Hello everyone,
I have a Home Assistant setup that I installed from an .iso image. To which, I have since added the GivTCP (ver 3.0.3) Addon to help me manage my GivENERGY solar/battery system.
From a number sources, I note suggestions that into this mix, I could add a SOLCAST prediction.
Can anyone help me, or point to a document that I can use to enable that to happen? My (uninformed) hope, is that using such a prediction, I should be able to automaticity adjust my over-night battery charge to maximise the next day’s sunshine.
Martin, GIVTCP documentation is certainly lacking and often reaching out to the group on Facebook yields little or no response. I recently moved to V3 and had all sort of issues which I ended up sorting myself by just reinstalling the lot again. With regards to your query, Solcast is a free hobby site that predicts your solar forecast based on your location and your solar array setup (pitch, orientation, number of panels, size etc). When plugged into GIVTCP add-on using the Solcast API key they give you, GivTCP can define how much your battery charges up throughout the year rather than charging to the max every time. You define/link it on the GIVTCP config page (Palm section), and enter your GivEnergy API key, Solcast API key and site ID. There is a good video on YouTube (look at Speak To The Geek channel) as you can define your main solar months, shoulder months (when solar starts to drop off) and winter months (when solar drops to minimum). The forecast from Solcast will then be scaled down for the shoulder and winter months you define. Hope you have it sorted already, but if not check out that video. Nigel.
Thank you for taking the time to offer your suggestions. Appreciated. I don’t know if I am looking in the wrong place, I see very little chat or comment on this area. Yes, I have watched (some - maybe not all) Speek to the Geek/givTCP videos.
I am fairly sure that I have setup all that I should setup, but my problem is trying to determine if the forecasting is working or not. How do I tell?
I have set my Target ToC (when forcing) to 90%. And that is what is happening - the battery charges to 90% every night. Regardless of what the forecast (or reality) for Sun is the following day.
What are the numbers that I should look for in the Solcast integration that governs the overnight charge?
Enough for now. If you should feel like holding my hand, I’d be very pleased to hear from you (or anyone else for that matter).