Hi everybody;
I am running a 20year old oil heatingsystem from Viessmann with a VITOTRONIC 200 control. This control can be upgraded with a “Vitoconnect” gateway and the ViCare app (I did not so far).
At the moment I manually note some data from my heating system once a week:
1.) Oil consumption in litre
2.) Number of starts of the burner
3.) absolut running time of the burner in h
Can anyone tell me, whether these data are provided within the ViCare app and thus can be found as entities in home assistant?
Hello, that’s how it looks with me and the heating is an oil heating. As far as I know, consumption is not published. For that they would need to use something like OilFox.
Thanks @Bimbo009, for this picture! In this case - consumption is not published - it would be possible to calculate it by multiplying the “delta” burner hours with the specific consumption of the buurner which is given in the data sheet. For example: My burner consumes 2 liters oil per hour according to the data sheet.
But it would be easier for all of us if the value would be provided directly by Viessmann.
I know this thread is old. But in case someone runs across this and wonders why there consumption is off. It may be because your heater supports different running modes since many oil pumps support different speeds. My heater, for instance, has two modes that can be detected by the “modulation” value. In my case it will wither show 50% or 100%. Here you would need to check the documentation of your heater to see the twi different consumption values.
Unfortunately, the ViCare integration only totals the running time and hours and doesn’t calculate separate values per modulation (pump speed). So, you would also need to create separate template sensors that take the current modulation in to account.
Since the ViCare integration only updates every minute or two you won’t get very accurate calculations though. This is why I kept my calculations based on a Shelly EM power consumption instead. With power consumption I can easily differentiation whether the burner is running at 50% or 100% modulation and therefore drawing oil based on the two supported speeds of the pump.
So I would put it this way in order to get an approximately reasonable value you would have to be able to determine the flow and that is definitely only possible if you manipulate something on the supply line or to put it differently you would need a flow monitor on the supply line that is suitable for everything else is speculative. I have the Oilfox that is attached to the tank and I get the values once a day, but I would never bet that you can really do something sensible with the values in terms of consumption.
I considered getting an Oilfox for my tank. But my tank has tubes under each opening going down into the tank. And of course, an ultrasound measurement is not possible in this case. Actually I find the “calculation” based on pump or burner runtimes pretty accurate (when you know the volume of flow for the oil pump). At least my comparison with the manual measurement of the oil level over a longer period of time comes pretty close.
I would never bet on the actual oil volume to decide when to fill up of course. But using this calculation I am able to integrate it into my energy dashboard (after converting burnt liters of oil into kWh). Albeit it shows as gas. But I get a pretty accurate idea how much energy costs I have over time. I’m not depending on this for filling up my tank. And since I have a 10000 liter tank I have plenty of time to do manual oil level tests for that.
Anyway, I sometimes think it’s a bit exaggerated what some people do with statistics and stuff just to track some kind of consumption. What you use, you use up, that’s just how it is. Luxury has its price. I also dare to doubt whether the whole circus that we are told is actually true. Let’s start with the plastic in the sea, what can I do about it? I dispose of my rubbish, but if some corrupt traders dispose of the rubbish in the sea, I can’t help it. Politicians should start there and ban the trade in garbage.
