Your Electricity Provider
This section contains different instructions depending on whether you are using the Wholesale-exposed trading or Retail-Bill Optimisation method. Amber Electric and LocalVolts customers will use the Wholesale-Exposed Trading method, while Flow Power customers will use the Retail-Bill Optimisation method.
Configure who you buy your electricity from
This area is where you configure whether you are an Amber Electric or LocalVolts customer.
- From the Your Electricity Provider (Select) box, select your electricity provider
- This will change the text boxes that appear directly below. Just the appropriate boxes for your electricity provider will be shown. Leave the other electricity provider's boxes empty. Examples follow:
Amber Electric
To get your Amber Electric API key:
- Log in to your Amber Electric account at https://app.amber.com.au/developers
- Navigate to the Developers tab "For Developers"
- Toggle on Developer Mode
- Click on Generate a new Token
- Name your token and click Generate
- Copy the generated API key - make sure to copy the entire key, including all characters, as it is unique. Once you refresh the page it will not be shown again. You will need to copy this into Energy Manager.
- Authorise the API key (known as a token). Paste your api key/token into the value box, if not already there.
- Scroll down and enter your Amber login account name into the CLIENT_ID box and your Amber login password to the CLIENT_SECRET box.
- Tick all the boxes underneath the boxes.
- Scroll back up to the top of the Authorizations popout box and press Authorize.
- Once authorised, click on Close (note, the Authorize button should have changed to say Logout (do not log out yet) - this is an indication that your authorisation was successful).
To get your Amber Electric Site Code:
- Scroll down the same page to GET /sites within the developers area and select the green Try it out button next to it, and then select execute.
- Copy the "id" that is shown. You will need to enter this in Energy Manager.
- Take note that the activeFrom is very recent. If it is more than a year old, e.g., 2022, this is a dummy id and is not your id. Make sure you have selected execute and the activeFrom is very recent.
LocalVolts
- The Partner ID and API Key can be obtained by filling in the form at https://localvolts.com/localvolts-api/
- The NMI can be taken from a past electricity bill from any provider. Some people have found it works fine with just * as the NMI
Flow Power
There is no Electricity Provider API key to enter for Flow Power, but there are additional settings that need to be configured appropriately as per your Flow Power tariff:
- Enter your Peak Start Time, usually 5:30pm
- Enter your Peak End Time, usually 7:30pm
- Enter your Buy Price, in cents, as supplied to you by Flow Power. This is usually 34c.
- Enter your Off-peak Feed-in Price, as supplied to you by Flow Power. This is usually 0c.
- Enter your Peak Feed-in Price, as supplied to you by Flow Power. This is usually either 35c or 45c.
- If you want to export during the peak period, enable Allow peak exporting
- Set the percent of your export limit that you would like to export at during Normal weather (as opposed to Bad weather). Normally you would want your full export, so set this as 100.
- There is the option to continue to export if the system is in bad weather mode, or to disable exports completely. If you select to export during bad weather, you will have the option to specify the percentage of your maximum export limit to export at. This can come in handy if you want to reserve more of your battery storage for your own usage, but still want a smaller amount to be exported.
Your Electricity Distributor
Configure who your electricity distributor is
This area is where you configure who your electricity distributor is. This is used so that the Energy Manager servers can work out when your demand period is, if any, so it can aim to have your batteries charged (if required) before your demand period starts, and also stops importing (if it was) 5 minutes before the demand period starts, just to be sure you aren't taking from the grid during your demand period. Days of the week and seasons are taken into consideration for your demand period, if it varies during the year.
- Select whether you are on a demand tariff or not. If in doubt, select that you are, but check with your electricity provider (Amber, LocalVolts or Flow Power) to confirm.
- Select your electricity dstributor from the list
