We’ve just had an airconditioning unit installed in one of our rooms. Currently it just has a simple automation: whenever the temp is above 27C and it’s between specific times, it turns on. Below, it turns off. (27 sounds really high but it’s the temperature it signals when it’s comfortable in the room, so I think it measures it higher than it actually is –if I’d hazard a guess it’s around 24 degrees– but that’s okay).
The installer told us that the automatic mode on the unit itself can be weird sometimes, eg., turning on in winter when it’s cold but, by chance, it’s hit by direct sunlight (we’ve got a glass ceiling). So I made this one for now, but I have to finetune it still.
So I was wondering: are there any best practices when automating an airconditioning unit? Tips and tricks on which things to include, what to think of? Tips for preventing high energy usage?
PS: I’ve posted on Reddit as well, where connecting to the underfloor heating was given, making sure there’s no door open with the sensors on the doors, check if someone’s home etc. But I thought people here may have useful tips as well!
There are a lot of ways you can manipulate this to prevent false positives or false negatives in addition to direct wiring devices into your lines:
Is anyone home? Simple template to check people home.
On vacation?
Sleeping?
Season of the year
Is the heater running?
I have an aux cooling system in my home and use those to make sure I’m not wasting power or fighting my furnace, just a few options for you.
I’m a big fan of using things like helpers to control EVERY automation. All my automation reads helpers like sleep mode (Sleeping, Awake, Napping, etc), guest mode, vacation mode, the seasons and so forth. By doing that you only have to remember to use those conditions instead of doing custom conditions for every possible scenario.
@CO_4X4 Oh those helpers are great! I’ll look to implement those. What do you use to ‘measure’ sleeping for instance? Is it certain times in combination with, say, your phone being charged / alarm turned on?
How do you limit the energy usage? I’m not sure if it’s best to just turn it on for a couple of degrees and if a certain lower temp is reached turn it off again until it reaches the higher trigger temperature again, and if so, if it’s better to keep those triggers close together or further apart.
You could trigger that based on a device being charged or being in sleep mode (think Apple shortcuts that flips a HomeKit switch tied to HA). For me, because I have a bunch of things that occur before bedtime (security checks, turning off lights, etc) I just tied it into my voice system: “Siri, goodnight”.
Short of tying in a device (i.e., Shelly) to your wiring to actually know the usage, you can try to use logic like “is the heater on” or “if nobody is home why am I heating the house”.
That is what I would do. I try to look at all automation as “what would I do physically if I had no automation” then simply replicate those steps. If you had unlimited time would you turn it on at X degrees and off at Y? Once you decide what you would do then you simply automate from there. Here’s an example: when we shower we turn on several lights in the master bedroom that don’t need to be on otherwise, so I have a smart switch in the shower which has a single purpose - to know if someone turned on the shower light as I don’t actually control it. By knowing our habits and having that, I now can say “when the light comes on and if the number of showers taken today (helper entity) is less than the people currently home (device trackers) then someone is taking a shower and turn on the lights”.
Trial and error based on what works as you use it.
Yeah with energy usage I meant if it would be more energy-conscious to do short bursts of airconditioning (say, trigger when above 27 degrees and turn off when 26), or to do longer ones (above 28 degrees and turn off when 23) for example. Which option would be more energy efficient in the long run. Short bursts are, well, shorter time the airconditioning is on and I can imagine it’s easier to cool down 1 or 2 degrees, but there’s the start-up and power-off energy usage to consider as well. I don’t know if you know the answer, but I might as well ask haha.
The sleep mode helper is a good one, I’ll remember that!
It’s hard to say, one way or the other you are using about the same amount of energy to do short bursts as you will longer ones (many studies about this very practice), I don’t think it will be a huge difference since both get you to the same temperature and it takes about the same energy to get you there.
To me, being energy efficient, means running it only when it makes sense - but if it makes sense then run it. It doesn’t make sense to run it when you aren’t home or when it’s winter or especially when the furnace is running. You might trigger it to run when you have been X over your set point of Y for Z minutes rather than on demand or in some pre-determined schedule. So you set it for when it’s been above 27 degrees for 5 minutes in the Summer or Spring, maybe that changes to above 27 for 30 minutes in Winter or Fall. That’s the trial and error.
Thanks! I’ve just set up that it only turns on when we want it to (location, temp for X amount of minutes, floor heating isn’t on, doors aren’t open etc). I added feel temperature instead of seasons, that way I don’t need to include the seasons and I’ve had it for a different automation anyhow.
First thing to ask: Is it an Inverter Air Conditioner or a Non-Inverter Air Conditioner you have installed?
In regards to electricity consumption this can make quite a difference. Especially if you plan to turn it ON and OFF based on room temperature. A continuous ON and OFF can go hard on the compressor of the AC unit and doesn’t help much on your electricity bill.
You might want to read about the latter HERE before implementing automation stuff based on room temperatrure.
Looked it up in the rerferring catalog: Your AC model is an Inverter Air Conditioner. Hence I would use automations sparingly because its compressor will run idle with little power usage anyway if the preset room temperature has been reached.
Hmm, I’d like it to at least only run when certain conditions are met. Would it then be best to just activate the auto mode whenever those conditions are met? Regardless of inside temperature? What would your recommend?
Well, it depends totally on your personal preferences for feeling comfy.
What I have done HA automation wise with all of our ACs in the sleeping rooms is for i.e. to rise the temperature 2°C every night at 01:30 AM. This saves alot of energy with 3 units running non-stop during night time. No family member has ever noticed this for the last years. Neither did over-night friends in the guest room
As the kids tend to set their AC units to as cool as possible using the manual remote I put another automation in place which overrides the manual settings and set HVAC mode and fan mode to a preset I configured with HA automations.
Other than the above the only HA automations I use is to switch OFF the AC units if the door/window(s) are left open for a certain time.
Thanks! Yeah one of the conditions here is that it won’t start up at night. The airconditioning unit is in our conservatory (hope that’s the right word haha), so it isn’t needed to cool it at night –then there’s no one there. The automation only takes place between 7 AM and 12AM; if there’s no doors open; if either the alarm system’s off OR we’re not home + the alarm system’s on; the outside feel temperature is above 15; the doors in the conservatory are closed. I’ve also built in a delay of a few minutes and picked a higher temp trigger to turn it on (27) versus the temp trigger to power down (25) to prevent it continously starting up and powering down.
Only thing left, I think, is to see which temperatures are most comfortable and so what the high and low triggers should be.
