Solar power realization: I should charge the plug-in car during sunny days. In the past it was programmed to happen overnight, hoping for a lower electricity rate. But, if there's power coming from panels, it’s much better to just have that go straight into the car rather than expect “selling" it to power company and using it later will be cheaper.
@jerzone I had many mind bombs like this after getting solar. Like, the photons are coming from the sun, to the panels, directly to the car battery?? Indeed.
@notio I get that with the solar hot water heater from time to time.
“Hey, this could go into some thermal mass and be used whenever."
“It should be heating the basement floor when hot water tank is warm enough.”
“Why doesn't everyone have this, they all use hot water, burning gas or heating with elements with electricity should only be a backup.”
@jerzone Does your charger have a setting to put extra energy into your car first, and the grid second? Or, do you manage this with something Home Assistant?
Or, like an animal, just have to remeber to dash out and plug it in? 😂
@Topslakr Totally animal style charging right now. I have car set up for a 1am charge, but there's a button on dash do trigger it any time. I suppose if I got rid of programming and set it up to charge whenever plugged in, then I could setup the Kauf plug that's been monitoring the power it uses to also turn it on at opportune times.
@Topslakr I haven’t figured out what programming is available in HA. Automations seem to be a markup language with a fixed syntax. Is there a way to call python script or chain automation rules? Since the solar panel is essentially a big sun detector I'd like to be able to say something like if there's >400W solar power turn charger on, if there hasn’t been solar power for longer then 5 minutes turn charger off. Basically some hysteresis to keep it from trying to kick the charge off/on when the sun's barely shining/getting hidden behind clouds frequently. Or maybe it's simple enough that if there’s over 2,000W just turn it on and leave it on until the end of the day? Solar would do most of the charging, but if there's a few dark clouds the grid will fill in.
For 99% of tasks these days, there is no need to manually enter in a bunch of yaml code, the interface has enough if/then/else type flows that you can sort out most things.
I’d probably just setup two automations, one for on and one for off. Based on the data you can feed it getting a draft running should be the work of 10 minutes.
@Topslakr I sorta see. Messing around with device vs. entity it seems you can get different options. Like our wash machine just had a “switches off" automation while the garage had a “from Closed to Open for 10 minutes”. If I copy the garage yaml into the clothes washer automation, then I could get similar behavior for its transition from running to off.
@jerzone I would try to prod you toward doing it in the GUI, instead of yaml, since the project is trying to make yaml available, but not required .. but you programer types do love to program 😂
For me, mearly a sysadmin, I find the visual flow easier to follow in the GUI over the yaml side.
@Topslakr Right, I just haven't found the magic sauce to get that particular UI in the GUI. I mean, I somehow did it a couple years ago when setting up the garage sensor, but did I copy yaml from somewhere or click the right combo of things? This old mind no longer knows. “;^)
@jerzone They are improving the GUI very quickly, which is great, but finding the right item for use in an automation is a big stumbling block for me.
These days I tend to spend some time in the weeds of each relevant device to find the exact name and type of entity I will need to get me from point A to point B in the automation flow.
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