I’m currently getting quotes for home solar and battery systems. One that seems quite well priced is Duracell’s Dura5 battery. Having to rely on cloud servers is a deal breaker for me, and my Googling has only turned up getting Home Assistant to interface with this battery by doing RESTful stuff with Duracell’s cloud.
However, the spec sheet says that the Dura5 battery has CAN / RS485 communication ports, so is it possible to get Home Assistant to control this kit locally?
For hybrid inverters and batteries, you cannot control the battery, only the inverter.
Batteries talk to inverters, usually over CANbus. You need to connect to the inverter, which is possibly a Dura-i device.
This appears to have the usual CAN and RS485 ports to connect to the battery and to the CT clamp meter. Extra RS485 port may offer Modbus RTU, and if there is indeed Ethernet (optional LAN/WiFi dongle) then Modbus over TCP may also be offered. Like many manufacturers today, monitoring and control is offered over a cloud based app, and other access can be limited.
Actually doing anything with Modbus by direct connection to the inverter requires knowing the correct settings, protocol, and registers, which are often not willingly offered. However, many devices are actually badged products / systems from the mainstream manufacturers, and will use or mimic something like Solis, Deye, Sunsynk, or Growatt. This can mean that, with a bit of tinkering, an existing HA integration for another brand could work. Of course, unless someone else has already taken this step, with a newly introduced and small market device, you may find yourself being the first person to try and connect to this particular model.
If open Modbus communication is offered (RTU or TCP) by the inverter, and if physical connection can be made, and if the register map used is fairly similar to eg Solis, and if the inverter data and control commands are fairly standard, then I would suggest possibly yes with time and effort.
Interestingly, I had an installer quote the other day for Duracell batteries paired with a Solis inverter (because he said the Duracell inverters are crap), so that may be an option. Although that installer also swore blind that there are no products on the market that can do whole home backup, so I question his knowledge a bit!
I’ve been working on an ESPHome node to monitor a Duracell Dura-i5 inverter that only exposes data over Bluetooth (no RS-485 wired connection used here). The goal was to:
This post shares my current ESPHome config and explains what it does.
BLE1423PH)0xFF10, write 0xFF11, notify 0xFF12At a high level, the node:
0x2000 region: SoC, battery volts/amps0x1400 region: MPPT1 / MPPT2 power0x150F : an alternative PV power candidate (scaled u/10)0x130B : used as load power (AC side)It then publishes:
These map directly into the Energy dashboard.
The tricky bit with this inverter is that different sources disagree or go stale:
load – grid – battery_bus0x1400The script adds a “consistency layer” that:
pv_consistency_w: "80" # absolute tolerance in W
pv_consistency_frac: "0.25" # fractional tolerance vs derived PV
pv_headroom_w: "120" # slack over Load+charge for rounding/noise
tol_abs / tol_frac)load + discharge + pv_headroom_wResult: PV doesn’t randomly jump or show “ghost solar” at night.
On top of that, there’s a simple grid lockout with hysteresis and PV coverage check:
Substitutions:
soc_unlock_pct: "16.0" # below -> allow grid import
soc_relock_pct: "18.0" # above -> re-lock (self mode)
pv_lock_margin_w: "50.0" # require PV >= Load - margin to lock grid
Logic:
grid_lock_active) flips when:
soc_unlock_pct → allow grid importsoc_relock_pct → re-enable lockPV ≥ load - pv_lock_margin_w)If those conditions aren’t met, grid power is allowed to go positive so the house doesn’t go dark or cook the battery.
I’ve exposed the main tunables as ESPHome number, select, and switch entities so you don’t have to recompile to tweak behaviour.
Ibat Scale K0x2008 for battery current; this scales the raw value into real amps, considering pack count.Grid Deadband (W)Battery Clamp Threshold (W)PV Floor (W)Ibat Source – choose which battery current register to trust:
Auto (prefers 0x2008 when present, else 0x200D)0x20080x200DPV Mode – how strict we are with MPPTs:
AnyPresent – if either MPPT1 or MPPT2 looks sane, we can use the sumBothRequired – insist on having both MPPT channels validPV Derive: Assume Grid~0There’s a small support layer that decides day vs night and keeps MPPT fresh:
0x1400 MPPT window (function 0x03 and 0x04) to “hammer” it and keep those numbers aliveOn boot, there’s also a hammer_mppt script that runs a quick burst of MPPT reads once we’ve seen a valid load value. This helps populate sensors as soon as possible after a restart.
Some of the key sensors exposed to Home Assistant:
Instantaneous:
Battery SoC (%)Battery Power (-dis) (W, negative means discharge)Load Power (W)PV Power (W, after consistency logic)Grid Power (W, positive import / negative export)Battery Voltage (V, internal)Battery Current (A, internal)PV Source Status (text: tells you which PV source is being used and current PV W)Frames OK, CRC Errors, Exception Frames, Last Frame Age for debugging the BLE/Modbus layerEnergy (for the Energy dashboard):
PV Energy (kWh)Grid Import Energy (kWh)Grid Export Energy (kWh)Load Energy (kWh)Battery Charge Energy (kWh)Battery Discharge Energy (kWh)These are all sensor.integration entities using trapezoid integration and converted from W·h to kWh with a simple *0.001 filter.
I’ve just got my Duracell Inverter and Battery. Turns out they are basically the same as the Skyline inverter. So I used this integration, and followed the instructions to wire it all up: GitHub - iPeel/HA-Skyline: Skyline integration for Home Assistant
Works like a charm.
Hi,
Just had a Duracell Dura-i inverter and battery installed and want to integrate into HA for monitoring following in your footsteps.
In trying to plan the best hardware setup and routing for cabling, can you say whether the integration is able to talk through USB x RS485 Modbus adapter? In my case it would be much easier running a cable from the inverter to a USB x RS485 adapter at the server end as opposed to going to the adapter mentioned in the document and then on to the server. I’m asking you as not able to identify the creator of the integration.
Kind regards
Wonder if you can share what you’ve installed please as I’m in the same position with the inverter of a dura-i.
I’ve installed HAHome to the ESP32 can see all the BLE devices but they are not auto discovering, but also don’t have any idea what integration you’re running for this so if you could share that would be fab.
Thanks
Hi David - wonder if you can assist, I’ve a duracell Dura5 G3 model, is this what you have? I’ve also had a look at the skyline integration and connected up the Tx and Rx + GND but get nothing through, is your RS485 port a 4 or 10 pin port? struggling to get this into HA and the duracell app is well , rubbish
I’ve finally moved forward and installed the Peel Skyline Integration as described above. Works like a charm as previously stated by David. The only downside that’s bugging me is that it identifies as a ‘cyg Skyline’ inverter BUT the Dura-i model number is correct.
Hi Gitano
Can you advise what you’ve used settings wise and how you’ve managed this as I would love to get this setup. What inverter you using? a G1 or G3?
Thanks in advance.
Any chance you can share what you’ve done gitano, as I’ve completed the same as yourself but get nothing? do you have a g1 or g3 inverter, mine is a g3 and really need to get this up and running.
Is there anything to add on what’s in the installation guide if the integration? I have been trying to follow but getting blank on the ACT light with nothing from the inverter, any tips?