Hi everyone! I’m Franz, a developer from Austria. My parents have solar, a battery, a wallbox and a resistive water heater, and zero interest in writing YAML or building automations. So over the past months I built them “Franzl”: a Home Assistant add-on plus companion app (iOS + Android) that manages the household’s energy on its own. Solar surplus comes first, price optimisation kicks in where tariffs are dynamic.
What it does: PV surplus charging for the EV (vendor-independent), shifting hot water, AC, pool pumps and smart plugs onto solar, consumption shifting with dynamic tariffs (aWATTar/EPEX for AT/DE), battery priority, and a daily plan with an honest look back at what actually happened.
Under the hood it’s a real optimizer, not a set of if-then rules: a MILP planner (HiGHS) re-plans the next 24 h every 15 minutes against solar forecast and prices, while a realtime controller follows the actual measurements every few seconds, including cloud dips, battery priority and contactor-wear protection. One rule throughout: if it isn’t measured, it isn’t claimed.
Setup is deliberately simple: install the add-on, get the app, enter a pairing code. Devices are discovered through your existing HA installation. Requires Home Assistant OS. There are profiles for ~140 devices common in Europe (Fronius, SMA, Kostal, Sonnen, go-e, KEBA, NRGkick, Easee, OCPP wallboxes, SG-Ready heat pumps, Shelly and more). What’s battle-tested daily is my parents’ setup: Fronius GEN24 with battery, NRGkick, ABB Terra via OCPP, Ohmpilot, VW ID.4, Tesla Model Y.
It’s a beta and currently completely free. Being upfront about the model: monitoring will stay free, the autopilot part is planned to become a small subscription later. It’s not open source, but everything runs locally on your box. Cloud is only used for login and push.
Heads-up on availability: the apps are currently in European app stores only. US support would need some extensions.
It has exactly one production install so far: my parents. 
That’s why I’m here. I’m looking for a handful of people willing to let it loose on their real setup and tell me where it breaks. And to say thanks: everyone whose feedback helps me during the beta gets lifetime premium, on me.
Website with everything: getfranzl.com
I’d love your feedback. Questions and skepticism welcome, I’ll answer everything here. Thank you!
