I am setting up a small house (2 broom) with 3KW solar, electric heating (3 heaters) and a water heater.
Since I will only be there in the WE, I want to inteligently control the heaters and water heater depending on my solar production and time of the day/week to only heat using my solar energy…
My heaters do have a zigbee thermostat/controler, but my microinverters do not (they use some proprietary wifi that just sends the info to some cloud)…
So I was planning to add a zigbee power meter on the solar output to get the solar production info…
What would be your advice on a zigbee gateway that I can use.
Will the home assistant application allow me to setup complex rules that will allow me to control my heaters?
Is there documentations on rules/scripts somewhere that I could look at?
I think you’ll find HA can do just about anything you want. It has robust energy reporting and management capabilities built in. For what you’re calling scripts, you’d use “automations” in HA. These are pretty well explained in the documentation linked on the home-assistant.io home page.
There are a number of threads about which USB Zigbee coordinator to use, and from what I’ve seen they all work. I use an older model, HUSBZB-1, which does everything I need using the “ZHA” integration, which is native to HA.
There’s a bit of a learning curve, which starts with just learning what everything is called in HA. In addition to automations, you’ll want to understand what is meant by “integrations.” These are components which interface between third-party protocol or process and HA. Many are built in, and many others are available either as supported or third-party add-ons.
The reason I’m mentioning this is I’ve found it’s best to start with just a few different types of components. Home automation is a very dynamic field, and things are changing all the time. The fewer things you have to chase to maintain your system, the easier it will be. It’s very tempting to try out every available option, but every new protocol, every new device type, every new integration adds to your support overhead.
If you want a “Zigbee Gateway”, you can connect Home Assistant SkyConnect - Home Assistant via USB to your home assistant Server. There are many different USB-Sticks that do the same but this stick is coming from the Home assistant People.
A very good list on what is compatible or not can be seen in https://zigbee.blakadder.com/
Be aware that this list shows multiple compatibilities and always be sure that the devices have the “Zigbee Home Automation” Logo when you are using ZHA
