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Home Assistant integration to get energy prices from California's MIDAS energy price API

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MIDAS (California Energy Prices)

MIDAS integration logo

Custom integration to get the current electricity price and other data for many California electric bills from the California energy regulator's electricity price API MIDAS.

If your electric bill has a RIN QR Code on it, you can use this integration to get your current electricity price.

Installation

Open your Home Assistant instance and open a repository inside the Home Assistant Community Store.

To install this integration, add this GitHub Repo to the HACS Custom Repositories, or click the badge above.

Configuration

Configuration is done in the UI, please follow the steps below for guidance.

  1. Add the integration in the Devices & services section or click this add link:
    Open your Home Assistant instance and start setting up a new integration.
  2. Choose whether you have a MIDAS account or not.
    Config step 1: Do you have a MIDAS account? Yes or no
  3. If you don't have a MIDAS account the integration will help you create one.
    Config step 1.5: Create a MIDAS account.
    Once complete, click the link sent to your email to activate your account.
    Config step 1.75: MIDAS account creation successful. Please click the link in your email to activate the account before continuing.
  4. Enter your MIDAS account information.
    Config step 2: Enter your MIDAS account credentials
  5. Enter one or more Rate IDs to monitor, obtained from the QR code on your electric bill.
    Config step 3: Enter Rate IDs to monitor
  6. A device will be created for each Rate ID entered.
    Config step 4: Devices are created for each entered RID

These entities can be used in the Energy dashboard to set prices, in automations to help conserve energy when prices will increase soon, and more!
Price entities being used in the Energy dashboard for price tracking Tariff name entity being used in an automation for taking actions when peak usage starts

Setup recommendations

I recommend placing the MIDAS price entities inside a "Combine the state of several sensors" helper. This can help resolve the following issues and make your steup more resilient:

  • If you're a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) customer you have 2 RINs. Combine them with a Sum type to get a single entity that has your true per-kWh cost.
  • If you ever change your electricity plan, like moving from one time-of-use plan to another or buying an electric vehicle or solar panels, placing your price sensors inside a helper will let you keep your energy dashboard history and replace the source sensor when your plan updates.
  • Your electricity company can update your RIN at any time even if the amount you actually pay stays the same. If that happens, you'll need to update which RINs this integration provides which may cause the loss of the old rate's data.

Resetting your MIDAS account details

While there is no website for creating an account, there appears to be pages for a forgotten username and for resetting your password. These pages seem to be from the internal MIDAS portal, so if they get disabled or stop working please raise an issue.

Contributions are welcome!

If you want to contribute to this please read the Contribution guidelines

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Home Assistant integration to get energy prices from California's MIDAS energy price API

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