Amber Electric (Australia) Custom Component

Thanks removing the ~ makes it more readable.

The spikes do seen very high, while the negative events are rare.

My automations switch most things off during price spike so not too bad, but looking forward to getting my battery so I can export during these times.

Iā€™m starting to think seriously about a batteryā€¦possibly solar less. Or with a solar system that is sized very tightly to requirements. And an inverter I can turn off with HA automations in the case of a negative fit event.

In SA we are getting great runs of sub 0.1/kwh for many hours midday and a few negative price moments. Solar itself seems be becoming less advantageous. Either needs a battery to shift it to when it is used or cover price spike events. Or possibly just a battery that is charged off the grid at the periods of lowest rates each day. Cover our use evenings and price spikes. Maybe even discharge to grid if it made sense.

Major issue is that Iā€™ve got 3 phase and a 3 phase Aircon :thinking:

But Iā€™m not sure which hardware would accommodate thisā€¦especially with HA

@madpilot how does smart shift actually work? Beyond just pre selecting the best hours in advance from forecastā€¦is it dynamic to adjust to weather? Adelaide today is a good example of that. Iā€™m sure forecast from midnight was pretty different to what actually happened.

It uses price and solar forecasts, your past usage, and past solar generation and tries to optimise for minimising costs. But it reruns the optimisation every five minutes to deal with changing forecasts.

Re: three phase. In some configurations you can still supply all phases with one battery.

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Yes the economics are interesting.

The high price spike events seen to be a lot more severe than the low price episodes.

Fill a 10 kWh battery in the morning for a cost of $0-$2 and then discharge in the evening for a sale of $4-$10+ and your ROI for a $15k battery is between 5-10 years and you help stabilize the grid.

Price spike events become revenue opportunities rather stressing about excess consumption.

Solaredge seems to have pretty good battery control in HA:

People are doing it with Powewall2 but send a bit more complex:

I have just ordered a powerwall mainly to see what it can do and to see if I can drive down that ROI period with automation. Delivery expected in April. Showed my installer what HA could do and he got very excited as he thinks he has a lot of users that could benefit.

Modbus is the way to go - the cloud APIā€™s rate limiting effectively limits you to 5 minute control at best.

I have a SolarEdge inverter - researching batteries at the moment (the LG Chem batteries seem to be the recommendation)

+1 for ModBus.

I have my Solaredge reporting every second, which is excellent for balancing excess solar charging into my EV under HA control.

Good summary here:

To cope with the billing being the price in the last 5min of a 30min block. Does smart shift try and cut out earlier?

I felt like Iā€™ve gotten a text message and turned it all offā€¦and the next day I was still on the hook for power during the spike. My guess is that I was happy paying $0.5c to be comfortable in that momentā€¦but then it switched to a spike (of $14-17) in the last 5-10min, so was on the hook. Acting on the text message or app notification isnā€™t enough. Need to preemptively reduce incase high prices switch over within the block.

It tries to minimise damage by reacting to 5 minute prices, which is the best you can do with 30-minute billing.

We are all waiting with baited breath for 5-minute billing so that problem goes away (to be replaced with the ā€œhow do we get the current price, and then control the device in a timely mannerā€ problem)

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Hi, Iā€™m trying to create a basic script that I can ā€œcall onā€ via google around the home.
I want to be able to say ā€œwhenā€™s the cheapest powerā€, and the script to output data, so google responds ā€œThe cheapest power will be XXcents at (time) YY:00/30ā€

The time frame Iā€™m flexible on, best case itā€™s hours remaining between the time the question is asked, and say 9pm (ā€œgetting things done hours), but otherwise, in the next 6 hours would work.

I have tried adapting a solution from above for cheapest price in next 2 hours, but 1) I canā€™t work out how to extend it to 6hour period, and 2) also output the time at which the cheapest value occurs (if more than one time has an equal lowest value, then the closest one is fine).

value_template:   >-
            {{ (state_attr('sensor.amber_general_forecast', 'forecasts') | map(attribute='per_kwh')|list|sort).4}}

My current ā€œhey google, whatā€™s the power priceā€ script looks like this (and works perfectly for me):

speak_power_rates:
  alias: Speak power rates
  sequence:
  - delay:
      seconds: 2
  - service: tts.google_say
    entity_id:
    - media_player.living_room_speaker
    data_template:
      message: The power currently costs {{(states('sensor.amber_general_price')
        | float * 100) | int }} cents

Is there a way on your solar edge to limit export to zero when FIT goes negative with HA?

I just got a 10kw 3 phase solar edge inverter with modbus. My only concern is when fit goes negative, I do want to export.

What happened to the forecasts in the attribute section? im on 2022.4.1 and cant see any forecasts anymore :frowning:

I havenā€™t upgraded yet - still on 2022.4.0. Though there hasnā€™t been any code changes.

Will check tomorrow.

Hey @Scott_87 were you checking the forecast sensor?

I just loaded up the tagged version in dev, and itā€™s showing up:

Yes I was checking the forecast sensor. I donā€™t have forecast attributes attached to it


So it might have come down to the fact I hadnā€™t fully removed the HACS version (thought I did :thinking:)

I deleted all the Amber integrations and removed from HACS and did a reboot. It didnā€™t initially come back but a few hours later I can now see forecasts again.

In theory, but itā€™s pretty hairy.

Assuming you can control the inverter output via modbus, you need to dynamically set the output of the inverter to exactly match the consumption of the house (You canā€™t just set the output from the inverter to zero, as your house will always draw from the grid in that case). So youā€™ll need to be hitting control signals pretty hard (ie as fast as you can - youā€™ll constantly need to be responding to changes in the house consumption).

Try at your own riskā€¦

We are doing a bit of user research around automation visualisation - are wanting to talk to people who are automating their batteries and EVs (we donā€™t care what brand) based on price or renewable percentage - we are interested in what metrics you look at to see if you are winning or now.

If you can spare 15 minutes for a quick chat, hit up my DMs!

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Iā€™ve had Amber activate smart shift/solar curtailment/grid services on the SolarEdge inverterā€¦

results are suboptimalā€¦every grid service command seems to reset the inverter and the ramp up is slowā€¦add insult to injuryā€¦weā€™ve had a few moments here that feeding was negative and inverter was tripping and general price was still 0.2ā€¦

might try the self management via modusā€¦even if it draws a little from gridā€¦it would be better than the inverter being in some ramp from reset 80% of the timeā€¦Amber has tried to fix,but no luck

Itā€™s looking like a SolarEgde firmware issue. We have escalated it. Hopefully the can figure it out on their end