Frequently asked questions

nemy helps you reduce your carbon footprint and save money by aligning your electricity usage with times of abundant renewable energy in the grid. It works like this:

Say you’ve installed solar panels on your roof. You’d want to use your own solar power as much as possible. So you turn on the dishwasher and other electricity hungry appliances during the day when the sun is shining, right? In the same way, nemy tells you when the whole electricity grid is being powered by lots of renewables. So you can turn on electricity hungry appliances when the grid has cheap, green power, and avoid using as much electricity when the grid is powered by lots of more expensive fossil fuels.

nemy tracks the National Electricity Market (NEM) in Australia. Get alerts and control your home's smart devices based on the price of electricity and the amount of renewable energy being generated at any moment.

We’ve partnered with IFTTT, a popular integrations platform, to deliver electricity grid information to you and to help you control devices in your home. IFTTT is easy to use, has partnerships with hundreds of brands, and is free to use.

Once you’ve signed up to nemy, head over to our service on IFTTT and make your first applet. Our favourite uses for nemy are changing the colour of a smart light to reflect the price of electricity, and getting an alert or turning off an appliance when electricity is expensive.

For more information and ideas, head to our IFTTT: Setup guide.

nemy is completely free to use. Your good pals Sam and Jarman are currently covering the costs behind the scenes (primarily AWS and coffee). This decision is in line with our vision and mission and will enable more people to start reducing their carbon footprint and saving money.

The current goal is to team up with several electricity retailers to help their customers shift when they use electricity. In the meantime, if you would like to support nemy, you can contribute through Buy Me A Coffee.

nemy was co-founded in 2020 by two best friends: Sam Poustie and Jarman Stephens.

We’re both electrical engineers and share a concern for the environment and climate change. We want to do our bit and reduce our environmental footprint. Our goal, and nemy’s mission, is to facilitate the transition to an enduring 100% renewable energy future.

This depends on a few factors such as where you live and how many appliances you control with nemy. Let’s consider two examples:

• Example 1: Kim lives in Melbourne. Over the past 12 months, over 75% of the electricity generated in Victoria was from fossil fuels such as brown coal. Using nemy, Kim could potentially reduce her household’s carbon equivalent emissions by hundreds of kilograms each year; and
• Example 2: John lives in Hobart. Over the past 12 months, almost 100% of the electricity generated in Tasmania was from Hydro or Wind. John will not see a great reduction in his carbon emissions using nemy. However, he could still save hundreds of dollars using nemy by shifting some of his electricity consumption to cheaper times.

As well as reducing your carbon footprint, you can save money using nemy if you’re with an electricity retailer that passes on real time wholesale electricity prices (e.g. Amber Electric, Flow Power). Depending on your electricity use and how much energy you shift, you could save hundreds of dollars each year.

We would love to hear from you. Don’t be shy! For support or questions, please contact us at: info@nemy.io

nemy currently works for anyone connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM). This includes most people in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. For more information, check out AEMO’s NEM Regional Boundaries Map.

nemy plan to expand to other grids in Australia such as the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) in Western Australia, before taking on the world…

You can use nemy with your existing electricity retailer. By aligning your electricity usage with times when there are more renewables in the grid, you’ll make a big difference in reducing your carbon emissions. But if you’d like to save money while doing so, then sign up to an electricity retailer offering real time wholesale prices (e.g. Amber Electric, Flow Power). It turns out you can have your cake and eat it too.

The short answer is no, but that shouldn’t dissuade you from buying 100% GreenPower. When you buy a GreenPower product from your electricity retailer, your retailer must buy certificates representing the same amount of electricity from an approved renewable energy generator. However, whenever you use electricity, you are still indirectly paying whichever generator is producing electricity at that time (e.g. in Victoria, electricity is generated from brown coal around 70% of the time!). In summary:

1. You are paying generators based on when you are using electricity; and
2. You are funding renewable generation as part of the GreenPower scheme.

nemy can help you change when you use electricity, so that less of your electricity comes from fossil fuel generators. GreenPower is a different mechanism which means that your electricity retailer funds renewable generation projects on your behalf.

For more information, check out a great Choice article which provides a more detailed explanation of GreenPower.

nemy uses real-time data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). The Dispatch price is obtained every five minutes for each state (e.g. VIC), expressed in $/MWh. The household price is the dispatch price (including GST) plus a flat 15 c/kWh amount which estimates non-wholesale-generation-charges (e.g. network chargers, market charges). The household price is expressed in c/kWh.

On 1 October 2021, the National Electricity Market (NEM) moved towards five minute settlement. nemy has updated the household price calculation in accordance with the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) rules. However, some residential electricity retailers may still be in a transitional period. For more information, check out AEMO’s Five-minute Settlement (5MS) and Global Settlement (GS) information page or contact your electricity retailer.

nemy uses real-time data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). The renewables percentage is calculated every five minutes for each state (e.g. VIC) based on the generator SCADA dispatch and whether the generator type is renewable.

nemy considers solar (utility-scale and rooftop), wind and hydro generators to be renewable, as well as generators using less common fuels such as landfill biogas methane, primary solid biomass fuels, bagasse, biomass and industrial materials, and other biofuels. We have considered these less common fuels as renewable since we believe they align with nemy’s mission and we therefore want to incentivise their use.

nemy uses real-time data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). The percentiles are calculated based on rolling one month historical data snapshots.

nemy uses real-time data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). nemy’s categories (i.e. "Good/Bad", "Cheap/Expensive", "Green/Polluting", "Green/Red") are calculated based on a combination of current and historical metrics. We are continuously updating our calculation methodology to provide the most useful and simple indicators for people. To find out more, visit our colours and categories page or contact us at info@nemy.io.

IFTTT, short for "If This Then That", helps you connect all of your different apps and devices. You can then enable your apps and devices to work together to do specific things they couldn't do otherwise. For more information, check out the page What is IFTTT?

nemy is a service on the IFTTT platform, similar to Amazon Alexa or Spotify. IFTTT then brings together two or more services to form applets, enabling applications to do something they couldn’t do on their own.

To use nemy you will need to sign up for an IFTTT account. IFTTT have two different plans - Standard (free) and Pro (paid) - and nemy works with either plan. For more information on IFTTT plans, check out the page Find the right plan.

We don’t receive a financial benefit from suggesting particular 3rd party devices. There are many great devices that work with IFTTT and nemy, each with their pros and cons. We’ve listed our favourites based on our own testing and what we think people will enjoy.

RapidAPI is an API marketplace that helps developers find, test and connect to thousands of APIs. For more information, check out the page What is RapidAPI?

nemy’s API is distributed through RapidAPI Hub, the world’s largest API Hub used by over three million developers. RapidAPI makes it easy for developers to get started with our API as well as monitor metrics like the number of API requests, latency, and error rates. nemy API is our business-facing product built for companies (e.g. electricity retailers and electric vehicle charger manufacturers) wanting to access our backend infrastructure.

To use nemy API, you will need to sign up for a RapidAPI account. Once you have a RapidAPI account, you can subscribe to nemy’s API. For more information on plans, check out the page Choose The Right Plan For You.

nemy on RapidAPI is a freemium service. There is a limited free tier available and a selection of recurring monthly subscription plans. For more information on plans, check out the page Choose The Right Plan For You.

For special use cases, we can create custom private plans. To find out more, contact us at: info@nemy.io.

The API documentation can be found within nemy’s RapidAPI page. Check out the screenshot below which highlights useful information such as endpoints, parameters and sample responses. To find out more, contact us at: info@nemy.io.