Hi I just got a new hybrid Rheem Platimun Premium ProTerra hot water heater and HA integration is working but the available hot water metric appears to be inaccurate.
This is not an issue with the integration. It is an issue with Rheem. They have done a very strange method of interpreting how much hot water is left by doing a 4-state encoder. 100%, 40%, 10% and 0%.
There are no other values available. It would require Rheem to expose the temp at the top and bottom of the tank to the API to do anything beyond use what they provide.
Also - when the unit is on high demand mode, is it normal for the elements to only run for 30 seconds to a minute and turn off? there are a few instances where it only runs for 6 seconds and turns off… this water heater is brand new.!!!
There are just two sensors. Top and bottom water temp. They have some sort of algorithm that compares those temps and calculates the percentage. The output of that algorithm is the 4 states.
As to the high demand mode - I can’t say as I almost never use it. I have a hot water mixing valve so I keep my tank at 130-140F depending on time of day. For a family of 5 with showers and laundry my compressor does 98% of the heating. In the evening with high usage and cold groundwater, I do get short spikes of element use with balanced mode. The upper element can dump a lot of BTUs pretty quickly and I’m sure there is an optimizing routine that only heats the water enough to let the compressor catch up.
Here is a one hour period where we had a load of laundry, a shower and a tub drawn last night. You can see I had several short bursts while the compressor ran the whole time. The 6 seconds might have been right on the edge of when the element was needed.