Frequently asked questions

ems42 shows where your electricity goes and what it costs, and makes suggestions: when your appliances run best, what your peak does to the capacity tariff, and what more solar panels, a battery or a heat pump would mean.

Everything is based on your own meter readings, the weather forecast and market prices. ems42 helps you see the choices you have; you decide.

Nothing: at launch ems42 is free.

No. ems42 only reads meter readings and gives advice. It never switches an appliance, battery or charger on or off.

ems42 is a product of Codelab42 from Ghent, specialists in Drupal and Smart home enthousiasts.

• Everything goes over an encrypted connection (HTTPS) and is stored on servers in the EU.
• Your password is only stored as an unreadable hash.
• If you connect your Loxone, your Loxone password is used once and never stored; ems42 keeps only an encrypted login token. We recommend a separate Loxone user that only sees your energy meters.
• Only you and the household members you add can see your home.

We store as little as possible:

• your account: email address and username;
• your home: a name, your postcode and coordinates rounded to about 1 km;
• what you enter yourself: solar panels, battery, appliances and your contract;
• quarter-hour totals: grid import and export and, with a connection, solar and battery.

We do not store your address, your EAN code or meter number, your Fluvius file (it is deleted once read) or your Loxone password. Live values are not stored: only the latest, for at most 10 minutes. We sell nothing and share nothing with suppliers.

Yes, yourself and completely. Under My account, choose Cancel account. Once you confirm by email, we delete your account with everything that belongs to it: your homes, readings, appliances, connections and your traces in our logs.

Only want to clear your readings or one home? You can on the Data page or in your home's settings.

Yes, but only anonymously and combined. We may use the quarter-hour data of all homes together to make our suggestions and calculations better, for example to check how well the estimates turned out. We do not look at you or your home: nothing can be traced back to you, and we sell or share nothing.

• Market prices: the Belgian day-ahead prices from ENTSO-E, the European grid operators' platform. Tomorrow's appear around 13:00.
• Contract prices: average prices for Flanders, for a dynamic and for a fixed or variable contract. We do not follow each supplier: the difference is a few percent of your bill, and the cheap hours are the same for everyone. If you know your own price per kWh, you can fill it in.
• Grid fees and capacity tariff: Fluvius' rates for your area.
• Installation prices of solar panels, batteries and heat pumps: indicative prices for Belgium, with the date we checked them.

ems42 gives suggestions and estimates, not guarantees. They follow a fixed logic based on your own meter readings, the weather forecast and the prices, and show what they are based on.

Whether your bill really goes down depends on much more: your use, the weather, the prices and your contract. So ems42 mainly helps you see the choices you have, such as when to run the dishwasher, or whether a battery could make sense in your home. For an investment, an installer's quote is what counts.

Market prices every day, automatically. The average contract prices a few times a year, grid fees and the capacity tariff when Fluvius changes them (usually in January). Each estimate says what it is based on and, for installation prices, when we last checked them.

Yes, from your own data: your usual use per weekday and hour, your base load, the yield of your panels (once a connection measures it) and the charging of an electric car. Some estimates need a minimum, for example 30 days of readings for the battery size.

ems42 calculates with the prices and fees it knows and leaves out fixed charges such as your supplier's fixed fee and the data management fee. Your bill uses Fluvius' meter reading and every charge. Your bill is what counts.

Fluvius charges part of your grid fees based on your highest quarter-hour of grid import each month: your monthly peak. The average of the last 12 months (at least 2.5 kW) sets what you pay. Running appliances one after the other instead of together keeps that peak down.

Your postcode and your quarter-hour values from Mijn Fluvius are enough. If you have solar panels, a battery or a home system such as Loxone, add them for better advice.

Log in to Mijn Fluvius, open the electricity Verbruikshistoriek (usage history), choose kwartierwaarden (quarter-hour values) and download the CSV file. Upload it in ems42 under Data.

Want to be extra sure? Empty or delete the EAN-code and Meter columns first; the import works the same.