Home assistant has solved the problems around integrating different kind of systems and displaying/interacting with the data. I would love to see Home assistant starting to solve some of the “business cases” around smart home.
One reason for getting a smart thermostat is to save energy. But what is the best way to actually save energy/cost?
Home assistant already have information regarding energy prices today and tomorrow, room size, temperature and power. The dream would be to input at what times I would like a certain temperature and the for home assistant to automatically turn on and off the heating to get the desired temperature but also do it as cheap as possible.
Imagine if home assistant sent a notification with: “Tomorrow you can save X amount of money by turning the temperature down X amount of degrees. Would you like to do this?”
This feels to me more like you’re looking for help on building an automation, rather than a feature in home assistant itself.
Maybe I’m wrong, this doesn’t feel like something that would be a core part of HA, but rather something that would be an automation, or possibly an integration.
Yes I think this could definitely be solved with a complex automation. But since Home assistant is trying to make things simpler and more user friendly, I think this kind of functionality is something that could really make it stand out as a home automation platform.
Making it simple for everybody to save energy would be huge win for Home Assistant.
With all the voice stuff going on (which I don’t use) HA now has access to machine learning. Easy accessible machine learning in the weather, heating, energy parts of HA could be useful.
My thoughts are that this type of thing is too dynamic to have a “one size, drop in” for everyone…
For example, not everyone uses Phillips Hue lights. I did some research online and saw testing that these lights use half the power at 75% brightness. Meaning that if they dim to 75% you get 3/4 the light while using only half the power… So I have automations which dime the lights to 75% if there is no motion after a period. I can tell you that when you leave a room and come back 20 minutes later, I don’t notice the difference. Some people prefer lights going off completely after a period.
Multiply that with endless integrations and possible configurations, and you can see why that’s an issue. What works for me (dim) may infuriate someone else who wants them off completely.
I’m not sure how the developers could find a one size fits all solution to energy besides what they do. We get a way to see the details of our situation, and the ability to act on it in ways that matter to us. How specifically do you think HA can help besides that?
I agree that it’s not possible to standardize everything. But f.ex most people like their outside light to be on when it’s dark and off during the day. This is simple to achieve using automation. But if you would to include energy prices into the mix and say that light should be on when the sun is down, but should not cost more than X amount each night. The automation is a lot more complex.
That said lights are not really the target for energy saving as this does not cost anything compared to car charging, water heating, house heating/cooling.
Where I live smart water heaters are becoming the standard for new water heater installations. They have a function you can enable to heat when the energy prices are low. Most people would like this function enabled to spend less energy without loosing any comfort on the water temperature.
It would be lovely if HA could have the same on their thermostat where you could add energy prices to a thermostat and enable “smart energy heating”. This way any thermostat could have “smart energy” option and you could even make a generic thermostat “smart energy heat/cool” capable.
Recently, I implemented a couple of scripts that act as a load balancer for managing a series of daily tasks in my home. These include pumping water from the well, irrigation, running the dishwasher, and managing excess solar energy production. The tasks are queued and executed based on their priorities.
These two scripts have significantly simplified the previous system, which relied on isolated automations that were unaware of each other. That approach couldn’t prioritize tasks or adapt to the state of other actions, often leading to inefficiencies.
As I added more tasks, managing rules became increasingly complex and cumbersome, creating challenges on its own.
I can easily envision Home Assistant introducing a feature like this—a standardized way to queue and manage tasks. Such a feature would empower users with limited coding skills to create more efficient and coordinated smart home systems.
Given the reach and amount of people using HA, helping people save energy can have a huge impact quite quickly.
And I think if there are easy standard solutions to enable energy savings, most people would just use that. Even if they can create more optimized solutions themself that are better. Simplicity always wins.
One thing that has impeded me (not a coder at all) is that I can’t even get my energy cost into Home Assistant.
Perhaps someone can create an integration that allows my energy cost to be pulled in? For electric, all I get is a list of the price history on Central Hudson’s web site. No “demand pricing” for me either. All I see is “here is the last price”…
Before anyone can address something like this, we first need to be able to know what the commodity is costing in real time. Solving that, would be a good start.
One area I could see a savings is if there were a way that a thermostat could implement some form of “predictive” heating/cooling. So let’s say that I want it 68 in the house, and the air will kick on at 70 to cool it down… If the thermostat could foresee that it is currently getting cooler outside, it might hold off since it’s getting cooler anyhow. Why kick on at 70 if it’s already 71 outside and on the way to 65. The house is naturally about to cool off anyhow, so why waste the last cycle?
Hello,
In my opinion, firstly, this is not possible and secondly, you should be capable enough to make your own decisions based on the data that HA provides. HA is not designed to give you advice, but to give you the opportunity to interact with your home.
Aside from that:
To program the whole thing and make personalized decisions for everyone, you need a server farm like no other. I’m thinking of the server farms that are only responsible for the weather. Just the weather! Now energy, shopping (where, what is the cheapest) - I don’t need to write any more, do I?
And it is very paradoxical when someone who uses LED strips talks about saving electricity. LED strips are way down on the energy efficiency list! Then it’s better to forego the LED strips instead of mourning over 20 dollars.
It goes even further:
So, now HA says to you, ‘Come on, turn the temperature down by 2°, that way you’ll save 2 cents’. Great, does HA know your contract with the electricity supplier, or does it get the daily prices from the electricity exchange? It doesn’t matter because your provider most likely has another supplier.
Again about temperature control:
So HA tells you to turn down 2°. This may be the reason why you get mold in a room…
NO, you have to make your decisions YOURSELF based on the data. And these are very helpful.
For example, tenants or owners should finally understand that the windows should be closed in summer and ventilated as often as possible in winter if the goal is to dehumidify a house or apartment. How would HA know that?
You would have to fully disclose your life if you want others to make the right decisions for you. Congratulations, big brother will like that.
What I’m missing is a “best price” feature. You provide home assistant with an entity that provide the price for 24-48h in the future. Like the Nordpool integration. And then home assistant turns an entity on and off based on that, based your configured options. You’ll then be able to use that in an automation.
Sure. As mentioned, these standards streamline how decisions are made about what should be executed next.
For each task, the task service specifies the following requirements:
• A helper that indicates the current state of the feature. This can range from a straightforward check (e.g., the status of a switch) to something more intricate, such as the availability of battery or solar power. (id format: binary_sensor.{{ device_name }}_is_idle_or_running)
• A helper that evaluates if the feature is ready to start. There may be opportunities to execute a feature, but it isn’t ready yet. (id format: binary_sensor.{{ device_name }}should_start)
• A script that initiates the feature action. (id format: script.action_start{{ device_name }})
Tip: Make sure the IDs of these entities are correctly defined at the time of their creation, as Home Assistant does not update them automatically afterward, even if adjustments are made through the UI.
With this setup, adding a new feature to the queue is straightforward. You only need to create the two required helpers and the start script, then reference it in the Load Balancer script.
To trigger the Load Balancer script I use a mqtt sensor that I know is refreshing every 10 seconds.
PS: Currently, I still manage task termination individually.