[OBSOLETE] Anyone maximised solar panel savings by scheduling specific appliances based on real-time generation data?

[arsharpe (samsung_det@arsharpe.co.uk)]

Hi All,

I am new to SmartThings and am thinking of using it to control various high power loads to only run when my solar panels are generating enough power.

Can’t seem to find an existing similar project. Does anyone know of one? If so can you point me in the right direction.

If not, then I would be happy to work with more experienced people here to make a very powerful system.

Look forward to hearing your throughts.

Thanks,
Rob

[hec222]

Interesting idea, what loads would you turn on? Save your laundry, charge your car, electric water heater. My knee-jerk reaction is the convenience of using those things when you want out way the potential savings… maybe the car?

[JDRoberts]

I don’t know of anyone who’s fully automated it. There are some people who get phone notifications based on their tesla powerwall statistics so they can make decisions about what to run. The specific integration is quite old and I’m not sure it works anymore, but you might check out the following thread:

Tesla Powerwall II

Here’s a very basic device handler for the Tesla Powerwall II It will show you charge level and the current power for grid, site, solar and Powerwall. It requires a FQDN for your Powerwall, because SmartThings is a PITA about allowing direct access via IP addresses unless you also write a device handler app - and I lost the will to live trying to decipher the awful documentation on doing this. Someone that knows what they are doing could probably sort this out really quickly. The SmartApp simply sends you a push notification when the charge level goes through configurable upper or lower limits, with the simple purpose of alerting you when the battery is full so that you can turn something on to make use of excess solar. The SmartApp could be easily modified to switch a load on and off f…

Also, someone did one a few years ago for fronius, but again it’s probably out of date now:

Fronius Solar Power Inverter

I wanted to share this Device Type I’ve written to read the realtime, day, month, year values from a Fronius Solar Inverter connected to solar panels. The Device Type polls and reads the values from the inverter directly on the LAN. It is a little rough and ready at the moment but hopefully someone else will find it useful. [image] The code for the DeviceType can be found here Let me know what you think, hopefully you don’t find any bugs.

And there was one for Enphase Envoy, but the author is no longer supporting it:

[UNSUPPORTED] Enphase Envoy (local access)

This is my first attempt at creating and releasing a device type - a power & energy meter for a solar system running Enphase inverters. It connects to the Enphase Envoy on the local LAN and thus is not bound to any rate limits or contingent on setup of a developer account with Enphase. This was inspired by this post (with the linked code unfortunately no longer being available). [image][image] A few notes: Unfortunately it is not possible to set dynamic colors on tiles - the main tile will turn green for production of 2kW or more (you could adjust that depending on system size) The peak percentage is based on maximum theoretical output (number of inverters multiplied with inverter size) Peak power is not reported by the envoy - this is the maximum value the device type encountered d…

So these are just some ideas to look at.

One thing to be aware of is that if you are querying a cloud or website, many companies put rate limits on how many times you are allowed to poll that information per day, and that includes information you need for other parts of your system. So that’s something you need to look into as well if there’s a cloud involved. Typically you’ll be limited to about one query every 15 minutes for this kind of purpose, but it does vary from company to company.

[arsharpe (samsung_det@arsharpe.co.uk)]

Thanks for your reply.

Sorry for the delay. Was expecting to get notification of replies to comments from the system. Need to look at that next.

@hec222

Interesting idea, what loads would you turn on? Save your laundry, charge your car, electric water heater. My knee-jerk reaction is the convenience of using those things when you want out way the potential savings… maybe the car?

Like you implied, it needs to not impact convenience and therefore works best when the device can be delayed (aka “Load Shifting”) without the user noticing it.

See below for the type of loads that I am proposing to control. Been doing it via remote switching for a couple of years and have got fed-up with it.

[arsharpe (samsung_det@arsharpe.co.uk)]

Hi,

@JDRoberts

I don’t know of anyone who’s fully automated it. There are some people who get phone notifications based on their tesla powerwall statistics so they can make decisions about what to run. The specific integration is quite old and I’m not sure it works anymore, but you might check out the following thread:

Thanks a lot for all the info.

The idea is to write a SmartApp that intelligently controls devices, not write inverter device drivers. Hope to post requirements tomorrow which should clarify the operation better and give opportunities for people to get involved as a community project.

Also, rather than trying to talk to the inverters directly, the intention is to add non-intrusive power monitors - making that part trivial and able to work with all types of inverters.

Been playing with some code over the weekend so that looks doable - watch this space.

But I will probably need some help with the advanced stuff.

Thanks

[Ovidella]

That’s a smart idea! Using real-time generation data to schedule specific appliances can definitely help maximize your savings with solar panels. I haven’t personally tried this approach, but I’ve heard of people doing it and seeing great results. It makes sense, right? Using power-hungry appliances like washing machines or dishwashers when your panels are generating the most electricity can help reduce your reliance on the grid and save you money in the long run. If you’re thinking about giving it a go, I’d recommend talking to some local solar panel installers ireland. They can give you some tips on how to set up your system to make the most of your solar generation data.

[JDRoberts]

You are responding to a post which is three years old, and a lot of things have changed in that time. In particular, the whole architecture of SmartThings changed in 2023, so pretty much all of the discussion above is now obsolete.

That said, SmartThings has introduced its own“SmartThings energy“ feature, which was specifically designed to help schedule appliances. Not just for solar energy systems, but for anyone who lives where energy is at different rates during different times of the day.

Smart Devices - Monitor & Save Energy with SmartThings Home | Samsung US

And just a few months ago, Samsung announced a new partnership with Tesla, which can even take into account stormwatch standing.

Samsung Announces Collaboration With Tesla at CES 2024 for SmartThings Energy

So there’s a lot of interesting stuff available in this area on the platform now, but it’s not using the method discussed this thread. Feel free to start a new topic if you do want to discuss more details about what’s available with the current 2024 architecture.