Skip to main content

Hydro-Québec Peaks smart home integration, free and open source

Hydro-Québec Peaks integration for Gladys Assistant

Hydro-Québec winter peak events: pre-heat, start and end of every peak in your scenes.

View on GitHubAll integrations

This integration brings Hydro-Québec's winter peak events into Gladys: the hours, announced a few hours or a day ahead, when customers enrolled in a peak offer are asked to use less electricity. Gladys can then pre-heat the house, shed load during the peak and put everything back afterwards — on its own.

Unofficial integration, not affiliated with Hydro-Québec. It reads the public data Hydro-Québec publishes (open data, CC BY-NC 4.0 licence).

Before you start​

Gladys 5.3 or newer is required. You need no Hydro-Québec account, no customer number and no key: peak events are public.

You only need to know which offer you are enrolled in. It is written on your bill and in your Customer Space:

OfferCodeFor
Rate D with Winter Credit OptionCPC-Dresidential
Rate Flex DTPC-DPCresidential
Winter Credit Option, businessCPC-Gbusiness
Rate Flex G, businessTPC-GPCbusiness
Demand response, businessGDP-Affairesbusiness
OEA, businessOEAbusiness

Hydro-Québec publishes peaks in winter (December to March, as a rule). Outside that season, the devices simply say that no peak is announced.

Configuration​

FieldWhat to put
Offers followedTick your offer. One device is created per offer ticked.
Other offersOffers the list lacks, by their code, separated by commas (e.g. ENG_100H_2F_7J).
Pre-heat lead timeHow many minutes before a peak the pre-heat window opens. Hydro-Québec advises about two hours (120). 0 turns it off.
Refresh intervalHow often the Hydro-Québec data is read again, in seconds (900 = 15 minutes, minimum 300).

Then open Discover in the integration and create the device of your offer.

The List the offers button gives every offer code Hydro-Québec publishes this season, ready to copy into Other offers. Test the connection reads the data now and tells you, for each offer you follow, how many peaks are announced and which one comes next.

The device of an offer​

Each offer becomes a device called Hydro-Québec <code>, with these read-only features:

FeatureValues
Peak in progress1 during a peak, 0 otherwise
Pre-heat window1 during the lead time before a peak, 0 otherwise
Peak this morning1 when a morning (AM) peak is announced today
Peak this evening1 when an evening (PM) peak is announced today
Peak tomorrow morningthe same, tomorrow
Peak tomorrow eveningthe same, tomorrow
Minutes until next peakminutes before the next peak starts; 0 during a peak, -1 when none is announced
Next peakthe running or next peak, e.g. 2026-12-15 06:00–09:00, — when none

All times are Québec time, whatever the time zone of your Gladys server. A peak runs from its start to its end: at 09:00, the 06:00–09:00 peak is over.

The flags change on the minute: the integration re-evaluates them every minute from the data it already holds, and reads the Hydro-Québec data again at the refresh interval.

Scenes and dashboard (Gladys 5.1+)​

Scene triggers​

TriggerWhen
A peak is announcedHydro-Québec published a new peak for the offer
The pre-heat window opensthe lead time before a peak begins
A peak startsat the start of the peak
A peak endsat the end of the peak

Each trigger can be limited to one offer (its device) and to the morning (AM) or evening (PM) peaks. In the following actions, the event gives: offer (the code), start and end (Québec time, YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM), duration_minutes — and for the pre-heat, lead_minutes. For instance, a notification: Peak {{triggerEvent.data.start}} to {{triggerEvent.data.end}}.

Each trigger fires once per peak, even after a restart of the integration. Two rules worth knowing:

  • the peaks already published when you install the integration (or tick a new offer) are not "announced" — only the ones published afterwards are;
  • if the integration was stopped when a peak started, it does not pretend the peak "just started" more than 10 minutes late. The end of a peak whose start was fired is always fired, even late, so the scene that puts the heating back always runs.

Scene action​

Read the Hydro-Québec peaks now reads the data immediately and gives the following actions: peak_in_progress, preheat_in_progress, next_peak_start and minutes_until_next_peak (for the chosen offer, or the first one followed). Useful in a scene started by something else — "when I come home, if no peak is in progress, turn the heating up".

Example scenes​

  • Pre-heat: trigger The pre-heat window opens → raise the thermostats by 1 to 2 °C, heat the water heater.
  • During the peak: trigger A peak starts → lower the thermostats, turn the water heater off, pause the car charger.
  • After the peak: trigger A peak ends → put the setpoints back, turn the water heater and the charger back on.
  • Warn the household: trigger A peak is announced → send a message "Peak tomorrow {{triggerEvent.data.start}}: avoid the dryer".

The "Hydro-Québec peaks" widget​

Add it to a dashboard: a countdown to the next peak (or to the end of the running one), the next announced peaks — how many is a setting of the widget — the state of each offer you follow, a Refresh button and a link to the open data.

Good to know​

  • The data comes from Hydro-Québec's open data, read about every 15 minutes with a conditional request: when nothing changed, nothing is downloaded.
  • Hydro-Québec sometimes publishes a peak only a few hours ahead. When a peak is published inside its pre-heat window, the pre-heat trigger fires right away.
  • The integration keeps a small memory in its /data volume (the peaks it already announced). Deleting it only means the next start announces nothing for the peaks already published.
  • It does not know your consumption or your credits: those stay in your Hydro-Québec Customer Space.

Troubleshooting​

  • The configuration screen says to choose an offer: tick at least one offer, or type one in Other offers.
  • "Unknown to Hydro-Québec this season" under Test the connection: the code typed is not in the feed — check it with List the offers.
  • No peak, all winter: check the offer; outside winter, no peak is normal.
  • "Hydro-Québec open data unreachable": your Gladys cannot reach donnees.solutions.hydroquebec.com (DNS, firewall). The integration keeps the last data it read and retries at each interval.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings Hydro-Québec Peaks asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Getting startedsectionNoThis integration reads the winter peak events Hydro-Québec publishes as open data: no account, no key. Tick the offer you are enrolled in (it is written on your bill and in your Customer Space), and each offer becomes a device with its peak flags, plus scene triggers for the announcement, the pre-heat window, the start and the end of every peak. Unofficial integration, not affiliated with Hydro-Québec.
Offers followedmulti_selectNoThe peak offers you are enrolled in. One device per offer.
Other offersstringNoOffers the list above lacks, by their code, separated by commas (the button "List the offers" gives them all).
Pre-heat lead time (minutes)numberNoHow long before a peak the pre-heat window opens. Hydro-Québec advises about two hours. 0 turns the pre-heat window off.
Refresh interval (s)numberNoHow often the Hydro-Québec data is read again, in seconds. Peaks are published hours ahead: 15 minutes is plenty. The flags themselves change on the minute.

How to install Hydro-Québec Peaks in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Hydro-Québec Peaks appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/prohand/gladys-hydroquebec-peak:1.0.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/prohand/gladys-hydroquebec-peak.

Hydro-Québec Peaks requires Gladys >=5.3.0. 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​

Hydro-Québec Peaks 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 prohand, not by the Gladys core team.

Subscribe to the Gladys Assistant newsletter

A few emails per month about new releases and project news. Sent by Pierre-Gilles Leymarie, founder of the project. Unsubscribe anytime 🙂
Last updated on