provided by local utility companies may actually use ZigBee - but different “profiles” than ZigBee HA (home automation) so the can’t be joined to ZigBee HA hubs even if you could get it in the right mode.

Applies to gas, electric, and water meters.

These meters sometimes have additional interfaces for local use - electric meters, for example, might have an optical signal output which a non-invasive clamp-on device can read.

There’s also clamp on devices for the analog portion of a water meter which uses a magnetic sensor to count rotations of the fastest moving dial.

I wonder if that particular magnetic clamp meter might actually be compatible with some gas meters.


The trend, however, is for the utilities to provide a feed from their cloud via an API or via a partnership with a data analysis / customer interface company. Utility companies get the data in near real time (or real real time?), so why not share it with the household members?

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I was skeptical too, but the difference is significant on overall utility bills. “Gas is almost always cheaper than electric, whether tank or tankless.”

https://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/waterheaters.html

My water heating operating cost was neatly 20% of my bills (second most expensive household expense). A Sense Energy Monitoring can make an audit a breeze, but if you don’t have one installed, it takes a lot of effort to perform an energy audit. Luckily, there are a lot of tools online to help you make an informed decision. In my case I went with condensing gas water heater. For us, it was the most cost effective choice.

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Anybody who had v.00.00.01 from git installed, we got a bug, the default url was pointed to the dev server instead of prod. There is a new version (02) in git or you can change it manually, just replace http://dev.hundredgraphs.com/hook/ with https://www.hundredgraphs.com/hook/

Sorry for that and thanks for trying

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Grafana and InfluxDB is for somebody who wants more local control, basically because you are doing everything by yourself.

HundredGraphs is a cloud SaaS, so you use something that we have predefined for you. However, HundredGraphs also has an optimization AI (currently in closed beta), where you can get optimization feedback from SaaS to your ST, Grafana can’t do anything like that, it is just graphs.

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Github was updated with v.03.
Fixed time zone in feeds

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v.04 Minor bugs fixes, mostly in logging

There’s a site with some numbers. Their references are good. Some of the conclusions they themselves draw are incorrect although their end numbers are generally right. (for example, they base their calculation for smart lighting on the number of hours in a year when most people run the lights in anyone’s room no more than three hours a day. But they still get to the right place on their top line because they are using government numbers for the percentage spent on lighting in a typical consumer budget.)

https://www.simplyss.com/blog/smart-home-savings/

Anyway, there are entire government agencies in the US dedicated to nothing but calculating where energy can be saved. So there are a lot of numbers out there without having to go to “private industry.““ :sunglasses:

According to the energy star folks, about half of the energy used in a typical US home is used to heat space. About another quarter is used to heat water. About 11% is used for lighting prior to getting LEDs. And everything else is everything else.

That’s why smart thermostats generally do pay for themselves pretty quickly. Using cold water to wash clothes will save about 50% of the energy from the washer. Using a more efficient water heater will save energy for sure, but might not save money, because there’s typically a high installation cost.

All of your electrical devices together are running on your electricity, not your gas bill. So there’s usually a pretty high percentage per device that you can save there, but not a lot of dollars. Unless you are running things like pumps and air-conditioners.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do some kind of energy audit (we use solar energy at our house, so we’re pretty careful about everything), I’m just saying that the total bottom line savings will be impressive in terms of percentage per device, but maybe not so much in terms of cash.

So definitely, more efficient appliances including the furnace, then a smart thermostat, then LED lights, and you’ve probably saved 85% of anything you’re ever going to save. :sunglasses:

Smart Meters

Your comments about smart utility meters were spot on. They generally are a closed system that you will not have access to except through a cloud to cloud interface if they make one available. Many utility companies do make those available these days to encourage consumer savings. So the first thing you can do is get in touch with your own utility company and see what kind of energy audits they offer and suggest.

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Oh, and as far as rebuttals, The Ambient has a good general article on the reality of smart homes and the fact that we often get information that we don’t act on. Or act out in ways that increase energy use, like all those people who have the smart thermostat start raising the temperature before they get home so the house is warm when they walk in. :wink:

It’s an interesting read:

https://www.the-ambient.com/features/do-smart-homes-save-energy-1232

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Prewarming (or precooling) the house can increase the energy use, but if you would think in energy cost, it can decrease cost at the same time. A lot of places has already adopted multi tier pricing and even dynamic pricing.

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Thanks for this app!

Works great with my solar pool heating and automation efforts: SmartThings Swimming Pool Solar Heat Automation - DIY

Here’s the live data using the HundredGraphs app. Click the pic for live data:

I’ve adding a few new solar collectors, and insulated the pool bottom. This app and the data shows that 2" of stryofoam SM under the pool made a big difference. The new collectors should be online tomorrow.

All LED
All Smart Switches
A lot of stuff on SmartPlugs
HVAC dialed down a bunch
Window treatments
Entertainment Devices limited
Got rid of 2 old appliances
Ran dish washer less
Went gas on as much as I could

We cut about 40% from our consumption at home with automation. I replaced some older power hungry networking gear, replaced our clothes dryer with a heat pump version etc. All of the house lighting is HUE or similar with motion sensors and smart switches.

The single largest drop (38%) is on the home front. The home had an apartment previously, so we have two meters. We’re doing this with pretty much zero behavioural changes. One wonders how much power is being wasted and CO2 generated needlessly across the board…

2 months consumption, HOME meter 1.

2 months consumption, HOME meter 2 (basement)

This is from another building, a 9000 square foot commercial building with five business tenants.

Business consumption over 1 month…but with new tenant in building.

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This is exactly the reason we have created HundredGraphs, to get a clear visual when and how you spend energy. It is so great it works for you

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We have added a binary type graph for cases when you need only open/close, up/down, etc.
Also a linear graph now got a ‘raw’ option, it would not average at all and just show values as it is. Very useful for SmartThings specifically.

We are working on a ‘Burst’ option so you can send data as soon as it happens. And it is possible to miss some motion sensors update when it opens and closes again between reports.

I also encourage to update to the latest version of plugin (00.00.07 as of today), we have tried to increase stability and error handling.

Please let me know if you fancy something else and we will try to accommodate.

I set up a sample feed into hundredgraphs just to see how it worked. I have the smartapp configured to send data from about a dozen devices (temp, motion, and power to track a set of stairway lights controlled by a SmartLighting automation). Hundredgraphs drops all my events and the profile shows this message:

Error: ""Frequent" extended feature was used, extra data was dropped."

Details: "Frequent" plan required. The Free Forever Plan supports 2 months of raw data retention and data push every 10 mins with 1 node reporting. Would you like to increase the frequency of updates to each 60 sec? Try Frequent plan. Or maybe you need more nodes reporting? Check out our plans

error was updated at Wed Jun 03 2020 16:47:00 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Please check your API push

Clearing this doesn’t ever make it go away. I cleared it at 3:50 and yet it happened again. I have the SmartApp configured to send every hour (with the catchup as 2 hours and the maximum number of events at 200). I see this in Live Logging:

4:47:26 PM: debug Hundredgraphs Logger HundredGraph Logger logged 0 events between 06/03/2020 15:50:34 and 06/03/2020 16:47:22 in 3.902 seconds.
4:47:23 PM: debug Hundredgraphs Logger SmartThings found 106 events between 06/03/2020 15:50:35 and 06/03/2020 16:47:22, posting them to HundredGraph Logger

3:50:35 PM: debug Hundredgraphs Logger HundredGraph Logger logged 0 events between 06/03/2020 15:49:55 and 06/03/2020 15:50:34 in 0.938 seconds.
3:50:34 PM: debug Hundredgraphs Logger SmartThings found 2 events between 06/03/2020 15:49:56 and 06/03/2020 15:50:34, posting them to HundredGraph Logger

What is your username, we will check it?
Sorry, I have not seen it before, it is better to open a case through a site, we have immediate alert.

We have updated plugin to version 0.0.8. We highly encourage you to update the plugin, it has bugs fixed and better logging and reporting.
You can see it immediately on the first page of the installed plugin where it says how many feeds were updated and if anything happened during the update.

Wanted!
Do you like smart devices and talking to people?

HundredGraphs, a smart energy analytics project, is looking for a co-founder to lead the Community development.
Fun, challenges, and options are included.

Small font: Community Manager will be a cofounder on a part-time basis. The initial reward will be paid in options.

Please apply with this form

We are looking to add some additional functions to HundredGraphs.
We have recently added alerts and in our opinion they are better than ST, but if you think otherwise just let us know and we will improve it.
We also have added real time options for data collection.

However we are looking to add something more. Would you be interested in:

  • IFTTT integration?
  • Zapier?
  • AI alerts - this is when HG notifies you if something unusual happens, like sudden spike in your electricity that you have not last 2 month or so. Or sensor triggered during the night and it should not.
  • HG plugin switches something back on ST in response to a …
  • … something else?

For somebody who doesn’t know what http://HundredGraphs.com is - it is a SmartApp for ST and the cloud service collecting data from ST and making graphs out of it.