amber-electric-pro_skill

Overview

This skill integrates with Amber Electric to fetch real-time wholesale electricity prices, price forecasts, and site information for Australian customers. It exposes actions to retrieve current price level, numeric price values, 24-hour price predictions, and the list of NMIs and site IDs linked to your account. The skill is designed to help schedule high-power loads and track price spikes and lows.

How this skill works

The skill calls Amber Electric’s API using an API key supplied via environment variables or configuration. It retrieves current price data, a 24-hour forward forecast of half-hourly prices, and the authenticated account’s site list (NMI and site IDs). Responses are normalized to include a price category (e.g., extremelyLow, spike) and numeric price values in cents/kWh or the provider’s units.

When to use it

• Schedule heavy appliances (e.g., EV charging, pool pump) based on low-price windows.
• Alert or automate actions when prices enter spike or extremelyLow bands.
• Display live price widgets or dashboards for energy-conscious households.
• Fetch site and NMI information to validate account configuration or troubleshoot access.
• Integrate price forecasts into home energy management or battery charge logic.

Best practices

• Store AMBER_API_KEY securely in environment variables or a protected configuration file.
• Rate-limit requests and cache recent price data to avoid hitting API limits.
• Convert provider price units to your preferred units consistently (e.g., cents/kWh).
• Use the 24-hour forecast for planning and treat real-time price as authoritative for immediate actions.
• Validate site list and NMI before scheduling device-specific automations.

Example use cases

• Automatically start EV charging when the next available half-hour price is in the extremelyLow band.
• Push notifications when a price spike is forecasted or detected to avoid running expensive appliances.
• Populate a home dashboard with current price, predicted low-cost windows, and the active site ID.
• Use site list to link sensor data to the correct NMI for billing or monitoring.
• Feed price forecasts to a battery management system to optimize charge/discharge cycles.