Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

SBo said:
Ah yes but my 10.5kwh of PylonTech LIFEPO4 storage cost £3,300 total plus £80 for the Raspberry Pi/Home Assistant to control it... so I suspect I have some wiggle room to pay myself with to set it up ;)

Would love to see what the Tesla control/app looks like though if you wouldn't mind sharing?
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Oh yes, you're well up at the moment :)

Hold on....
 
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john_smith said:
Oh yes, you're well up at the moment :)

Hold on....
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4th November, see how the battery decided not to charge over night. It guessed right! Since the 1st week of ownership it has never guessed wrong. I love that. The other two screens are now and today so far. However i've looked at HA after looking at the above links and I think i'm going to install it to have a play.

I have PW2, eddi, harvi, zappi, smart hue bulbs and heatmiser for heating. Unfortunately my solar is from 2012 so has no smart features at all but both the Tesla and myenergi apps can "read" solar via the CT clamps.



 
katie279 said:
Not quite doing what we call in the forums 'Doing a Ron-ski' - where you manage sub 1kwh in a day.

Horrendous weather here today, so currently at 0.21kwh, so there's a chance I could be sub 1kwh today....!
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Failed..... so close, but ended up 1.47kwh.

Tomorrow looks poor, so I'll try for the Ron-ski then... ;)
 
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katie279 said:
Open source software to control every stupid app, open up every closed environment and centralise every smart device in your house. Game changing!
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I've realised that I have virtually no smart devices, then I also realised that there is the car charger, the inverter, the washing machine (not really used), a media server and media streamer, and probably several other devices that I have forgotten about.
Things are not going well in avoiding these things! :(
 
katie279 said:
Changes. Your. Life.

Open source software to control every stupid app, open up every closed environment and centralise every smart device in your house. Game changing!

Swear I should be on HA commission or something!

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So if you dont have loads of "smart" devices its really not that much of a thing then?
 
Journey said:
I've realised that I have virtually no smart devices, then I also realised that there is the car charger, the inverter, the washing machine (not really used), a media server and media streamer, and probably several other devices that I have forgotten about.
Things are not going well in avoiding these things! :(
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@katie279 is right, and it's addictive. We got burgled a month ago (first time in my life) despite having an alarm, CCTV and everything being locked. Home Assistant among other things now notifies my phone and triggers six LED floodlights when my Hue motion sensors or my Unifi cameras detect a person in the garden and the alarm is set. Hunger Games booby traps next...!!

Things HA now controls for me in one week of having it:
My calendar
Solar/battery/backup power
Gas useage (monitoring only)
Immersion
Car charger Zappi
Sonos speakers
2 smart TVs
Harmony remote
Unifi CCTV
Alarm
Hive Thermostats
Neo Thermostats (under floor heating)
Baby monitor
Sonos and temperature in the nursery
Hue lights
Unifi doorbell

And you can automate almost anything. Eg. outside temp drops, increase interal heat temps. Set alarm, turn down heating. Sunny day tomorrow, charge batteries less etc etc etc

I keep editing this because I keep remembering more things that it now does.
 
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SBo said:
Its addictive. We got burgled a month ago (first time in my life) despite having an alarm, CCTV and everything being locked. Home Assistant among other things now notifies my phone and triggers six LED floodlights when my Hue motion sensors or my Unifi cameras detect a person in the garden and the alarm is set. Hunger Games booby traps next...!!

Things HA now controls for me in one week of having it:
My calendar
Solar/battery
Gas useage
Immersion
Car charger Zappi
Sonos
2 smart TVs
Harmony remote
CCTV
Alarm
Hive Thermostats
Neo Thermostats (under floor heating)

And you can automate almost anything. Eg. outside temp drops, increase interal heat temps. Set alarm, turn down heating. Sunny day tomorrow, charge batteries less etc etc etc
Click to expand...

So its just sort of simple "macro" typs stuff, if A and B then do c and do D type level stuff?

Where does it run, on a local processor or cloud based?

I suppose with smart plugs its possible to turn some even non smart devices into smart to some extent depending how the operate when you turn them on
 
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
So its just sort of simple "macro" typs stuff, if A and B then do c and do D type level stuff?

Where does it run, on a local processor or cloud based?

I suppose with smart plugs its possible to turn some even non smart devices into smart to some extent depending how the operate when you turn them on
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It runs in your home, its not cloud based.
Your deployment can be as sophisticated as you want really. It is immensely capable and there are millions on people coming up with new capabilities/add-ons the whole time.
We have a central home ipad, but its also on our phones, laptops etc now.
Ours is running on a Raspberry Pi in a cupboard which is probably the easiest/simplest way to deploy it.
I had about a dozen apps to use before, now everything runs via HA except when I'm out the home and it all plays nicely with each other.
I had zero experience with Raspberry Pi / coding in general a week ago.
 
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katie279 said:
Failed..... so close, but ended up 1.47kwh.

Tomorrow looks poor, so I'll try for the Ron-ski then... ;)
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1.76kWh here.

The lowest daily generation I can find is 0.078kWh on 31/12/2019, but both 5/1/2019 and 11/12/2017 had zero generation. Just checked the graphs (SolarEdge still has the panel level data) and the system was working, just negligible generation.

A-pants-day.jpg
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
So its just sort of simple "macro" typs stuff, if A and B then do c and do D type level stuff?

Where does it run, on a local processor or cloud based?

I suppose with smart plugs its possible to turn some even non smart devices into smart to some extent depending how the operate when you turn them on
Click to expand...
Exactly right - all local, so no 3rd party dependencies, subscriptions etc.

You'd be surprised at how many smart devices you have without realising - pretty much all TVs will connect, your PCs being remote controllable, all your hard disk/graphics card/cpu loads and temps in one place, network activity, your phones, tablets, routers, printers etc and as you say, with smart plugs even dumb devices become connectable.

It does a great job of making things into smart devices - eg I just installed a component that turns all my pcs into media players so I can use them along with my sonos stuff to stream music through the house (thus saving a few hundred quid to avoid getting sonos for rooms with PCs or TVs in them).
 
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