Specify custom discount rates per hour

[GuyKh]

Checklist

• I have filled out the template to the best of my ability.
• This only contains 1 feature request (if you have multiple feature requests, open one feature request for each feature request).
• This issue is not a duplicate feature request of previous feature requests.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

No.

Describe the solution you'd like

With private electric providers, many offer a discount per hours - e.g. 15% off on weekdays between 08:00-17:00.
Need to think about how to model, and use it within the component to get a more clear estimation of the cost.

I've thought about a json with hour ranges describing the discount from the full tariff, but that's a longshot.

e.g.

{
    // Sunday
    "0": { 
        "from": "08:00",
        "to": "17:00",
        "price": 0.50
    },
    "1": { 
        "from": "20:00",
        "to": "23:59",
        "discountPercent": 15
    },
    "2": { 
        "from": "00:00",
        "to": "08:08",
        "discountPercent": 15
    }
    // ...
}

Downside is that it's not very intuitive, and hard to maintain.

[OnFreund]

HA has existing mechanisms for this.

[GuyKh]

@OnFreund awesome, however, it requires creation of a manual helper, no?

[OnFreund]

It requires a separate helper, but there's a UI to add and maintain it, and it appears within your device. I use it for water consumption and it's working really well.

[GuyKh]

One thing to mention, in this component, there's no way to use it witg the LongTermStatistics - i.e. Energy dashboars as far as I understand

[OnFreund]

UtilityMeter supports long term statistics

[maorcc]

@OnFreund / @GuyKh, I think it would be best to integrate with a source like Kamaze and get all possible plans data. Let the user select the current plan, and based on the last month's consumption pattern, the system can even suggest a better plan if there is such.

[GuyKh]

@maorcc while it's not a bad idea, I think the implementation is rough since kamaze.co.il doesn't have a valid API and the values are textually vague and require parsing - i.e. הנחה בימים א'-ש' בשעות 23:00 ועד 7:00 למחרת - what's the discount rate? how to set it into a valid json structure instead of parsing Hebrew each time;

Another maybe more interesting option would be Chashmalink (by @Sinaini) Need to dig deeper into their API

[OnFreund]

Also worth noting that HA doesn't accept scraping-based integrations, so using kamaze would make it impossible to contribute this integration into core.
In any case, if you are going for it, I would recommend decoupling the two - one integration for Kamaze that exposes the relevant sensors, and one for IEC that lets you select sensors for the different tariffs.

[GuyKh]

I agree about the separation of purposes

[roysha1]

Is there any way to apply those with the new release?

[GuyKh]

@OnFreund described UtilityMeter for this

[GuyKh]

Actually - @OnFreund or anyone else - I'd love to hear the implementation details of Utility Meter combined with IEC sensors - i.e. how did you configured it? which sensor did you use?

[OnFreund]

I'm not using the IEC integration yet, but the Utility Meter docs have a section on how to use tariffs. The gist is:

• You define the tariff names along with the utility meter
• You set up automations to transition between tariffs (in this case it would be time based, but you can use any trigger that makes sense)
• If you want, you can set up a template sensor to sum up the products of consumption and rates (or multiple sensors, one for each tariff, if you want that resolution)