statsbadge-octopus

Your Octopus Energy prices and meter readings as readings, for statsbadge.

On an Agile tariff the useful half of the price curve has not happened yet, so the next six hours travel as bars with the times down the side: put the washing on at the short one.

On any tariff, each meter reports what it used, what that day cost, and a half-hourly graph of it. A flat tariff has no curve to draw, so the bars and the cheapest-slot readings are not offered for one - the Tariff reading is there to say which you are on.

Install

statsbadge ext add octopus

Then, in the config UI under Extensions, paste an API key and your account number. The meters appear as checkboxes on the next reload, and each one becomes a source in the field pickers.

The key

Both are on octopus.energy/dashboard/new/accounts/personal-details/api-access: the key starts sk_live_, the account number with an A.

The key is stored in the host's config file in plain text. It is read-only and gives access to your account's meter readings, so treat it like a password.

Settings

Nothing else needs setting. The tariff, the region, the product code and the meter serials all come off the account, so switching tariff needs no edit here.

What each meter reports

On a tariff with a half-hourly curve, also:

Pages worth building

None of the meter readings are live

A smart meter sends its half-hours to Octopus in its own time, usually a day or two later, and the API has what it has been sent. So Newest half hour is the most recent half hour on record, not the one just gone, and a graph of it ends where the readings do rather than at now.

Meter behind by is how stale that is. Worth putting beside the others on a grid page: 19 kWh means something different at 2 hours behind than at 40.

The prices are live. It is only the meter that lags.

Gas

Octopus hands gas consumption over in kWh from a SMETS1 meter and in cubic metres from a SMETS2, and the API does not say which you have. The setting defaults to m3, which is the common case now.

If gas readings look about eleven times too small or too large, that setting is the wrong way round.

Agile goes negative

When the grid is oversupplied the price drops below zero and you are paid to use electricity. Nothing here clamps that, so:

• a grid, text or trend page shows a negative fine
• a dial cannot draw one, and reads as empty
• a bars page draws a negative lane as nothing

So a dial is the wrong page for a price. Use it for Last full day if you want one.

What it asks for, and how often

Every clock is set by how fast the thing behind it moves. Octopus documents no rate limit, which is a reason to be careful with it and not a licence.

That is about 5 requests an hour for a house with one electricity meter and one gas meter, and it scales with meter points rather than with anything else.

The price on the badge turns over on the half hour whatever the fetch interval is: two days of the curve are held, and the slot covering now is read out of it on every sample. So an hour late in noticing tomorrow's prices costs nothing on screen.

A failure waits two minutes and then doubles, up to an hour. A rejected key otherwise means thirty requests an hour for as long as nobody notices.

Export meter points are skipped. What a panel sold and what the house bought would draw the same page and mean the opposite.

Licence

MIT