Smart plug control to get the best from Agile

I'm using a GE plug to control our existing storage heaters at source via a 100 amp din mounted contactor.

https://ecoharmony.co.uk/collections/modular-contactor/products/wced-100a-2-pole-modular-contactor
( obviously no power monitoring.) Having moved from the octopus's E7 tariff on to Agile.
This works well having loaded up the schedule with on and off times.

It would be better if the times could work around the Agile tariffs cheapest slots, any one know a way do this ?

Are smart plugs controllable by an API ?

I will be do the same with the immersion heater shortly, via a25 Amp contactor, so keen to heater the water with the cheapest Agile price, which vary.

thought welcome !!

rob c I haven’t heard of anybody controlling their GE smart plugs via API.

There are plenty of other smart plug manufacturers that have control of their smart plugs via API’s; ESPHome and Tasmota are the principal ‘smart home’ platforms but Shelly and TP-link both make a good ranges and there’s a lot of Chinese stuff which has Tuya at its heart which comes with an app and can be integrated to a smart home system but is a bit of a fiddle.

Home Assistant is by far the most popular home automation platform to control smart devices from and there are integrations to pull in Octopus energy prices. Be reasonably straight forward to build an automation then.
You do need a dedicated device such as a small PC or a Raspberry Pi to run Home Assistant on, or there is a cloud subscription service.
I personally recommend the My Local Bytes smart plugs which are properly rated to 16A unlike the GivEnergy ones which are 10A (see other forum post on one overheating). MLB plugs come with either ESP Home or Tasmota.

geoffreycoan He has a contactor so the rating of the GE smartplug is irrelevant 🙂

Vestas I know, I saw that, and that’s good, shouldn’t be switching high load devices with cheap smart plugs. But still worth making the point about Amperage ratings

geoffreycoan I think you should be blunt about it and say that the GE smartplugs have a misleading specification and are cheap junk 🙂

Edit - also I think someone checked the spec on the relay in the GE plug and its only rated for 7A continuous.

Vestas Agreed. Being blunt I don’t think the GE smart plugs are to be recommended. Other than easy control via the GivEnergy app (but not the portal or API’s), there’s no advantage to them compared to many other different smart plugs.

For the record I have 4 Tapo P110 power monitor smart plugs, a TP-Link Kasa KP303 3-way smart plug strip and 8 MyLocalBytes Tasmota power monitor smart plugs. They are all easily controlled via API’s from Home Assistant.
In hindsight if I was buying now I would probably buy the MLB ones with ESPhome rather than Tasmota, just to reduce the number of management consoles.

rob c I’ve been in contact with @Wonder Watt as I want the same functionality to sync home battery charging and “dumb” EV charging (controlled via smart plug) with the best agile prices.

Their view was that the Shelley plug API would be a better platform for this vs Tapo which is what I have so have invested in a Shelley plug.

They have a waitlist for when the functionality will be available via WW here:
https://www.wonderwatt.com/smart-plug-integration-with-agile-octopus/

I think there were some prior posts that suggested this was doable with predbat and HA.

See middle of this thread for more:
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3781-hardwaresoftware-for-automation/39