Looking for some smart automation

[JohnMo]

Looking for assistance to do some automation.

 

Background have solar PV, a battery an ASHP and Home Assistant. Also I am on E7. Normal running period for the ASHP is during the night on a low tariff period. Today was better than expected for solar generation, so this afternoon I forced the ASHP to run for an hour. As there was plenty of solar the battery didn't loose much charge during the hour run.

 

 

The yellow is PV generation, the green band is the house loads, the step up is the ASHP running.

 

So looking to automate this function. So on a sunny day I can make the most of and run the ASHP. Home assistant has all the PV and battery data already available. The heat pump started and stopped via a zero voltage contact. So is it as simple as adding a smart relay that Home Assistant can control and then making a rule - if battery is above x% and PV generation is above x kW, close relay for one hour or until the battery has depleted to y%?

 

Any assistance appreciated.

 

 

[joth]

51 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Looking for assistance to do some automation.

 

Background have solar PV, a battery an ASHP and Home Assistant. Also I am on E7. Normal running period for the ASHP is during the night on a low tariff period. Today was better than expected for solar generation, so this afternoon I forced the ASHP to run for an hour. As there was plenty of solar the battery didn't loose much charge during the hour run.

 

 

The yellow is PV generation, the green band is the house loads, the step up is the ASHP running.

 

So looking to automate this function. So on a sunny day I can make the most of and run the ASHP. Home assistant has all the PV and battery data already available. The heat pump started and stopped via a zero voltage contact. So is it as simple as adding a smart relay that Home Assistant can control and then making a rule - if battery is above x% and PV generation is above x kW, close relay for one hour or until the battery has depleted to y%?

 

 

 

In a word, yes.

Plenty of smart relays, https://shellystore.co.uk/product/shelly-1/ is perhaps easiest. Home Assistant now auto-detects Shelly devices and adds them once they're on your wifi. 

You can power the Shelly from 24V and then use the O/I connections to close the potential free input on the ASHP

 

Personally I find Home Assistant UI for making automations a bit tedious and prefer the graphical flow editor in my Loxone system. With Home assistant, if you want to trigger only when both A and B are true (e.g. A = generating power, B = battery full) then you need to setup both A and B as the trigger, and also A and B as the condition. This is because triggers are always "ORed" together, but conditions are ANDed (by default).  If there's a nice way to avoid this duplication I'd love to know, as it's littered around several of my config. (I think "install Node Red" maybe the answer)

 

 

 

(I used another battery level for illustration here, as it looks like my inverter battery isn't actually connected into my Home Assistant install)

 

 

 

 

[JohnMo]

39 minutes ago, joth said:

install Node Red

Thanks will have a look, another day of learning.

[TerryE]

The HA automation language is quite rich and NodeRED even more so.  I can chat offline.  I've PMed you.

Edited October 30, 2023 by TerryE

[JohnMo]

Decided to keep things simple. So I have just started to run the heat pump 24/7 under weather compensation. If the sun's out the heat pump uses the energy available anyway.