Stopping energy production during negative price : beginner friendly guide [Enphase Envoy standard]

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1

I am documenting my setup that stops production from solar PV during (high negative pricing). My searches did not give me a complete solution applicable to my situation so I thought I would document this for others who may need it.

My situation : Home user, based in the Netherlands. 12 solar panels generating around 4.5MWh annually. PV system based on Enphase Envoy Standard (not Envoy Metered). On dynamic energy contract with Tibber. No battery storage.

My solution strategy : For now, stop solar production when energy prices go below approx -12 cents. This number is the based on the netting on energy tax in 2026. In 2027, this number would be around 3 cents because there is no netting of taxes.
The standard way to do this would be to upgrade to Enphase Envoy Metered and use the built in features to measure power and stop production/export. But I did not want to pay for the upgrade and here we are.

How to achieve this:
[I would consider this quite easy to setup if you are already familiar with HA. Otherwise, it may take a bit of effort to understand everything happening here, but overall, quite easy]

  • Get Home Assistant (duh!). I have it on a container on my NAS. But any other method should work too.
  • Get an installer account for Enphase. Normal owner account will not work. DIY account may work, but you pay 250$ fees to activate stuff. You will need to use a different email address and choose 'I am an installer' (not DIY owner). You can make up fictitious company details. Enphase does not really care. It helps to use your home address and may be even your name because it would make the story easy for Enphase customer support if you need to contact them.
  • From your Enphase Owner account, add this installer company as a maintainer. [In my case, I had to contact Enphase support who suggested that I must first complete the free solar installer course from their university. Apparently at least one user from the company needs to have this certificate to allowed to be added as a maintainer. I am not 100% sure if that is a real requirement, but in any case, I could speedrun the course in about 1 hour]
  • If you already have Enphase integration for HA, uninstall it (you will still have all historical data afterwards)
  • Install HACS https://hacs.xyz/
  • Install the HACS Enphase installer integration GitHub - vincentwolsink/home_assistant_enphase_envoy_installer: This is a HACS custom integration for Enphase Envoys with firmware version 7 and up. · GitHub This will expose the 'Production enable/disable' option for Envoy to home assistant
  • Setup automations to turn the production off when some negative price is reached and turn it back on when it is back above a certain threshold.
    Mine looks like this:
alias: Stop-production-for -12 cents
description: ""
triggers:
  - type: value
    device_id: [your Tibber device id]
    entity_id: [Electricity_Price_Tibber]
    domain: sensor
    trigger: device
    below: -0.12
conditions:
  - condition: device
    type: is_on
    device_id: Envoy_XXXX
    entity_id: Envoy_XXXX_Production
    domain: switch
actions:
  - action: notify.mobile_app_xxxx
    metadata: {}
    data:
      message: Price below -12 cents, stopping production
      title: Solar stopping
  - type: turn_off
    device_id: Envoy_XXXX
    entity_id: Envoy_XXXX_Production
    domain: switch
mode: single
2

I have a similar setup and when my EV arrives I want to switch to a dynamic contract. I am not very experienced in HA yet. In your automation the panels switch off, would it be possible to scale them down as well (0 net export)? Also do the panels turn back on when the price exceeds -0,12?

3

From what I understand, only with Envoy metered and current transformers the net export option is possible (it will scale the production of each panel in increments of 25% to meet current consumption demand). With Enovy standard, this is not possible.
About second part, indeed you just setup an automation to turn on production when price is above -0,12 EUR

4

Thank you sir for describing this. I am about to accept a quote for an Enphase system but the uncertainty regarding whether HA can stop production is holding me back. I have a couple of questions:

  • when I get my Enphase system, could I ask the installer to create me an account with installer rights?
  • was the training difficult?
  • with the Standard instead of Metered, which measurements/metrics do you still get and which do you miss?
5

Sorry, I am not here often, but here we go.

  • when I get my Enphase system, could I ask the installer to create me an account with installer rights? --> No, the installer account is something you have to create independently (independent of owner account). Then the owner account can add the installer account as the installer. The original installer can also do it, but you need to have your installer account ready in time.
  • was the training difficult? --> Not at all. Assuming you have some technical background in electrical engineering (high-school level). You need to understand currents, voltages, resistance etc. It just takes some time. Each block has tests that you need to get 100% right to proceed. It took me about 3 hours.
  • with the Standard instead of Metered, which measurements/metrics do you still get and which do you miss? --> I would recommend going for the metered version. You get the consumption and export data sensors in addition to production. For now, I use the Tibber P1 meter sensor as the 'export' sensor and Envoy as production sensor. The difference is the consumption. While this works, having all enphase metered will allow each panel/inverter to be regulated at fractional power instead of full on/off like now I have.

I would go for metered to maximize self consumption. Otherwise, you fully turn off during low prices, but then any consumption is from the grid. When the netting ends in 2027, this is not the best economically.

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