The scenario is this: every October to April, my clocks move forwards 1 hour for summer time. This includes clocks in the computers. Also, my electricity charges are based on the time of day - Time Of Use - TOU, with peak, shoulder and off peak costs.
However, the electricity company doesn’t change their times to match summer time.
So, off peak starts at 10pm normally, but at 11pm during summer.
Naturally, I’d like have as much electricity drawn during the cheapest times.
The question is: how do I set up an automation to start at those different times?
I have a couple of possibilities, and wonder what you guys think?
1/ Just make the automation start at 11pm, summer or standard time.
This is simple, but loses one hour of cheaper electricity.
2/ Set up automations in October to enable a summer time automation and disable the standard automation, and do the opposite in April.
This takes advantage of the extra hour, but is more complex, potentially requiring 3 extra automations: 1 to disable and enable, and 2 others to call the actual automation at different times.
Another possibility is to use GMT, which doesn’t change with summer time.
But how do you access it in a trigger?
as far as I know, triggers set on time will be for the local timezone
if you wanted it based on UTC only (so don’t apply daylight saving) I would suggest a trigger on both times (daylight and not) and a condition that check the hour is correct. See below example set for 22 UTC (23 BST if you’re in the UK / GMT +1)
{{as_timestamp(now()) | timestamp_custom("%H", false) | int == 22}}
false here is the keyword to not use local time
[EDIT]
Don’t do that, set a template trigger with the above template: