solar-controlled-appliance

Control an electric appliance based on scheduling and solar electricity production in Home Assistant.

Introduction

This blueprint allows you to control an electric appliance based on solar panels production, house instant power consumpsion, and scheduling. It also adds a minimum daily on time (for cloudy days), maximum on time, and holidays mode.

Changelog

• 20/09/2023 v1.0. First public version.
• 21/09/2023 v1.1. Check whether switch_appliance is on for trigger id electricity_import.\n"- 1.0: Initial public release.
• 28/09/2023 - 1.2. Possibility to input binary_sensors instead of input_booleans.
• 17/10/2023 - 1.3. Bug correction: cloudy didn't take into accound holiday mode.

Installation

Or alternatively, copy solar_controlled_appliance.yaml to your config/blueprints/automation/ folder.

Discussion Forum

You can discuss about this blueprint in Home Assistant Community.

Prerequisites

You need to identity the next entities for the blueprint to work (the name is only a way to referring to it here, it can change in your HA installation):

Name	Type	Description
switch_appliance	switch	Appliance to be controlled
active_power	sensor	Active power of home (possitive: export, negative: import)

You need to create the next entities:

Name	Type	Description
bool_appliance	input_boolean	It is On when the appliance may be switched on. It is intended to be controlled by a scheduling. The real control of the appliance is done by the blueprint. It can be On 24/7 or you can limit the hours when the appliance may be On.
bool_cloudy	input_boolean	It is On when the appliance must be switched on in case a minimum on time still has not reached during the day. The Off->On is intended to be controlled by a scheduling; the On->Off is controlled by the blueprint. Usually it should be On some time after noon.
bool_holidays	input_boolean	It is set to on if the appliance must not be switched on.
daily_on_time	sensor	Number of hours the appliance has been On during present day.
timer_appliance	timer	Initialized to the maximum time the appliance must be On. After this time, the appliance and bool_appliance are switched off. This is optional.

Sensor daily_on_time can be created in configuration.yaml with this code:

sensor:
  - platform: history_stats
    name: Daily on time appliance 1
    entity_id: switch.my_appliance1
    state: 'on'
    type: time
    start: "{{ now().replace(hour=0, minute=0, second=0) }}"
    end: "{{ now() }}"

Schedulings can be easily created with HACS integration scheduler-component and HACS lovelace integration scheduler-card.

Configuration

Settings -> Automations and scenes -> Create automation -> Solar controlled appliance.

Parameters of the blueprint (for a description go back to Prerrequisites):

Name	Entity	Required/Optional	Description	Comments
Appliance switch	switch_appliance	Required
Active power	active_power	Required
Appliance boolean	bool_appliance	Required
Daily On-Time	daily_on_time	Required		Unit: hours
Cloudy boolean	bool_cloudy	Required
Minimum On time		Required	Minimum daily On time (for cloudy days)	On cloudy days, when bool_cloudy is on, if daily_on_time is lower than this value, appliance is switched on until reaching this value. When it happens, boch bool_cloudy and bool_appliance (and `switch_appliance) are set to Off. Unit: minutes. Range: 0-240
Holidays boolean	bool_holidays	Required
Nominal appliance power		Required	Nominal appliace power	It can be found in the appliance manual or nameplate. Unit: Watts
switch-off hysteresis delay		Optional (default: 300 s)	When active_power is negative, wait for this time to switch off appliance to avoid continuous switching when active power is close to zero	Unit: seconds
switch-on hysteresis delay		Optional (default: 10 s)	When active_power is above Nominal appliance power, wait for this time to switch on appliance to avoid continuous switching	Unit: seconds
Appliance timer	timer_appliance	Optional (no default)		If not present, no timer is used

Lovelace card

You can use a Lovelace card similar to this for each appliance to show the behaviour of the automation.

Footnotes

• bool_appliance scheduling can be as simple as setting it On sunrise and Off at sunset.
• bool_cloudy scheduling should be set to On several hours after bool_appliance, in such a way that only in cloudy or rainy days, appliance is on when panels are not providing enough energy.
• You can create as many automations as the number of appliances you want to control.
• In this case, hysteresis parameteres should be different in each one, to avoid all the appliances switching on and off at the same time with active power variations. It is recommented to set lower switch-off times and higher switch-on times for higher nominal power appliances. It's enough to vary values 5-10 seconds between appliances.