Hi all,
Can anyone please suggest a smart plug with a power limiter function? If the power consumption of the load is too high, I should be able to limit the power. (ex. if the Air con is draining too much energy, rather than switching it off, I want to reduce the power given to the Air con.)
This is because my air con does not have wifi function to connect with Home Assistant.)
Any link or suggestion is highly appreciated.
There is no way to reduce the power an airco is drawing other than from the unit itself. It is not like a light bulb that you can dim.
And even if you could, not sure that is something you should do.
I would assume the compressor would have to work harder and fail sooner.
When the big AI centers use lots of power or cut away from the mains the fluctuating effect on the grid will cause compressors to die sooner.
They say…
Then you build it. Or go with IR.
What’s your ac model/brand?
With any smart plug (with sufficient capacity) you would be able to write an automation to shut the air conditioner off if the current gets too high.
I’m not sure what good that would do though. The AC is likely going to draw a pretty consistent amount of power at each setting. It’s not like there will be a sudden increase beyond the “high” setting. If that setting risks overloading something in your electrical system, then don’t run it on that setting.
There’s also a normal spike when the compressor motor starts up. That should only be a second or so, but whatever you do will have to accommodate that.
This is not valid with modern inverter AC, they can draw X or X/10 while setting is not changed.
Also while they can stand power outages once in a while, they are not designed to be turned off by cutting the power.
Right. I thought about mentioning inverter models, but they only make the problem worse. I don’t think you’d want to control them via some sort of smart plug. The appliance will control the power level to the compressor internally.
What might work would be a smart plug to monitor the power being drawn, and a universal remote, controlled by HA, to turn down the AC (or up to a higher temperature) when some threshold is reached.
Even that has problems. If you know the AC can draw more power than your electrical system can provide, you shouldn’t install it in the first place. Maybe for load shedding during peak periods you could cobble something together which would keep it running at a lower power draw. But that’s not really how the controls on these things are designed.