Home Assistant and energy monitoring & automation - the App I use the most

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The ultimate monitoring platform that enables you to see and control just about everything quickly and easily and you don't need to be an IT programmer either.
This is my story and current use of Home Assistant viewed as an amateur. I'm not an expert on this but slowly over time
learning more every day. I don't spend long working on Home Assistant Instead I prefer analysing the data. You could however, if you were keen make this a hobby all on its own.. Its incredibly powerful and useful
My aircon installer:
Graham Durrant
Ignite heating and cooling
15 Connaught Ave, Gorleston-on-Sea, Great Yarmouth NR31 7LU
07989 610033
Email: info@igniteheatingandcooling.co.uk
Solar config
PV all JA solar 9.2kwp
14X280w (3.68kw Solis)
8X300w (2.0kw Solaredge)
4x450w Solis string 1
3x370w (2.5kw) Solis string 2
Myenergi Zappi 1, Eddi and Hub
Battery:
Victron Multiplus II 48/5000
Cerbo GX
5 x Pylontech Us3000C
ET112 meter on the solar & AC out
EV:
Mini Electric Cooper SE Level 3 in midnight black and Chester leather
EGolf in Oryxx white and Vienna Black leather
Links & referrals
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OCTOPUS energy referral code: "pink-rose-718"
share ** £50 credit each **
🐙🔌share.octopus....

Опубликовано:

7 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 59

@philipbroggio9315 Год назад

Very timely video there. For several weeks I have been playing around with home assistant setup on my PC. Starting to get to grips with it but found it was not great having to keep the PC live 24/7 as when in standby no data was passed to the database. So yesterday I took the plunge and treated myself to a Raspberry Pi 4 , a nice case and a plugin SSD. This afternoon has been spent getting the PI image onto the SSD and getting started. I was just about to find the myEnergi integration when your latest video popped up. The thing I really wanted to display is data from my heat pump but unfortunately this isn't available but I can at least now use the data from some additional CT clamps from the Zappi (power to HP) , external temperatures from Met Office and thermostats around the house. I saw that there is now a thing on internet about "mambi" middle aged man buying insulation but as I am 68 I think I'm actually a "ogbi" or old git buying insulation. The journey from getting an EV to then solar , Zappi, eddi then Haet Pump, Ripple continues. All I have left to do is a battery I guess . Look forward to seeing your HA videos. :-)

@constructioneerful 3 месяца назад

Did you get your battery yet? Prices have been dropping..

@philipbroggio9315 3 месяца назад

@@constructioneerful I have not got a battery as yet. I did get a quote for a Libbi but I need a new fuse box and this adds to cost. Using my daily data and looking at 5, 10 or 15kWh storage I calculated I might save £600 a year but the capital outlay is well over £12k. Difficult to justify. My current bill is now about £90 incl servicing ASHP and home charging the EV with Ripple discount to come in July so a battery dies make financial sense ATM .

@bencampbell2041 Год назад

My most useful automation sends me a mobile notification to tell me to put the bins out 😅

@EVPuzzle Год назад

That's a good one, we never remember the right colour bin

@geoffreycoan Год назад

We have two repeating google calendar weekly meetings scheduled to remind us which bins to take out. Old school !

@johntisbury Год назад

As you know I too love Home Assistant. It's great to see how other people use it and what they get out of it. Good explanation of your needs and wants Nigel.

@EVPuzzle Год назад

I'm progressing slowly but from a starting point of... Nah that'll be no good to me, I now use it predominantly.... When the Internet works 🤦‍♂️

@richardteychenne3950 Год назад

Informative Nigel, that's a huge step forward in integration making monitoring a much simpler job and probably avoiding many error traps. Just looking at a new system upgrade so most welcome. 👍

@ched999uk Год назад

Nice video, some details in a future video on how you set up some of the cards with calcs etc would be nice. Just had PV and battery installed and playing with Home Assistant myself so perfect timing 🙂 Cheers.

@geoffreycoan Год назад

Useful to see your setup Nigel. I installed Home Assistant on a tiny PC I bought for the purpose about a month ago as we’d finally got our export tariff in place and I wanted to automate maximising the battery investment. I found that there’s lots of videos out there on how to set it up, install the GivTCP integration for my GivEnergy inverters and get the data flowing into dashboards, all very easy. Like you I’ve had a career in IT but I still found writing the automations difficult even with cut and pasting snippets off the internet as there is limited debugging capability. Now I’ve got the scripts working to export spare stored solar in the Octopus peak period they work well, but was a bit of a journey to get here. HA can be quite addictive; plenty of future projects to integrate my Growatt FIT array, the heat pump and more energy monitors

@chrisblunt7627 Год назад

Good video as always Nigel, very informative. As yet I don't have solar, but I do use Home Assistant, with 9 of the Sonoff temperature sensors, this has been quite revolutionary in letting me know where out heat goes and what rooms need insulation addressing. I also have automations for lights and energy monitoring with Tapo P110 (TP-Link) smart plugs. I run my HA on a virtual server, the host server is my NAS so on 24/7 any way. I would make a cautionary suggestion to those using Raspberry Pi computers with SD cards, the number of writes to the database will kill your SD card in the end and it is worth looking at using an SSD and SATA to USB caddy. A smallish SSD and Caddy could be bought for probably £40 from a well known online retailer.

@MoggerhangerMark Год назад

Great video. I run HA on a PI4 with an SSD and works very well. Very flexible but HA can consume you!As I have GivEnergy batteries and inverters so I use the add-on GIV_TCP add-on in HACS and same as you it's nice to get real time snappy updates not via the clouds.

@fredflintstone1428 Год назад

Excellent data indicators.

@munurty Год назад

Wow thanks, that was a great video. I think I've just found a new hobby.

@EVPuzzle Год назад

Glad you enjoyed it!

@munurty Год назад

@@EVPuzzle We got 9kw of solar panels installed yesterday and have a home assistant yellow in the post. Your videos are making a positive contribution to the world. You should be proud of yourself. Thanks for showing us how to do it.

@EVPuzzle Год назад

You're welcome, it's good to share good things. You'll have fun with that setup and the Yellow HA sounds great. More advanced than mine and better performance

@pumpkinhead456 Год назад

Nigel! I'm on the same journey... I am currently making my own Edie/I boost, will be £50 all in, very nearly finished.

@peterclarke5323 Год назад

Very interesting, are you switching the immersion fully on and off or using a thyristor based solution?

@pumpkinhead456 Год назад

@@peterclarke5323 I'm using a silicon controlled rectifier (scr) controlled by an ESP32. It's been a steep learning curve!

@JimGayes Год назад

Great and useful video as always. We've had a pair of Multiplus ll inverters installed in parallel along with a few Pylontech batteries after watching your videos - yes, it's all your fault! 😆. Noticed in this HA video you have included some specific Victron controls for the ESS & DVCC. I've not got my head around these settings and I'd like to make a suggestion for a future video that it would be really useful if you could cover these settings in detail please.

@EVPuzzle Год назад

One for the future but there is an integration that does much of this for you now. The custom buttons though I've found invaluable for easy setting changes

@PaulRBinding Год назад

Excellent video Nigel & timely as I’m just trying to do similar with the successor to your Blue box the HA Yellow. Your dashboard is amazing & I didn’t realize you could get all that data from Octopus & Zappi. Just starting with a Aqara temp & humidity sensor but with little joy - might change to yours. Keep the HA stuff coming.

@ianandrew7010 Год назад

Can't look @ more data I'm obsessed with my Solis inverter app, Solax X1-Fit battery app and the myenergi Eddi app 🤪

@adamprince3400 Год назад

Hi Nigel, great video! I have already ordered Home Assistant Yellow to start experimenting before it goes into a new build house. We are currently going to go with a sunamp Thermino ePV with a solar diverter, partly based on the issues you flagged with Mixergy tank either having their own PV diverter that doesn't play nicely with other diverters OR their third party conversion where you lose the smart nature of the mixergy. Does Home Assistant overcome the Mixergy 3P diverter issues do you think?

@EVPuzzle Год назад

Automation ability most certainly improves the mixergy and Eddi combination. Personally I prefer being In control so I don't miss the AI that no doubt would be frustraring when it gets it wrong. Easier to blame myself. Having instant hot water with just a couple of minutes boost is a huge improvement over a standard tank and for that alone I'm glad I upgraded to the mixergy system despite the online signup issues

@barryjgreenhalgh8450 Год назад

Hello Nigel, you mention that you use Kasa smart plugs. I have just purchased on and not e that they have a max rating of 1500 watts. In your video you show that you monitor your oven & hob and also your Air Fryer. Both will use over 1500 watts. Have you had any problems with the smart plugs?

@EVPuzzle Год назад

I'd better check again I read they were 13a capable The oven goes through a Shelly pm ct monitor not a kasa plug so that's good too

@nicholasriley8977 Год назад

Would have been nice to detail the kit you used and some links

@EVPuzzle Год назад

I did and have quart from links to buy but Google them

@jorkirasalas2726 Год назад

Nigel. Cant see a link for the blue box or other gizmo on the back of it.

@EVPuzzle Год назад

I dont give links for products I buy, it's best ti Google them and find best option. Blue box is discontinued I think, new one might be yellow

@brogiesthemotorcyclist5408 Год назад

Hi Nigel, great video as per usual. I’m a HA user and have managed to integrate all my devices with the exception of my Solis battery inverter. There is an integration in HACS for Solis but I’ve been unable to get it working (Solis API is active) I’d be very interested in how you get on with the integration of your Solis PV inverter in to HA.

@TheBadoctopus Год назад

I use the homeassistant-solax-modbus integration in HACS, which supports many inverter brands, and needs a little bit of hardware to convert modbus to ethernet. It gives me all the stats from my Solis hybrid inverter every 15s and means I don't have to use that terrible Solarman app and dongle with its 5 minute lag. If you are up for the challenge it's the best solution IMHO.

@jorkirasalas2726 Год назад

Nigel. Did you produce the review vid on the various apps that you mentioned as I can’t see it on your site

@EVPuzzle Год назад

I did, a while back yes. Can't recall the title but should be obvious

@EVPuzzle Год назад

. Might be "best renewable energy apps" or "problems problems problems"

@jorkirasalas2726 Год назад

@@EVPuzzle looks like the latter!

@olej24 Год назад

Great detail. I really need to get round to pulling together a useful dashboard in HA. Currently my main use of HA is to send the data to an excel export every 30 mins, which I then use to populate a PowerBI dashboard to show monthly stats. My one issue with Myenergi is that the Zappi usage doesn’t come through correctly. For the eddi there are two sensors in HA, one for grid and one for solar kWh today. For the Zappi these don’t work correctly and I’ve had to create an integral helper based on the instantaneous wattage usage. Also, what CT clamps are you using to measure your A2A and Oven?

@EVPuzzle Год назад

I use shelly pm monitor for aircon and Zappi seems really accurate on my. Myenergi account 🤔

@olej24 Год назад

@@EVPuzzle consumption shows up fine in the app, just not in HA. Can you use a Shelly monitor with just CT clamps and not feeding a circuit through it? If so which one?

@EVPuzzle Год назад

@@olej24 ahwwly has to be powered of course, we've powered it from a 5a light circuit and monitoring two 32a circuits

@btube2022 Год назад

Have you been able to add any automation to the AC? I use Tado for my gas central heating, but would like to move to the AC to heat in the rooms it’s in. I am doing this overnight (on E7). I have this as a schedule, which I will turn off once the weather warms up, but would love to create an automation that either leaves the airco on heat or turns it off based on the room temperature. Doing this with the inbuilt Haiori temperature sensors never works as they are so far off….I just set it to 17/18 to get a room temp of 18-20

@EVPuzzle Год назад

Yes but currently I cant control my toshiba units and see Solaredge data. There's a code conflict But if I disable Solaredge I can automate aircon units

@btube2022 Год назад

@@EVPuzzle thank you, that’s good to know. No solaredge on my end, so hopefully it works.

@EVPuzzle Год назад

The Toshiba units have a good online interface. We use alexa to control ours with ease, HA will work nicely too

@btube2022 Год назад

@@EVPuzzle currently using the app, which seems “OK” but sometimes has connection issues. Not yet connected to Alexa - can you use it in routines etc there? That could be another way for me to automate it without installing HA which I don’t currently use.

@EVPuzzle Год назад

@@btube2022 guess so, haven't tried. Google assistant too maybe

@MrButuz Год назад

I need to get home assistant methinks

@EVPuzzle Год назад

Be aware it'll be in front of you often 🤭

@ellas6101 Год назад

Hello Nigel, HA looks interesting but our system is going to be more basic than yours - inverter and battery from SolarEdge plus Zappi and Eddi and maybe two SolarEdge smart plugs so that we can turn on electric heater if we have excess energy. No smart meter. So if you had this set up , would you still go for HA? And one more question - you have mentioned that the lights go brighter when you are exporting - is this a clever way to notify you ? This is a common complaint that I see on the internet that users do not have any notifications when they start exporting so unless they are glued to their phones they send electricity to the grid rather than using it at home- many thanks Ela

@EVPuzzle Год назад

Yes that's it exactly on export notifaction. Could send notification to phone or play music but our dog barks when light comes on. If it was a multi colour light could had red for export, green for good etc

@ellas6101 Год назад

@@EVPuzzle thank you for your reply and thank you for your videos, you are one of my main sources of information when it comes to solar panels !

@chrisblunt7627 Год назад

I have a small Oil Filled Radiator plugged into a smart plug in my home office and one of the Sonoff temperature sensors, when the temperature falls below 18 I switch the radiator on and off again when the temperature goes above 20. It is much more accurate than controller on the rad. Also I sometimes forget to switch it off at night so my automation can do that as well. As long as you could get your current export amount and it was more than you heater would use you could automate a heater or as Nigel does switch on a light as an indicator. Furthermore there are some half decent solar predictors with amount for the day and peak hour, so you could decide to put your washing on at 10am if that's your peak hour etc. I use the Tapo P110 smart plugs made by TP Link (KASA) and they are less than £10 each, they tell you how much a device is using in kWh (usage now and cumulative) so I know my rad is 850w and how much I've spent heating my office today.