Nabu Casa, Please focus on Home Energy Management

Energy
1

Hi,

I want to shout out to the good people of Nabu Casa en all the members of the Home Assistant Community!

First off all, this is my personal opinion, so be gentle in your responses :innocent:

I think it’s about time for the year of the Home Energy Management(or whatever timespan)
The energy sector, governments, companies and home users are struggling with all kinds of issues this energy transition is having.
Many good things are being done, like more and more solar panels, EV’s, home and area batteries, smart electrical devices etc.
Home Assistant has integrations to many of the devices and can report on it, but this more or less a Energy monitoring system (Like the energy dashboard) and not an energy management system.
EMHASS(@davidusb )is doing a great job but after installing it over a year ago, I still find it too complicated and dont know if this is what’s needed for the majority of us.
In the mean time more and more niche players and energy companies are creating Home Energy Management System(HEMS) software solutions. These solutions are often proprietary, based on their own hardware platform and certainly not open.
I don’t want to make this a long post and I think I made my point by now.

My opinion is that Home Assistant can play a major role in the HEMS area.
Butt… It need to be more automated, clever(AI based ??) and user friendly.

I’m not a climate activist, but Home Assistant can help in making the world more sustainable and greener
And with all do respect to for example Voice Assistants (year of the voice), Energy Management is many times more important and worth the time and effort to bring this to the next level in Home Assistant.

Again this is my personal opinion and based on the Dutch/EU state of the energy transition.

Thanks,

Rien

9 Likes
2

I agree with that! I think that efficient energy management is a central part of a smart home.

3

I’m not totally with you, but that might very well be me, not exactly understanding what you’re after. :wink: :slight_smile:

Please give us/me a more detailed view on what you’d expect. I for one am living in a rented flat (typical for Germany), so the way I could influence these things is not really an energy management, more like a switch off the Zigbee outlet. :rofl:

But nonetheless I can see a huge need for people, who actually can influence their energy systems, house owners for example. :slight_smile: Or did you have something in mind even for rented flats and apartments? :wink:

4

Hi,

I think what the OP has in mind is similar to certain commercial offerings. There are a number of websites on this topic; here is one example from Germany:

HEMS page

There are various objectives a user might set. For me it is to optimize use of solar power when electric rates are high. For others, it could be optimization of home battery charging and discharging.

I would love to see a push by the Home Assistant dev team for Home Energy Management. It is likely a big challenge, but with a large payoff for users.

I agree that EMHASS is a great integration for this purpose, but I think it’s best for power users. I gave up on using EMHASS myself. (There is also a Blueprint for optimizing solar excess, but I haven’t tried it yet.)*

HEMS opportunities in rental flats may be limited, unfortunately. Perhaps commercial systems combined with regulations would be the answer for flat rentals. (?)

*Blueprint Solar Excess PV Optimizer