I'm building power / solar price comparison website and I would like to get a feedback

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nztomas

14 posts

Geek

#315666 4-Aug-2024 16:26

Hi!

Last month I was wondering if my current power plan is the best one (I have a solar array) and I struggled to compare all different power plans in an easy way. So I've decided to write some scripts for myself but then a few other people and friends asked me about the same thing so I ended up coding a little website. It (sort of) works for me now (I live in Northland) - but it's not perfect. I've taken some shortcuts and focus only on simple smart meter / variable rates - so nothing about controlled / uncontrolled / day & night meters etc.

Anyway - I would love to get some feedback on it. Please bear in mind this is something built in my free time (which I don't have much lol!) and there will be heaps of bugs and UX fails. It might be even completely wrong and break a lot. But I'm happy to improve and fix.

All the pricing is manual - I went through "every" supplier with my address and create some json files with price plans. They suppose to be easily extendible and I plan to put them on public github account if people would be interested into helping me (and keep them up to date).

I do some "smart" assumptions and calculations - different "patterns" for solar productions and use consumptions - I'm aware these needs to be tweaked per region and the code should be able to accomodate that.

But now - I would like to know your opinion on the most important question - do you find this useful at all and do you see yourself using it?

In case you are interested and you think this is worth working on and you have either bugs or feature requests - feel free to comment here or go to https://github.com/freepower-nz/issue-tracker/issues (this should be publicly available).

The website is here - don't break it too much please https://freepower.nz/

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17106 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#3268197 4-Aug-2024 21:03

Sounds great. I'll make some time for a look tomorrow.

jrdobbs

106 posts

Master Geek

#3268208 4-Aug-2024 22:06

You may want to note some changes described here,

https://help.frankenergy.co.nz/en/articles/9569695-electricity-price-change-2024-faq-s

mrdrifter

576 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#3268253 5-Aug-2024 08:55

@nztomas - I've had a quick play around and compared it to my spreadsheet that I built when working out which power company to go with and it's actually pretty closely matching. Mine was based on Wellington location, but it's still within a couple of % overall. Would have made my job a lot easier if this had been around a year ago! :-) Nice work.

CokemonZ

1051 posts

Uber Geek

#3268254 5-Aug-2024 08:58

Interesting enough the Electricity Authority has a tender out for this type of site.

If you want to make it a thing you build and get paid for, you could take a look: GETS | Electricity Authority - Comparison and Switching Website

Ge0rge

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#3268261 5-Aug-2024 09:21

I spent some time last week mucking around with excel to try and do something similar, after Octopus informed me of their upcoming price increase but it was a huge amount of work and very labour-intensive to make useful, and even then wasn't perfect.

It would be fantastic to be able to upload a CSV from your current power provider of your 30 minute usage for say a month or maybe six, and then be able to compare what the costs would have been with different providers, taking into account free hours of power / day & night rates / solar buyback rates. While it would be good for the site to automatically compare providers, I'd be more than happy if I was able to enter different rates and select ToU periods etc manually.

As it was, I'm (pretty) confident that remaining with Octopus, despite their price increases, will still see me better off than getting one or three free hours each day, or even free weekends.

nztomas

14 posts

Geek

#3268286 5-Aug-2024 10:40

Thanks, yes it was always the plan but I pushed it bit further down the line.

Atm you can "approve" website to get access to your historical usage with every NZ provider (there is a law where they need to make this available to you / or someone on your behalf and I think they have something like 2-3 days to comply). Of course the law doesn't say in which format / structure it needs to be provided so it's bit wild out there. I'm planning to support this bit later if I see I have a time and it makes sense.
But maybe as an interim step, I could publish "a CSV contract" in some set format (ie. 30 minutes intervals with amount of Kwh used) and user could upload it manually.
When I get to implement the step #1 I can just write some converters from suppliers data into our "contract csv" and it should just work

The reason I pushed this feature little bit back is:

you current consumption is usually affected by your current supplier price plan - so for example if you are on Contact which has 3 hours free power, when you dump your data, the estimation with such pattern will be bit off. So I would have two options:

just recalculate the same patter with other providers assuming that you are still going to use 25% (approx of the shifted usage into free period) after 9pm
or be smart and shift some of that usage after 9pm into "other" periods

I'm not really sure which approach should I be taking and it sounds bit complicated - so I decided to keep things "simple" at the start.

Also not everyone is "power user" in the way they would be able to tweak "everything" but I was thinking about having some special component for people to manually enter they usage through a day (in form of percentage) - so even without the data dump, you would be able to say "I use 30% of my power in 9pm-12am and not much through the day" and submit it - it would probably give you much accurate results.

Hope this makes a bit of sense...

John19612

68 posts

Master Geek

#3268309 5-Aug-2024 12:22

Ge0rge:

It would be fantastic to be able to upload a CSV from your current power provider of your 30 minute usage for say a month or maybe six, and then be able to compare what the costs would have been with different providers, taking into account free hours of power / day & night rates / solar buyback rates. While it would be good for the site to automatically compare providers, I'd be more than happy if I was able to enter different rates and select ToU periods etc manually.

Amen to this. The average consumer currently has no accurate way to compare offerings from electricity retailers. The Powerswitch website has very little real use as it is just not accurate or detailed enough. That consumers have to plug data into a spreadsheet in order to get any real meaningful results is madness.

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neb

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#3268341 5-Aug-2024 14:13

nztomas: The website is here - don't break it too much please https://freepower.nz/

Needs a NoScript handler :-).

LightbulbNeil

57 posts

Master Geek

#3268374 5-Aug-2024 16:53

Hi, I am in Hamilton, St Andrews area. Our system is 15kw total, with 5kw North, and an East West array of 5kw each. On the 15deg roof, effectively it becomes about an 8kw array based on the North array being 100%. So I view our system as being a peak of 13kw.

What is different for us, is that we have 3 phases of energy back to the grid instead of only 1 phase. With Meridian and Wells, there was No export limit when we got our application for solar in. I don't think we have ever got to 15kw rate for export, but have exported in 1 day 110kwh in late December and early January. Some years will be better than others for sure, and I think the last year has been better than average is my uneducated guess.

We have gone with the Meridian 5 year solar plan, and are also on the low user rate for the daily charges. Our system went live on October 28, and we have received credit for energy sold since November 1 2023. By November 18 this year, will be a full calendar year of billing and we will then know the amount of credit created in the 1st year.

Currently we are in credit by $1200 and expect the next billing cycle to take away about $123 from the credit. We will have a bill of about 223 including line charges and gst, then we will get about a credit of close to $100 from the power sold back to the grid. The self consumed energy from July 18 to August 17 estimated to be about 380kwh to 410kwh due to the longer sunshine hours happening. We get 17cent credit for sold and by at 0.2985 incl gst and daily charges are incl gst is 0.69c per day.

At the end of the 1st year, I am estimating that we would have about $1500 to $1600 in credit. For the next 4 more years we will be getting money back from the system. That reduces the timeframe to have it all paid off earlier as well.

I have no idea of what the difference would be from Auckland to Hamilton for the solar intensity etc, but would think it is almost the same. We have been very happy with the winter performance of the system we got so far. By late December, the panels will need a clean after all the pine pollen comes through the Waikato.

Can you add a feature for 3phase people, who can sell at say 4.66kw per phase (5kva) , and add the Meridian Solar plan to the mix.

I am assuming that the +value on the outcome is a cost that is still to pay, and the - value is the credit after 1year.

Some companies do not allow the sell back at 3 phases , while others will if you ask them first. I just went with Meridian as they were happy that we had 3phase to sell back to them and seemed to me to be a good deal at the time last year.

Neil

gcorgnet

1078 posts

Uber Geek

#3268381 5-Aug-2024 17:09

I'm sharing this because it's on topic. There is a recent service in NZ called Ahiko (https://www.ahiko.nz/) which does something similar with one major difference: They update their pricing automatically, straight from the suppliers.

The main challenges is that every supplier will be changing their pricing at times and it can be nigh on impossible to manually keep track of them.

I understand Ahiko also handles solar and they are workign with NIWA and solar companies to help map out cost/benefits of solar installations.

I understand it's a paid offering but some of you could see value in the data they provide either through supplier pricing or consumption analysis. My understnading is that the data is available through API access.

Disclosure: I know the people behind Ahiko and have worked with them in the past.

steambun

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#3268440 5-Aug-2024 21:03

Thanks G for sharing.

If people intend to use the data for non-commercial purposes we at Ahiko.nz would be happy to talk and provide the API key free of charge. Please reach out to team@ahiko.nz and check out our API docs to obtain pricing plans here: https://ahiko.readme.io/reference/plans

gzt

17106 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#3268443 5-Aug-2024 21:28

https://freepower.nz/

I took a quick look. Nice design rapid to use no fuss. It got me thinking about power use and plans I haven't done that for a while. The modeling looked more or less accurate for my current provider. As a power thing I'd like to to have options like do you run a dryer and frequency like once daily or something from there it could suggest savings moving that usage. I like the simplicity and rapidity of it don't spoil that for anything : ).

It's a great starting point for considering where I'm at and changes.

It worked well on my mobile.

nztomas

14 posts

Geek

#3268565 6-Aug-2024 11:32

LightbulbNeil:

Hi, I am in Hamilton, St Andrews area. Our system is 15kw total, with 5kw North, and an East West array of 5kw each. On the 15deg roof, effectively it becomes about an 8kw array based on the North array being 100%. So I view our system as being a peak of 13kw.

What is different for us, is that we have 3 phases of energy back to the grid instead of only 1 phase. With Meridian and Wells, there was No export limit when we got our application for solar in. I don't think we have ever got to 15kw rate for export, but have exported in 1 day 110kwh in late December and early January. Some years will be better than others for sure, and I think the last year has been better than average is my uneducated guess.

We have gone with the Meridian 5 year solar plan, and are also on the low user rate for the daily charges. Our system went live on October 28, and we have received credit for energy sold since November 1 2023. By November 18 this year, will be a full calendar year of billing and we will then know the amount of credit created in the 1st year.

Currently we are in credit by $1200 and expect the next billing cycle to take away about $123 from the credit. We will have a bill of about 223 including line charges and gst, then we will get about a credit of close to $100 from the power sold back to the grid. The self consumed energy from July 18 to August 17 estimated to be about 380kwh to 410kwh due to the longer sunshine hours happening. We get 17cent credit for sold and by at 0.2985 incl gst and daily charges are incl gst is 0.69c per day.

At the end of the 1st year, I am estimating that we would have about $1500 to $1600 in credit. For the next 4 more years we will be getting money back from the system. That reduces the timeframe to have it all paid off earlier as well.

I have no idea of what the difference would be from Auckland to Hamilton for the solar intensity etc, but would think it is almost the same. We have been very happy with the winter performance of the system we got so far. By late December, the panels will need a clean after all the pine pollen comes through the Waikato.

Can you add a feature for 3phase people, who can sell at say 4.66kw per phase (5kva) , and add the Meridian Solar plan to the mix.

I am assuming that the +value on the outcome is a cost that is still to pay, and the - value is the credit after 1year.

Some companies do not allow the sell back at 3 phases , while others will if you ask them first. I just went with Meridian as they were happy that we had 3phase to sell back to them and seemed to me to be a good deal at the time last year.

Neil

Hi, interesting!

Sorry I might be confused about what you actually need lol - do you want me to add rates for Hamilton (including Meridian Solar). How is the 3phase setup affecting current calculations ? I thought that even now you can jump on and say "Auckland" + ~10kw array and get some numbers.

Or is it something else / custom you need? (sorry I'm happy to help but I'm just not sure what's needed :)

nztomas

14 posts

Geek

#3268570 6-Aug-2024 11:37

steambun:

Thanks G for sharing.

If people intend to use the data for non-commercial purposes we at Ahiko.nz would be happy to talk and provide the API key free of charge. Please reach out to team@ahiko.nz and check out our API docs to obtain pricing plans here: https://ahiko.readme.io/reference/plans

Hi thank for mentioning the Ahiko - I checked them before I did coding and it looked interesting. But it's behind the "paywall" so I assumed not many people would pay "significant" amount upfront to get some deep analysis. I'm trying to built some "fast", "accurate enough" and "as simple/easy as possible" to use.

Also as I mentioned, the problem with uploading of current usage is that it might not be THAT useful as people change their patterns depending on the provider.

Also out of the interest - so are you guys tapping into power suppliers API to get the pricing in the realtime? I wasn't aware this is possible and to me it looks like that every (almost) company is trying to make their plans / pricing as hidden & confusing as possible. I was assuming that you can get the "pricing" by using user's usage (so this would make it easy to have a database of really granular historical prices), but getting the latest price might be hard. Would you be keen to share how do you get them (is it officially from companies or some scrapers etc)?

Thanks

LightbulbNeil

57 posts

Master Geek

#3268633 6-Aug-2024 14:36

Hi,

Thanks for the reply and hints on how to use it. It does work well now that I have learnt how to adjust etc.

Yeah I have plugged in Auckland.

Then adjusted the daily average kWh to match the amount that we use/Buy from the grid. So our actual buy from the grid is alot lower than I thought with the solar.

Then adjusted the amount that we are likely to be exporting in a year and the final numbers look very close.

So my poor understanding is all it was. If you could add the Meridian (2 year minimum 5 year solar plan), with the low user rate, and the standard user rate, would be nice to see how it compares to the other companies at the moment.

I am assuming that the solar buy back rate does vary, and is a net price instead of a price with gst.

It looks to me, that Flick, would be the best option with current pricing for our actual usage and current export amounts.

Thanks for you help.

Neil

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