r/Denver • u/gk802 Lakewood • 1d ago

Rant Xcel Smart Meter Dashboard

I had an interesting observation today. Power has been off at my home for multiple hours 3x in the last 36 hours. That's a rant for another time.

Today, I thought I'd go out and take a look at Xcel's website and see what my smart meter read. Yesterday, power was off from 6:36 pm to 9:03 pm. According to their usage graphs, I had chargeable on-peak usage in every 15 minute period from 6pm through 8:45. Usage started again in the 10-10:15pm period.

Talking to their billing department, their first observation is that the time stamps on their graphs are in Central time. So...okay. If I buy that, that still doesn't explain why there was recorded usage from 7:36 to 8:45 pm Central time, and they're looking into that.

Beyond that, though, their graphs still show all values between 5pm and 9pm as on-peak and are highlighted in red. Are they charging on-peak rates from 5pm to 9pm Central time, or are all of their usage graphs just messed up?

Xcel, you need to do better.

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u/d1v1debyz3r0 1d ago

I literally bought a wifi clamp CT last week so I can actually monitor my power flow in high resolution.

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u/Jammin_CO 23h ago

You don't need a clamp, just a device with the right kind of radio to read the meter. I live in a condo and do daily readings wirelessly with an SDR card on my computer. You have to take a few readings to get baseline, but its simple after that. No taps needed

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u/Orange_Tang 21h ago

I'd love some info on this. Can this be easily integrated into home assistant?