Hi, Im VERY new to Home Assistant but been using PVOutput for years. I read somewhere recently but can’t remember where that its possible to make a action like turn on a smart switch based on solar production figures or household consumption. What I would like to do is when I’m exporting my surplus production to the grid a signal be sent to turn on a smart switch which I intend having a battery charger plugged into. Can anyone help please.
I’m not a programmer and I’m strugging at the moment with Home Assistant. I’ve managed to get a basic PVOutput display working on it.
Try the Watson Holmes smart switch about £25 each on eBay
Can’y find anything, Even googling it. I tried Holmes & Homes in case you miss typed it.
It shouldn’t be a hard thing to do, but I don’t think the PV Output component in Home Assistant has importing/exporting status, so first you’d need a way to determine that.
What you’d need is to be able to poll your solar inverter and get the data from there, and maybe make a binary sensor that can be either importing or exporting. From there, it would be a simple automation for the smart switch. If exporting, then turn on switch, otherwise turn off switch.
The best place to ask for this would be on the Home Assistant community forum. You’d get better support, and some may be able to help you out with getting the data from your inverter if there isn’t already a component for it.
Cheers. Bit it one thing saying it should be simple & another actually achieving it. I’ve messaged 2 members of this forum who have posted on threads relevant to what I’m after doing but have had no reply.
Hey There. Yes I have done this but slightly different to the way you are implying.
I have current sensing clamps on my switch board
3 phase therefore 3 CT clamps from grid power (install after meter)
3 phase therefore 3 CT clamps from inverter
I have sensors that monitor the Gen vs Use to give a surplus or deficit
then I have an automation setup to send the signal to my switch based on this
Question
What are you using to measure Generation and Usage ?
You would be best to go to the Home Assistant forums and ask there. The community there is much more active than here, and people there are willing to help out, even if they don’t have the same setup as you, what you are after sounds like a combination of a few simple bits here and there.
The folks on the HA forums will be able to help you extract the data from your solar inverter, create a sensor to show import/export status, and help with an automation to turn on/off a switch depending on the import/export status.
I’m using Current Cost equipment (sensors) that wirelessly feed back to a Current Cost EnviR base unit which is connected to a netbook running PVOutput integration service. Cheat & reliable
You need more than inverter output to manage this as OP has requested.
When production - load > X he wants to turn on a battery charge controller, He called it a charger but a charger in this application could over charge his batteries. The inverter only knows about production.
He needs X becase he would not want to use grid power to make up the difference between overproduction and the charge controller usage.
Best I can think of is 2 current transformer monitoring grid connection and a voltage taps where the phase relationship between the transformers and voltage would tell which way the energy is going and the transformers would also be able to tell how much energy is moving.
That would not be trivial for a non programer. There may be a system that does all that available but I do not know were to look.
It all depends on what the system he has and what he can get into Home Assistant. I have an Enphase PV System. In Home Assistant I can see the current net in either a positive or negative number. If it’s a negative, I’m exporting, so I’ve set up a binary sensory to show either importing or exporting.
Using that binary sensory I can then setup an automation to turn something on/off depending on the state of the binary sensor.
I’ve never hear of EnviR, so I can’t really help with that system and getting data into Home Assistant, but once the data is in Home Assistant, the rest is really easy.
Just a quick update. I eventually managed to get everything working just the way I was hoping too. My PV generation & household consumption that are uploaded to PVOutput are now integrated into HA which is setup using Automations to turn on smart switches on when my consumption falls to zero and then back of if it rises above a couple of watts.