Best practices to close window shutters at dusk

Configuration
1

I have been using home assistant for a couple of month now. The first thing I implemented have been my rollershutters, replacing the old decentralized controls with Shelly 2.5 controlled centrally via home assistant.
Mainly I trigger it once the sun’s elevation reaches -5°. The value was chosen a couple of months ago, as this seems to be just about dark enough. As we are moving into Spring, days are getting longer (I am in the northern hemisphere) and the automation correctly shuts the shutters later every day, but my impression is that nowadays, when the sun reaches the -5° it is by far not as dark as it was a couple of months ago.
So generally speaking, the shutters could close even later.
What are your experiences? I would be interested if anybody has noticed something similar and on what conditions you are running your shutters.

Cheers

2

The sun elevation and light levels are closely linked - things like cloud cover play into it too, but if you ignore that then -5 is -5. Whether that’s the shortest day, or the longest day, light levels (when the cloud cover is the same) will be broadly the same.

You could add a light sensor if you want something more flexible, that will close the shutters purely based on the light level.

3

Okay thanks for the reply, I somehow figured that this is the case. Maybe it was only an objective observation. I will adjust the percentage from -5 to -6. For now this seems to be the sweetspot for dusk and continue monitoring throughout the year.