In the beautiful Energy dashboard, we should have a real easy accessible automation for using excess solar energy.
Currently we as noob users have to fiddle way too much.
Thus:
Variable could be the amount of power. Eg:
Thanks !
You can create one template sensor to calculate the āexcessā and then use it in automation. Iām not sure how much simpler it can be. Only shortcoming is that templates canāt be create via UI yet.
I guess it canāt be so simple and universal that it is a point to automatically create such sensor. For example you may have a battery and then first prefer to charge that but for instance after 50% is charged you still continue but now consider this energy already excess for some other means (time to turn cooling more aggressive for instance).
hi Couger,
Well, not being in the GUI is such a big miss for a lot of the mainstream users. In my search for such a simple action, I did not find anything about templates.
I believe that this does need to be universal, at the moment a solar energy installation is detected by HAā¦
So in my opinion, this is exactly such a WTH scenario.
Here is an add-on that can help to maximize your solar production/consumptionā¦ but it is not as easy as you think because it is linked with a lot of factors: energy cost evolution during the day, solar production forecast vs real production, available consumption sources and corresponding power and so onā¦ And one case is not anotherā¦ This add-on is using the linear programming technique (well known in automation) and can be used to plan how to use your excess of solar productionā¦ Enjoy !
I did see this one already, but with WTH in mind: it should be easy for mainstream otherwise people donāt even start using itā¦
It looks like something the world needs to be a better place!
I guess this is custom?
Not custom, just started with an empty automation and added the relevant entries.
The new GUI automation editor makes these easy.
When starting a new automation, we need to set a trigger as in your example.
Lotās of choices, but no āSolar/ energyā choice?
Where did you get the āexcess solarā in the first trigger?
I guess this must be a custom value?
Just to make one thing very clear:
In no way I intend to piss of other peoples hard work. This community is brilliant, but:
Whenever I speak to people of different classes and professions, everybody agrees that with current energy crisis and prices each and everything will help. Everybody loves projects like home-assistant and what you can do with it. However, for 90% of the people it is still too complicated. The Energy dashboard is a big leap with that in mind. It is easy, no technical or programming knowledge required, and insight is provided directly. Exactly that method is required for those millions of peoples currently hesitating.
If a small part of this community can contribute to these cases, on a large scale these things will āmatterā.
Just think about the scenario where billions of households worldwide deliver 1-10 Kw less electricity to the grid, and how much savings this would make on a global scale for these electricity networks, and how much that would save on energy prices.
Just dreaming with my head in the cloudsā¦
Yeah itās annoying and you will see the āhow much easier can it beā responses all through WTH. People seem to get very defensive or think everyone is at their level of understandingā¦ But as I always say, āyou donāt know what you donāt knowā.
Maybe we should rename WTH to WTPā¦(Whatās the point) of bringing it up only to be shot down in flames by now knowledgeable members and moderators.
Iām on this journey myself.
Currently using a template sensor to take the house usage off the solar.
Thought process is to create an automation based off this value. Iām fortunate enough that there is a great integration with the Tesla API and so I can control the charge rate on the car.
Looking at scaling this as the solar excess changes and leaving my car plugged in on the drive to soak up any extra power during the day.
I agree an entity of Solar Surplus baked into home assistant would be awesome. Anything that avoids writing code into yaml files should be celebrated as a step towards being user friendly.
Donāt be put off making suggestions. Its the community of people striving to make this platform the best it can be that is so great. 
For everybody still looking for a solution, I implemented a pretty extensive PV / solar excess automation which can be configured via blueprints: PV / Solar Excess Optimizer: Auto-control appliances (wallbox, dish washer, heatpump, ...) based on excess solar power
