Octopus Electricity Prices

This is a modern GNOME application built to track and visualise Octopus Energy electricity prices in real time. It fetches current and forecast half-hourly prices across supported tariffs, helping users quickly see the best times to use electricity. This is only relevant if you are based in the UK.

• Current Price Display: Shows the real-time electricity price (pence/kWh).
• Price Level Indicators: Visually indicates whether the current price is low, medium, high, or even negative.
• Adaptive Price Forecast Chart: Displays a bar chart of upcoming half-hourly price data, adapting the visible horizon to the available space while keeping small-screen layouts usable.
• Find Cheapest Time: A built-in calculator to find the cheapest time window for a specific duration (e.g., "find the cheapest 3 hours in the next 24 hours").
• Region and Tariff Selection: Allows users to select their specific Octopus Energy region and tariff through a preferences window. Supports Agile, Go, and Intelligent Octopus Go tariffs. Go and Intelligent tariffs need a user-provided API key.
• Adaptive GTK Interface: The main window and preferences window now adapt more cleanly across narrow and wide GTK layouts.

Installation

This application is built for GNOME 50 and can be easily built and run using Flatpak and Flatpak Builder or directly through GNOME Builder.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have Flatpak and Flatpak Builder installed on your system. Refer to the official Flatpak documentation for installation instructions specific to your distribution.

Using GNOME Builder

GNOME Builder is the recommended way to work with this project. It provides a convenient development environment that handles Flatpak integration automatically.

1. Open GNOME Builder: Launch GNOME Builder on your system.
2. Clone the Project:
   • Go to "Clone Repository".
   • Enter the repository URL (https://github.com/nedrichards/octopus-agile-energy.git).
   • Choose a destination folder and click "Clone".
3. Build and Run:
   • Once the project is loaded, GNOME Builder will detect the com.nedrichards.octopusagile.json manifest.
   • Click the "Run" button (usually a play icon) in the top bar. Builder will automatically build the Flatpak application and run it.

Building with Flatpak Builder (CLI)

If you prefer to build the Flatpak from the command line, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/nedrichards/octopus-agile-energy.git
   cd octopus-agile-energy

2. Build the Flatpak:

   flatpak-builder --force-clean build-dir com.nedrichards.octopusagile.json

3. Install the Flatpak:

   flatpak-builder --user --install build-dir com.nedrichards.octopusagile.json

4. Run the application:

   flatpak run com.nedrichards.octopusagile

Usage

Upon first launch, the application opens the Preferences window so you can choose the correct tariff and region before fetching prices.

Configuration

To change your region or tariff:

1. Click the menu button (usually three dots or lines) in the top-right corner of the application window.
2. Select Preferences.
3. Choose your desired tariff type, region, and tariff from the available selectors.

The application will automatically refresh the price data when settings are changed.

Development

Linting

This project uses Ruff for Python linting. Ruff supports pyproject.toml configuration and is a good fit here because it covers the Flake8-style checks we want with a simpler toolchain.

python3 -m pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
python3 -m ruff check src tests

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later).

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Co-authored with Gemini.