our house benefits a lot from internal solar gain. When (depending on the season) the sun shines at certain times of the day, we get quite some heat into the house which saves a lot of energy especially in winter.
My thought is to turn the heating down early if it is foreseeable that I can expect a lot of solar internal gains in the next hours.
I can of course see via the hourly weather forecast if a sunny situation is coming but depending on the time of year, the timing of when the sun even shines into the house varies.
Is there some kind of module that can calculate a “sunshine corridor” for me?
There is an app called “TPE or The Photographer’s Ephemeris” that can show solar trajectories in VR. Something like that in the Home Assistant would be a good base for me.
Is there such a thing?
Sounds interesting, but I haven’t seen it (yet). There are some variables that might let you create something of your own, maybe even using Bayesian - Home Assistant
Available data in HA:
sun angle/elevation: {{ state_attr("sun.sun","elevation") }}
position from the north {{ state_attr("sun.sun","azimuth") }}
Add the a weather forecast and maybe even a Lux meter (or solar panels) as a sunlight validator, and you might be able to create your own sensor.
I think this thread might help. I’m linking to the post with a link to a very useful site to simulate the sun. There’s actually a fair bit of complexity to this and you might want to consider just getting a light sensor for your corridor.
Nice idea, I‘m thinking along similar lines. For a proof-of-concept you might consider an integration which forecasts energy production of photovoltaic installations, e.g. Forecast.Solar. This could give you an idea of the solar gain to expect.
Bc my idea of predictive heating based on actual outside temperature, brightness, weather forecast and irradiation forecast is in an early stage and I‘m not a machine-learning pro I can’t give you better advice. But I‘d appreciate it if you could keep us informed. Thanks!