Turning on/off a device when the average price is .90% or 1.05% of the daily energy price

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

Hi everybody,

I’m getting more and more frustrated by HA and the way things are overcomplicated (for my Neanderthal brain). I have HA running on a HP PC in native HAOS. Runs fine, very stable and there is a lot of things that work good.

But the one thing I don’t seem to get working (well, there are more than one) but this one is important to me…

Why is it not possible (or why can I not find it anywhere) to start or stop a device (water heater, floor heating or Jacuzzi heater) when the price is over for example 1.05-1.10% of the daily average, and to start it again as soon the price is sunken to the average or below average price.?

If tried automations from Komakino and Anhelgesen. I tried it with Tibber and Nordpool, but it never works to my expectation in more than one or two days.

I don’t need to know the price fluctuations over a three day period. I don’t need to know how many hours of the day are seen as ‘expensive’.

These devices I’m talking about never need to be ‘off’ in lets say more than 5-6 hours in a row.

If the average price today is say 1kr and tomorrow 1,50kr I need to be the devices to be turned off if the price goed over the daily average.

In my head that sounds very clear and easy, but I’m not capable to turn this into a script or whatever it needs to be.

Sometimes I try to copy something that should fit right in my template file, but then everything goes to h*ll because there was already something there that referred to a template. (Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.) This looks very good even it is way more complicated then I need.

I november (we are at day 6 today), I’ve already used over 620kWh. That why I seriously need a way to cut out the most expensive hours.

I’m even willing to pay for a guaranteed solution if somebody will help me with that.

My wish would be:

An (entity or sensor or whatever it needs to be that shows me everyday the average price between 00:01 and 23:59 of that day. And than a script bases on that average price minus or plus a few percent that turns off one or more devices.

A failsafe script that turns the device on again after say 6 hours, to be absolute certain the device is powered on even if a signal goes rogue. Ask me why

I hate cold showers😂

The devices I’m talking about have been proven to toggle easy manually in 'settings, devices and services.

Please help

Greetings,

Ewout Schalkwijk
Norway

[Boilerplate4u]

Great question! This probably belongs in the “What the heck?!” category too.

It’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while, but haven’t found a good solution for, especially when it comes to controlling heating with our HVAC in our vacation home with two guest cabins.

I have a solid background as a developer, but I still find it a real pain in the back to handle YAML and template programming using {%…%}, mostly because you need to have a really good understanding of the HVAC integration and be able to tell the difference between fully developed entities and half-baked ones that can only access values as attributes. For example, the HVAC integration varies a lot between Panasonic, Daikin, and Mitsubishi.

Also, it seems there’s no way to save the state of a device before it turns off, to restore it back to the same settings later or before running a script that changes stuff.

It feels like someone needs to have a look at the user process (ie way of working) without just claiming ‘this is FOSS, fix it yourself’ or ‘everything can be solved using YAML, you just have to learn how to programming it’.

I think there’s a lot of truth in the following article:

IoT Unravelled Part 1: It's a Mess... But Then There's Home Assistant

[OldSurferDude]

@Boilerplate4u

Also, it seems there’s no way to save the state of a device before it turns off, to restore it back to the same settings later or before running a script that changes stuff.

I use the helper input_number to store data. It’s awkard beyond belief, but such is life in HA. I designed a water flow meter using an Arduino. The maximum number of writes to the NVRAM of the Arduino is less thant the number of lifetime changes to the water volume.

Every time the volume changes, the value is sent to HA. In HA I copy the number to the input_number. When there is a power failure, on boot, the Arduino requests the number and resets its local value.

It’s not you @EwoutSchalkwijk , HA is not well documented, awkward and arcane. Forums and blogs are not documentation. (Which reminds me, I have to get back to documenting my water meter so I can figure out what I did

OSD

[complex1 (Frank)]

Maybe this is something for you?

Cheapest Energy Hours - Jinja macro for dynamic energy prices

[hacs_badge] [Version] [Buy me a coffe] [Paypal] A jinja macro to easily find the cheapest block of hours to know when to turn on your dryer Why this macro If your energy provider uses dynamic pricing, you might want to know when to turn on devices which consume a lot of power. It is relatively easy to find the lowest price on the day, but if it takes 3 hours for your dryer to complete, you might want to find the cheapest block of hours. It could be that the cheapest hour is not even in tha…

[khvej8]

If you look at the Nordpool attributes, it provides a mean of the day, and a current percent compared to average.

average: 3.280333333333333
off_peak_1: 2.5096249999999998
off_peak_2: 3.01725
peak: 3.8818333333333332
min: 2.236
max: 7.603
mean: 2.8345000000000002
unit: kWh
currency: DKK
country: Denmark
region: DK2
low_price: false
price_percent_to_average: 1.4559495986180266
today: 2.302, 2.295, 2.261, 2.265, 2.268, 2.236, 2.776, 3.674, 3.481, 2.98, 2.893, 2.797, 2.797, 2.819, 2.948, 3.437, 4.45, 7.603, 5.601, 4.776, 3.978, 2.85, 2.701, 2.54
tomorrow: 2.21, 2.199, 2.187, 2.182, 2.007, 2.22, 2.598, 3.26, 3.428, 3.074, 3.036, 2.905, 2.907, 2.887, 2.952, 3.331, 3.912, 5.938, 5.067, 4.082, 3.687, 2.71, 2.688, 2.579

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

@khvej8

You are certainly right with the averages here, but how to make a script that looks at the current price in comparison to the average and act on it. that is the big question.

Thanks for your reply

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

@complex1

I’m gonna dive in to it. At least it has an ‘installer’. Thanks for the tip

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

@Boilerplate4u

So an ‘helper’ could help? Let’s hope somebody can do something with it.

@OldSurferDude
Thanks for saying it is not (only) me. Sometimes I feel really stupid while struggling with YAML etc.

[Boilerplate4u]

Yeah, I’ve tried a few times (most recently this summer) but gave up because of inconsistent handling of entities and attributes for different HVAC integrations, which means you have to account for tons of exceptions. It always ends up as this incomprehensible and unmanageable spaghetti code that doesn’t work, and the whole thing just crashes due to my frustration (WTF PITA! ).

In my opinion, the current solution with templates/helpers works pretty well for small fixes. But if you want to do something more complex, you need a better solution. Why not just allow Python or another real and structured scripting language???

This is just a very small example how it might look like:

- sensor:
  - name: PT HVAC Activity
    state: "{{ state_attr('climate.tstat_4590be_lyric_t6_pro_thermostat', 'hvac_action') }}"
  - name: PP HVAC Activity
    state: "{{ state_attr('climate.tstat_8bf055_t6_pro_thermostat', 'hvac_action') }}"
  - name: Flex Room HVAC Activity
    state: "{{ state_attr('climate.tstat_899b8c_t6_pro_thermostat', 'hvac_action') }}"

  - name: HVAC Activity
    state: >
      {% set hvac = [ states('sensor.pt_hvac_activity'), states('sensor.pp_hvac_activity'), states('sensor.flex_room_hvac_activity') ] %}
      {% if hvac | select('eq', 'heating') | list | count > 0 %}
        heating
      {% elif hvac | select('eq', 'cooling') | list | count > 0 %}
        cooling
      {% elif hvac | select('eq', 'idle') | list | count == 3 %}
        idle
      {% else %}
        off
      {% endif %}
# HVAC Stats
- platform: history_stats
  name: HVAC Heating Today
  entity_id: sensor.hvac_activity
  state: 'heating'
  type: time
  start: '{{ now().replace(hour=0).replace(minute=0).replace(second=0) }}'
  end: '{{ now() }}'
   
- platform: history_stats
  name: HVAC Cooling Today
  entity_id: sensor.hvac_activity
  state: 'cooling'
  type: time
  start: '{{ now().replace(hour=0).replace(minute=0).replace(second=0) }}'
  end: '{{ now() }}'

views:
  - title: Home
    cards:
      - type: vertical-stack
          - type: history-graph
            entities:
              - entity: sensor.pp_hvac_activity
              - entity: sensor.pt_hvac_activity
              - entity: sensor.flex_room_hvac_activity
              - entity: sensor.hvac_activity
            title: HVAC Activity
            logarithmic_scale: false
      - type: vertical-stack
        cards:
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.heating_time_daily
            max: 24
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.heating_time_weekly
            max: 168
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.heating_time_monthly
            max: 720
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.heating_time_yearly
            max: 8760
      - type: vertical-stack
        cards:
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.cooling_time_daily
            max: 24
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.cooling_time_weekly
            max: 168
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.cooling_time_monthly
            max: 720
          - type: gauge
            entity: sensor.cooling_time_yearly
            max: 8760
title: Temperature

[khvej8]

A template trigger. Here a example with 95%, using the mean value. There is also the average value you can use.

{{ states('sensor.nordpool_kwh_dk2_dkk_3_095_025') < (state_attr('sensor.nordpool_kwh_dk2_dkk_3_095_025',"mean")*0.95) }}

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

But how do I use this? How to create a trigger? and how to read it?

Ewout

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

@Boilerplate4u

In my case not Hvac complexity. Just a YAML (copied from an automation) should do the trick. But somehow it often fails to activate again after prices a nice again.

alias: Tibber price control test
description: “this should activate the heat in high when prices are average or cheaper”
use_blueprint:
path: komakino/tibber-electricity-price-threshold-trigger.yaml
input:
tibber_price_sensor: sensor.reinemoen_electricity_price
below_actions:
- device_id: ab9403f812c3a908d274da81523cd43f
domain: mobile_app
type: notify
message: Stroomprijs ‘cheap’
- device_id: 3bccf98a2ad4367f1afde032e93b7aad
domain: select
entity_id: adc4be8a516fc3a0ed5c0f42d31ffac0
type: select_option
option: high
above_actions:
- device_id: ab9403f812c3a908d274da81523cd43f
domain: mobile_app
type: notify
message: Stroomprijs ‘expensive’
- device_id: 3bccf98a2ad4367f1afde032e93b7aad
domain: select
entity_id: adc4be8a516fc3a0ed5c0f42d31ffac0
type: select_option
option: low
threshold: NORMAL

[khvej8]

In the GUI, create an automation. Press “add trigger”, choose “template” and paste the template.

The YAML version will look like this.

alias: 0 test tmp
description: ""
triggers:
  - trigger: template
    value_template: >-
      {{ states('sensor.nordpool_kwh_dk2_dkk_3_095_025') <
      (state_attr('sensor.nordpool_kwh_dk2_dkk_3_095_025',"mean")*0.95) }}
conditions: []
actions: []
mode: single

[Boilerplate4u]

Thanks a lot!

If you need two different actions depending on whether the mean value is below 0.90% or above 1.05%, can that be done in the same template like a binary template or similar? Also, is it possible to calculate the mean value over a certain period, like 3 hours?

[khvej8]

The easy way to get different values as automation triggers, is to create different automations. then it is also easy to have different actions.

Not sure how to create a mean over a shorter period, however all the information is in the nordpool sensor. Might be easier to use some of the many blueprints providing similar options… Like this one : Nordpool price cheap/expensive actions

[Boilerplate4u]

@EwoutSchalkwijk, if you’re planning to try fixing this with your own code or by using a blueprint, I’d really appreciate it if you could let me know how it goes.

I’ve given up for now and just don’t have the energy to deal with HA anymore. It’s like taking over an object-oriented development project where the internal classes have zero documentation.

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

@Boilerplate4u , you know what? since today my Nordpool integration stopped working, my Balboa spa stopped as well. I’m getting sick and tired of this ‘geek’ toys.

It’s time to make HA available and understandable to the ordinary people or get glue a big warning on it. This is plain rubbish.

Suddenly entities are missing or no longer supported, I’m getting more and more sick of it.

But I’m not giving up yet.

there should be some sort of platform that works, and better yet, survives an update…

[fleskefjes]

This is a fix you can do.

2024.11.0.b3 introduces a new error: No module named 'nordpool.base'

[EwoutSchalkwijk]

@mhoogenbosch,

dankjewel voor je tip,

I think I have something else going on since I already ‘quick and dirty’ fixed the error, but still it is not working.

the Balboa, Zigbee and Netatmo errors (all came up today) I fixed by deleting the integration and adding it again.

The Nordpool integration I cannot remove it and therefore install it again. It is complaining about an old entity that no longer exists, but it seems no option to delete it is offered as well.

I made some screenshots.

[fleskefjes]

You have a typo. It’s "nordpool==0.4.2", notice the missing >