ZIGBEE Smart Meter Module Down?

[LFMc]

UPDATE:

After about 2 weeks, I got a call from a tech at ONCOR in response to my email asking for support. He apologized profusely about the delay getting back to me and was extremely helpful in resetting the HAN link on my meter to get my ISY ZS working with the meter again.  He asked me about the brand of my gateway and he recognized the UD brand immediately and was very complimentary of it. So, it seems that ONCOR is still at least servicing the existing HAN customers. I have no idea what might happen if we move to a new home in the ONCOR area, but thankfully there are no plans for that right now.

Not being a hard core programmer, I am looking for a way to run an automated query of the smarthometexas.com web site to retrieve the "get meter reading now" button response. I have no idea if this is possible with something like CURL or not (or maybe a custom node in Node-Red), but it would replace the need to even have a ZS card in my ISY if I could program it. Looking at their API doc, it says they allow up to 3000 queries a day (about 2 queries per minute), but the rest of the info in the doc is over my head for the most part. If anyone is interested, I will post a link to the API doc.

[Michel Kohanim]

@LFMc,

Thanks so much for the update. I am very interested.

With kind regards,

Michel

[LFMc]

59 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

I am very interested.

https://www.smartmetertexas.com/Smart_Meter_Texas_Interface_Guide.pdf

It appears to be open to all to view. If you have any troubles, lmk and I will download it for you.  If implemented for the ISY, this would be a great add on module that I would be willing to pay for in the future. The section that reads the meter real time is called ODR or On Demand Read vs. the Green Button D/L of data that is always a day behind. 

[Vaggeto]

On 2/23/2021 at 9:20 AM, LFMc said:

Hi V,  welcome to the confusing world of HAN devices. :-9

After Texas shut down HAN management via SmartMeterTexas.com, I have had no interaction with them. About 4 weeks ago, I somehow accidentally reset my ISY trying to copy the SD card in preparation of upgrading it to 5.x.  After restoring it, the ISY no longer talks to my meter.  My SEP repeater does still talk to my meter, so I probably need to ask Oncor to open up the "join" feature on the meter so my ISY can reconnect to it. 

So, you are ahead of me trying to get Oncor to respond. I have had actual phone discussions in the past with Oncor engineers and they did send a tech out to my house once to check the meter's HAN function. So they are responsive to me prior requests. It seems that once or twice a year my meter's HAN function locks up and stops feeding data to me. It turns out if power is removed from the meter (i.e. hard reset), then the HAN function returns to normal for another few months. So when that happens, I have to wait for a power outage or go through the trouble of convincing the Oncor service person that I know what I am talking about and cajole them into humoring me and resetting my meter. Of course that shuts down the power to the house for about 1 second and resets everything. ?  Simply rebooting my internal HAN devices never fixes the problem. 

I will probably call them this week and cross my fingers that I get someone that even knows what a HAN is.  Please let me know how you contact them and how it goes. If I succeed before you, I will post it also.

As to your last question, I have no idea if there has been any change releasing them from the PUC ruling that they have to support HAN devices. 

So I have some good results to report. I emailed Oncor on 2/22 to help me get my previously working HAN device working (Rainforest Eagle). They took a couple weeks to respond, but on Mar 5th  an Oncor HAN Technician named Phillip did respond that he reprovisioned the device (that had previously worked over a year ago) and asked me to check as he saw it appeared to be connected again.

Now my biggest issue is the risk of how much time to invest (In setting up a database to log the data and trigger actions based on the real-time usage) in this given that if my 6 year old device dies and I need to replace it, will they even be willing to do that? It seems like they absolutely have the ability to do so, but I'm not sure they would be willing to based on those other recent posts regarding the limitation for new customers/devices. I would hope I would at least be grandfathered in for my home rather than only on that device.

It really is sad that they are pushing to get away from the real-time monitoring. Your points regarding the recent issues with the storm and the high bills is a good one and I do think now is the time to push for HAN devices to be supported to allow for better real-time monitoring.

[Vaggeto]

3 hours ago, LFMc said:

https://www.smartmetertexas.com/Smart_Meter_Texas_Interface_Guide.pdf

It appears to be open to all to view. If you have any troubles, lmk and I will download it for you.  If implemented for the ISY, this would be a great add on module that I would be willing to pay for in the future. The section that reads the meter real time is called ODR or On Demand Read vs. the Green Button D/L of data that is always a day behind. 

I'm a bit confused on this API overall. I did email them a few months ago and they basically said I needed to fill out an application to request API access, but a recent post I found seemed to think connecting to this API and pulling data twice per minute was possible and they didn't mention requesting specific API access.

 

Here was the SMT note to me from back in July 2020:

Quote

We are waiting for your response. Please find the below comments for your request.

1> Due to a change in Smart Meter Texas functionality recently approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the “In-Home Device” functionality previously available through Smart Meter was removed on December 7, 2019.  Smart Meter Texas no longer supports provisioning of In-Home Devices. All In-Home Devices provisioned prior to December 7, 2019 will remain active but will be supported by your utility company (Oncor). To contact Oncor concerning support for your HAN device, contact Oncor’s HAN support team at hansupport@oncor.com. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. Smart Meter Texas receives the energy data from Oncor your utility company after they have completed their end of day procedures; therefore, your energy data (consumption and surplus generation) becomes available by 11:00 PM the day after the usage day on your Smart Meter Texas account. To mitigate the day lag, you can use the "Get Current Meter Read" feature on the SMT website to get access to real time consumption data. For more information regarding this functionality, please refer section 4 "Dashboard Topic" in 'Smart Meter Texas Residential User Guide' which can be downloaded from the Login page of the portal at www.smartmetertexas.comon the “Quick Reference Guide” section at the top of the page.

2>Smart Meter Texas also have API available to access your current meter read, please note "Get Current Meter Read" portal functionality and API gives your current consumption only. In order to use SMT API it is required to first complete API integration, below are the prerequisites to complete the API integration,

        a>Public SSL certificate(CA authorized SSL certificate is mandatory for Production/// Either self signed or CA signed SSL certificate for lower env.)                b>Static IPs

As per the latest SMT 2.0 guidelines, only Single domain certificates will be allowed and do not allow the use of Wild card certificates. Please find the attached interface guide for more details. Let us know if you are having any queries on it.

 

[Vaggeto]

Also I do see some folks successfully using it here:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/texas-residents-access-your-smart-meter-texas-readings-with-node-red-and-mqtt/196271

It utilizes this:

https://github.com/stmrocket/ha-smartmetertexas

and this comments:

Usage:

The Node-Red flow will request a meter read at 30 minute intervals since the last successful read. It will then request the results of the meter read every 30 seconds until they are available. The current meter reading is reported over MQTT with the topic smt/reading.

Note that the API limits each ESIID to two reads per hour and 24 reads per day. The limit is based on the time when the reading is successfully retrieved from the meter. Increasing the frequency of reads will result in an error until the hour or day resets (depending on the error).

[Michel Kohanim]

@LFMc,

Thanks so very much. Looking into it.

With kind regards,
Michel

[LFMc]

21 hours ago, Vaggeto said:

Here was the SMT note to me from back in July 2020:

Thanks for the detail. They do put a bit of a heavy requirement for direct access. Almost as they don't want to have to deal with end users like us.

Where did you see the once per 30 minute max inquiry you mentioned? I didn't find anything in the document other than 3k per day.

[Vaggeto]

6 minutes ago, LFMc said:

Thanks for the detail. They do put a bit of a heavy requirement for direct access. Almost as they don't want to have to deal with end users like us.

Where did you see the once per 30 minute max inquiry you mentioned? I didn't find anything in the document other than 3k per day.

You're welcome!

 

I found it on the bottom of the github page here: https://github.com/stmrocket/ha-smartmetertexas

 

I'm not sure where they got that guidance. It may have a different ruleset though as they don't mention applying for special API access as part of the process, so maybe there is a lower level access which is much more limited in quantity but doesn't require static IPs etc.

It does look like they credit another original project in their readme and that project is here: https://github.com/keatontaylor/smartmetertexas-api

 

and that mentions the same API document you linked to: https://github.com/keatontaylor/smartmetertexas-api/issues/