Amazon Alexa Skill – Electric Price
I was sick of opening up my phone to check the ComEd hourly price of electric supply, so I decided to make an Alexa app for my Amazon Echo!
It took about 2 hours. It was strange I had to set up both an Alexa skill and the AWS Lamda function, then link the two. I ended up copying most of the code from someones reference code on checking stock prices. Changed the regular expression function which found the stock price to a substring of the ComEd API returned text. Works pretty well! Only problem I’ve had is when the ComEd API is down. If it happens too much, I guess I’ll have to update it with some error handling.
Alexa Skill: Electric Price
Ask: “Alexa, ask Electric Price for Current Price.”
The logo is crap, I know. And I couldn’t use the ComEd company name in any of the program details/functions, so its a bit generic. But pretty good for my first try if I do say so myself!
ED HAYES 
Alexa, How much is a KWH?
Alexa, How much does it cost for electricity?
Alexa, What does electricity cost right now?
Alexa, Should I try to save electricity today?
Alexa, How much is ComEd charging for electricity today?
“Alexa, ask Electric Price for Current Price.” Is NOT natural speech =)
I have to have the “ask Electric Price” per the rules. It’s almost like I ask Alexa to ask a friend to do something. If you think about it like that, it kindof makes sense, but I agree, it’s not the best approach. But if you think about all of the stuff they are doing in the background to make sure things get handled correctly, its not that bad.