ComEd Hourly Pricing smart home integration, free and open source
ComEd Hourly Pricing (Illinois): real-time 5-minute price, hourly average and tomorrow's prices.
Published by guim31
- Devices
- Version 1.0.0
- Requires Gladys >=5.1.0
- ★ 0
The real-time electricity prices of ComEd Hourly Pricing in Gladys: the 5-minute price, the average of the current hour (the price you are billed), the day's lows and highs, tomorrow's day-ahead prices, a price chart, scene triggers and a scene action to run your appliances when electricity is cheapest.
The prices come from the public API of ComEd. This integration is not affiliated with ComEd. It was tested against the live ComEd API, but not yet on a real Gladys of an Hourly Pricing customer: feedback welcome.
Overview
Hourly Pricing is an optional rate of ComEd (Commonwealth Edison, Northern Illinois): instead of a fixed price, the supply price follows the PJM wholesale market hour by hour. ComEd publishes, without account or key:
- a real-time price every 5 minutes;
- the day-ahead prices: one price per hour, set the day before by the PJM market. Tomorrow's arrive in the afternoon. They are a forecast: what you are billed is the real-time hourly average.
All prices are the supply price in cents per kWh (¢/kWh), like on the ComEd
website and in the Home Assistant comed_hourly_pricing integration: delivery,
capacity charges and taxes are not included. They can be negative.
The hours are Chicago time, whatever the timezone of your Gladys.
Requirements
- Gladys Assistant 5.1.0 or later.
- Internet access from Gladys to
hourlypricing.comed.com. - Nothing else: no account, no API key, no hardware. You do not even need to be a ComEd customer to follow the prices.
Installation
- In Gladys, open Integrations → Install from GitHub and enter
https://github.com/guim31/gladys-comed. - Open the integration, choose the language of the feature names, save.
- Open the Discovery tab and add the ComEd Hourly Pricing device.
- Add the ComEd electricity prices widget to a dashboard.
Configuration
- Language of the feature names: English, French, German or Spanish. It names the features when the device is added; the names do not change afterwards.
- The Refresh the prices now button reads ComEd at once and shows the latest 5-minute price, the current hour average and whether tomorrow's prices are out.
The ComEd device
Every feature is a read-only sensor in ¢/kWh, kept in the history:
| Feature | What it is |
|---|---|
| 5-minute price | The last real-time price, published about 6 minutes after its 5 minutes |
| Current hour average | The average of the 5-minute prices of the hour so far: the billed price |
| Average price today | The average of today's 5-minute prices |
| Lowest / highest hourly price today | The lowest and highest hourly average since midnight (an hour counts from HH:15) |
| Day-ahead price this hour | The forecast for the current hour |
| Tomorrow's day-ahead average, low, high | Tomorrow's forecast, from the afternoon |
| Tomorrow's prices published | 1 once tomorrow's day-ahead prices are out, 0 before |
Tomorrow's average, low and high keep their last value until the next day's prices come out: check Tomorrow's prices published before using them in the morning.
When ComEd stops publishing 5-minute prices for 30 minutes, the integration stops updating the 5-minute price and the current hour average, and says so in the configuration screen.
Dashboard widget
The ComEd electricity prices widget shows:
- the last 5-minute price, the current hour average and today's average;
- a chart of today's real-time 5-minute prices and of the day-ahead prices of today and tomorrow, with today's cheapest and most expensive hours marked;
- the cheapest day-ahead hour left today, tomorrow's cheapest hour and average, or when tomorrow's prices are expected.
It works even before the device is added.
Scene triggers
The hourly price drops below a threshold
Fires when the average of the current hour goes under the threshold you choose (0 to 20 ¢/kWh), having been at or above it. The average is judged from its third 5-minute price (HH:15): at HH:05 it is a single price, too volatile. It fires at most once an hour per threshold. Variables: the hour average, the 5-minute price, the hour (HH:MM) and the time of the price.
The hourly price rises above a threshold
The same, upward: to stop a heat pump or a charger during a price spike.
The price turns negative
Fires when a 5-minute price goes below zero after one at or above zero. Same variables.
Tomorrow's prices are published
Fires once a day, in the afternoon, when ComEd publishes tomorrow's day-ahead prices (not after 23:00). Variables: average, lowest and highest price, the cheapest and most expensive hours, and the start of the cheapest 3 hours.
Scene action
Find the cheapest hours before a deadline looks, in the day-ahead prices, for the cheapest run of 1 to 8 consecutive hours from now that ends before the chosen hour (Chicago time), or without a deadline. Outputs: whether a window was found, whether it starts now, its start and end (HH:MM), its average price and the minutes until it starts. In the morning, before tomorrow's prices are out, only today's hours are searched.
Scene examples
- Dishwasher: every evening at 21:00, find the cheapest 2 hours before 07:00;
if the window starts now, start the smart plug, otherwise wait
minutes_to_startminutes. - Price spike: when the hourly price rises above 10 ¢/kWh, switch off the water heater and send a message; switch it on again when it drops below 5.
- Negative prices: when the price turns negative, start the electric car charger.
Refresh and API usage
The integration reads the 5-minute feed (the last 24 hours, about 13 kB) when the next price should be out: about once every 5 minutes, every 10 minutes at least. Today's day-ahead prices are read once a day, tomorrow's every 30 minutes from noon until they are out. After a failure it waits 1, 2, 5, 10 then 15 minutes. It is about 300 small requests a day to a public API that asks for no key.
Troubleshooting
- No value, "ComEd cannot be reached": check that Gladys can reach
hourlypricing.comed.com; the last known prices stay in use meanwhile. - "no 5-minute price for 30 minutes": ComEd stopped publishing; it happens during their maintenance. The integration carries on by itself.
- A trigger did not fire: the hourly average is judged from HH:15, and a threshold must be crossed (an hour that starts and stays under it after another under it fires nothing).
- Set
LOG_LEVEL=debugto see every request in the integration logs.
Limitations
- Developed without being a ComEd customer: the prices are checked against the ComEd website and API, not against a bill.
- Supply price only: no delivery, capacity or taxes, so not your full cost per kWh.
- The day-ahead prices are a forecast; the scene action plans on them, the real-time price may differ.
- The day the clocks go back, ComEd publishes one 01:00 day-ahead price for the two 01:00 hours: both get it. The 24-hour feed may also miss the first hour of that 25-hour day.
Configuration settings
These are the settings ComEd Hourly Pricing asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ComEd Hourly Pricing | section | No | ComEd publishes the real-time electricity prices of its Hourly Pricing program (Northern Illinois) every 5 minutes, and the day-ahead prices of tomorrow in the afternoon, without account or key. Prices are the supply price in cents/kWh, Chicago time. Add the ComEd device from the Discovery tab, and the price widget from the dashboard. Not affiliated with ComEd. |
| Language of the feature names | select | No | Used when the device is added to Gladys: the names do not change afterwards. |
How to install ComEd Hourly Pricing in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: ComEd Hourly Pricing appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-comed:1.0.0), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration). - Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
- You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-comed.
ComEd Hourly Pricing requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.
Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.
About external integrations
ComEd Hourly Pricing is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.
- Browse all integrations, native and community
- Build and publish your own external integration
- Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation