This is just to share how I have been helping other family members understand what is left in the house hold batteries so they can adjust their behaviour.
TLDR
Sharing House Battery SOC or KwH left in the battery with family members did not alter core behaviour but singing to a predicted spare capacity in hours normally between 3.5 hours spare down to 0 hours spare, does inform family members and causes minor behaviour changes.
This came as a bit of revelation to me, but no doubt it has been done before but thought worth mentioning for anyone else out there.
Long Read
I use the Ulanzi Awtrix ‘pixel’ displays for publishing status of critical devices, alerts (front door not locked, side or rear gates, or shed doors left open, parcel box, leaks, windows left open etc etc).
I tried publishing the battery State of Charge (SOC), I have a 20kWh battery pack, so about 16kWh of energy to get me through peak energy rates from 05:30 to 23:30 each day.
We push as much as possible to overnight using Home Assistant to do that.
Using SOC did not give my better half any real feel for how we are doing, so tried changing to how many kWh we have left, not much progress with that.
What is seeming to work is I calculate how many ‘normal’ hours of usage left in the batteries after we go into OffPeak.
ie by midday we are at 80% SOC, 12KwH left but the display now shows how much spare we project will have left.
Normally by midday it will be showing ~3.5hrs projected spare, if my wife has been baking, needed to run washing machine/dishwasher/dryer/ more showers then the figure will go down.
If at anytime it projects less that 0 then it causes alerts to me, we can adjust our activities or just eat the costs of Peak energy, which by the time the battery runs out it is very late and hourly usage is very low indeed, so may incur a 20p penalty. I can live with it.
Not had a time when we have run out yet, but had some times when we got very close ![]()
By doing this we save about £2,400 a year on elec costs.
The balance here is how do we cut costs without becoming my dad ![]()
Anyway, I have found that giving family members a scale they can see that runs from a 3.x to 0 allows them to make minor adjustments without any drama.