Feature Request: Auto Power Off at Night and Quiet Hours.

[forum1944-hash]

It would be very nice to have a couple of small features added to genmon.

1. Auto power down at a user defined time each night so that at say, 12:30PM the generator stops. An override switch could be provided if the user knows that they need power after this time or they wish to restart the generator.
2. Quiet Hours during which the generator will not start if the is a utility power loss. These hours would need to be user defined and again, overridable by the user. Why do I suggest this? I do not care to be woken up at 3AM by my generator firing up. Obviously there would need to be an override switch and even then it would be best to have a UPS on the wifi AP or router.

[jgyates]

Hi @forum1944-hash

You do not mention what controller you have. I am going to assume you have a generac Evolution as that one is the most popular with this project.

This would not be possible for most controllers as they do not have a way to set the mode to "Off". Only the Generac Liquid Cooled (excluding the 4.5L models) have the abiltiy to set the mode to OFF over modbus.

Also, I would not want to implement this feature for the controllers that does support this as you would need to remove the load first as it could damage your generator. This article has the steps needed to shut down your generator when it is under load.

https://support.generac.com/s/article/How-Do-I-Shut-Down-My-Generator-When-It-s-Powering-My-House

[forum1944-hash]

Thanks for your reply.

I am about to buy a Briggs & Stratton PowerProtect 26kW Standby Generator along with a 200A whole house ATS. It is to that I was hoping to attach genmon and then to Home Assistant. I currentl;y have a Predator 8750/700W Inverter generator to which I attached an ESP32 conected to HA and into the approximately 875 lines of yaml code I put in various features such as the ones I mentioned earlier. If anyone wants this code I can make it available. I am currently using a Generac ATS for this and it all works very well. However Code Enforcement in Charlotte NC will not pass it for use as, amongst other things, my controller is not UL Listed or PE Stamped and the generator is not powerful enough to carry the full load of the house even though I have auto shutdown set at 105% load after 20 seconds whilst running and 105% load shutdown immediately on startup.

I did not want to buy a Generac generator for two reasons. 1. they seem to have put more money into marketing than into product developemnt and, 2. Generac continue to move to a prooprietary encrypted system that only works with their paid cloud app. This last does not suit me at all.