I recently got solar installed at my place and was wondering if anyone had tips on things like:
- Using the Energy dashboard effectively
- Template Sensors I should set up for energy tracking
- Graphs or visualising production/usage in dashboards
- Automations that you’ve used to help save using energy from the grid
My solar is going up next week, so I’ve been experimenting a bit with working it into my current setup. I have import and export data from my smart meter, hourly electricity price from entso-e and a simulated solar production based on the lux reading from my outdoor pir sensors. To get real time production I specced an elko smart tag energy meter on the fuse for the inverter, as the solis is not easy for an amateur to get data out of. I also have smart relay on my water heater, and have been controlling this based on electricity price for a while now. I’m also working on adding the heat pump and bathroom heat, they will be set a couple of degreees lower when power is most expensive, and a couple higher when solar is produsing to “store” heat. Not sure how all this will work out yet so I’ll not share the details before I’m sure it works, but I hope it gives som ideas.
For visualizations I use apexcharts, i can fit solar production, consumption and price with and without grid tariff in a single card, althought it’s not quite perfekt yet.