PG&E and HAN (Zigbee) devices recently?

[wwu123]

Hey, wondering if anyone in PG&E territory the past few years has successfully connected up a Zigbee energy monitoring device via their Home Area Network (HAN) program? This is the one where a Zigbee energy monitoring device is paired up directly to the SmartMeter, and then can send that data to you locally or via the cloud.

I have been using Rainforest Eagle devices the past 10 years, somewhat successfully - the trouble is the devices only last about five years and then start dying. My current one was paired in 2019, but recently started losing it's physical Ethernet connection roughly monthly until I reboot, then weekly, now every few days, so I feel the end is near. They're not so expensive, about $100 to replace, but my concerns about ordering a new one (no longer available on Amazon, only directly from Rainforest Automation website):
-each time, it's a new generation of Eagle, currently 3rd gen, but PG&E's ancient validated device list only states the original 1st gen. I was able to get my current 2nd gen paired up with no objection from PG&E, but officially nothing beyond the ancient 1st gen is supported.
-when I got my current one paired up in 2019, it was quite an ordeal talking with several PG&E technical teams over a month, from my old e-mail records. There was some backend config issue, possibly they had to un-enroll my 1st gen device manually or something...
-SCE in SoCal apparently stopped enrolling new devices back in mid-2019, so wondering if PG&E will continuing doing so for much longer.

When they work, it's very convenient, and no mucking with around high-voltage wiring inside my main panel. But wondering if I should finally make the jump to a CT-type monitoring device at this point in time, seems like many folks here who are not monitoring with the Tesla app (via Powerwalls/gateway) use a CT-based solution? I log all my solar generation and home consumption data to pvoutput, so it important/obsessive for me to have 24x7 meter consumption ha ha. And seems like may CT-based monitors also allow additional CT's for monitoring individual breakers for hardwired appliances/circuits as well, which would be an upgrade...

 

[DOCAL]

I have an Eagle3 on PG&E in Fremont.
It failed to add through the website when I tried it, but the PG&E support people were very helpful and were able to add it.

Weirdly it's lost connection a couple of times, but I was able to re-connect it via the website and it quickly came back online.

 

[dailo]

I use this one and it works great. You can even flash it with some other firmware (I use esphome) so you don't have to rely on their cloud service at all.

Vue Smart Home Energy Monitor | Works only w/PG&E, SCE, SDGE, PPL, First Energy, Ohio Edison, Burlington Electric & Green Mountain Power | Connects to Your Electric Meter | Solar Net Metering https://a.co/d/hvcu6Y0

 

[wwu123]

Thanks to both of you for the replies - good to know that both the Eagle 3 and the Emporia Vue are supported, despite them not updating their public devlce list. The cheaper $40 price of the Emporia is attractive, though the Eagle 3 would be much simpler to swap and maintain integration with pvoutput.org - decisions....

 

[DOCAL]

Thanks to both of you for the replies - good to know that both the Eagle 3 and the Emporia Vue are supported, despite them not updating their public devlce list. The cheaper $40 price of the Emporia is attractive, though the Eagle 3 would be much simpler to swap and maintain integration with pvoutput.org - decisions....

If you're looking for compatibility, as far as I can tell the Eagle 3 API is the same as previous generations. HomeAssistant had no problems with it, and the few shell scripts I knocked together worked fine too.

 

[wwu123]

My Rainforest Eagle 2 has continued to increasingly trip its Ethernet connection offline almost every morning around 3:30am or so, so I've taken to putting it on a outlet timer to reboot a couple of times between midnight and 5 am, that's minimized the data losses but it seems to be on its last legs.

PG&E suddenly showed up today to install a Backup Power Transfer Meter on my meter socket, which I'd been on the waiting list the past six months:

PG&E EPSS and generator options

So it turns out even though the BPTM is a socket ring device, they swapped out my SmartMeter regardless, even though both old and new meter appear to be the same Landis + Gyr model (maybe enough of the BPTM-eligible homes in high fire threat areas are rural and don't yet have a SmartMeter, so they just make a habit to install both together?).

So my Eagle 2 is no longer paired with the new meter, so I would have had to call regardless to do the new pairing. So gonna go ahead and just bite the bullet on an Eagle 3 for easiest compatibility with my existing pvoutput logging setup, so I just need to call the PG&E HAN team once. Hopefully Rainforest Automation ships quickly, as they appear to no longer sell their Eagle devices through Amazon....

 

[charlesj]

So, if I understand this correctly this gives you whole house consumption, not each breaker usage, in real time.
Tesla gives only the graph unless you use the cursor.

 

[wwu123]

So, if I understand this correctly this gives you whole house consumption, not each breaker usage, in real time.
Tesla gives only the graph unless you use the cursor.

Yes, whole house net consumption. Not sure if it's necessarily better than types that use a CT, but certainly it's by definition accurate (reads the revenue-grade utility meter after all), and simple - no sensing wires, power, Ethernet to worry about in the main panel. But downside as you state, no ability to add individual circuit CT's either....

 

[charlesj]

Yes, whole house net consumption. Not sure if it's necessarily better than types that use a CT, but certainly it's by definition accurate (reads the revenue-grade utility meter after all), and simple - no sensing wires, power, Ethernet to worry about in the main panel. But downside as you state, no ability to add individual circuit CT's either....

Thanks. If it is net calc of dumping into the grid or using the grid, how would you determine solar generation and battery charging, discharging to the house.
If the net is zero, how much did the house consume?
I think I am missing something.

 

[wwu123]

Thanks. If it is net calc of dumping into the grid or using the grid, how would you determine solar generation and battery charging, discharging to the house.
If the net is zero, how much did the house consume?
I think I am missing something.

Yes, I mentioned logging the Eagle net consumption in pvoutput.org, but I didn't elaborate further as I've discussed it in a couple of older threads. As one might expect from the site's name, I also upload my solar generation from Enphase monitoring directly into pvoutput,org, and the site automatically backs out my actual whole house consumption and logs all three values continuously.

I don't have any batteries (yet), so it's a trivial calculation - but that does raise that if/when I eventually add energy storage, it adds one more energy sink/source that makes the calcs more complicated. Either replicate something like the Tesla app in pvoutput (may be possible because it has an extensive API and can input/log extended values, and do some intermediate calcs), or if getting Powerwall storage, to shift to using Tesla's app like many here...

 

[charlesj]

Yes, I mentioned logging the Eagle net consumption in pvoutput.org, but I didn't elaborate further as I've discussed it in a couple of older threads. As one might expect from the site's name, I also upload my solar generation from Enphase monitoring directly into pvoutput,org, and the site automatically backs out my actual whole house consumption and logs all three values continuously.

I don't have any batteries (yet), so it's a trivial calculation - but that does raise that if/when I eventually add energy storage, it adds one more energy sink/source that makes the calcs more complicated. Either replicate something like the Tesla app in pvoutput (may be possible because it has an extensive API and can input/log extended values, and do some intermediate calcs), or if getting Powerwall storage, to shift to using Tesla's app like many here...

Thanks. Now it makes sense and is clear.

 

[wwu123]

Noting just for my own closure, Rainforest shipped out the Eagle 3 promptly on the next business day and I got it last night. Booted it up and registered to my existing Rainforest portal account this morning, called PG&E's Stream My Data "hotline", and was able to have them pair it up with my one-week new SmartMeter replacement without any issues. At one point they asked what type of HAN device it was, but I think that's just for their data collection, they'd already gotten the critical Zigbee pairing info well before that - I answered "Rainforest Eagle", they probably don't know or care about the three different generations.

Ironically the Eagle 2 seems to have conveniently kicked the bucket this week. Although it was unpaired from the replacement Smartmeter during the past week, it should have been able to see the cloud, but was showing offline. Although I was rebooting it nightly to reset the flaky Ethernet, and the Ethernet status light was good, the cloud status light was flashing (bad) and the portal showed no connection - so even rebooting no longer fixing it and no other settings to go in to reconfigure.

After I got the successful pairing light on the Eagle 3 and affirmed from PG&E's end as well, everything seamlessly started updating and logging again once I updated the device ID in pvoutput, no reconfiguration of the setup otherwise. Will backfill the missing consumption data for the past six week manually using the PG&E Green Button data. OK Rainforest, will contact you guys again in another 5 years for (presumably) version 4....

 

[wwu123]

Well, this sucks, I just noticed that the Eagle 3 had stopped recording data a couple of weeks ago, on the morning Nov 30th. All the indicator lights say it's got a solid connection to LAN and cloud, as well as Zigbee connection to the meter. I've rebooted it and relocated to a different Ethernet jack, no change. It's only three months old, it seems to think it's working, just no meter data.

Perhaps not coincidentally, we had a brief power outage around the same time that morning, it took about 10 minutes to come back up IIRC, as I'd noted it in a different thread here.

File a support ticket with manufacturer Rainforest Automation, esp since they sell direct now instead of via Amazon. Meanwhile noticed that my PG&E Green Button Data is back to 15 minute intervals, it'd changed to 1 hour for a few months after I had my Smartmeter swapped out (and paired the new Eagle 3 with the new meter). Curious if the interval changeover aligns with the outages...(EDIT, nope, changeover back to 15 min happened on Nov 1st, several hours of hourly data on 10/31 noted as estimated as they reconfigured whatever on their back end)