Solar Assistant with Home Assistant Awesomeness

[ChrisG]

Recently setup SA with HA for my test Growatt inverter. Today something very cool worked. I already had Home Assistant integrated with OpenWeatherMap and Solar Assistant. Yesterday I setup an automation with an OpenWeather Trigger to have Solar Assistant change the Growatt to Utility Priority to fully charge the batteries at 50% precipitation forecast. Knowing we had bad storms coming into NC today I was hopeful this would work. Well sure enough it did. In addition we lost power and the Growatt 3k is powering circuits in the home as I type this via a Reliance TS. Probably need to increase the threshold of forecast to limit false alarms.

Also setup a push notification from home assistant which worked also


Just thought I would share how cool this is.

Code snippet for trigger but can easily be setup via UI:

alias: Growatt Precipitation Utility Change
description: Change Growatt to Utility Charge if Precipitation forecast above 50%
trigger:
- platform: numeric_state
entity_id: sensor.openweathermap_forecast_precipitation_probability
above: 50
condition: []
action:
- device_id: <YOUR ID HERE>
domain: select
entity_id: <YOUR ID HERE>
type: select_option
option: Utility first
mode: single

 

[Brett V]

I really need to do this! very cool!

 

[wattmatters]

My daily switching between grid and off-grid power is managed this way.

However I plan longer term to move my HA controls into Node Red instead. As good as HA is, I'm finding issues creeping in with each HA upgrade where certain integrations no longer work and this sort of operating uncertainty is unsuitable for a home energy management system. Solcast PV forecasts and IoTaWatt energy monitoring integrations for instance are not working with HA Core since their April updates.

I haven't been able to update HA from 2023.3.1 because of these issues. And this ultimately means my HA system will stop functioning as other integrations will ultimately require an updated core.

 

[ChrisG]

My daily switching between grid and off-grid power is managed this way.

However I plan longer term to move my HA controls into Node Red instead. As good as HA is, I'm finding issues creeping in with each HA upgrade where certain integrations no longer work and this sort of operating uncertainty is unsuitable for a home energy management system. Solcast PV forecasts and IoTaWatt energy monitoring integrations for instance are not working with HA Core since their April updates.

I haven't been able to update HA from 2023.3.1 because of these issues. And this ultimately means my HA system will stop functioning as other integrations will ultimately require an updated core.

@wattmatters that sucks. I have not had that issue yet. What inverter are you using with HA right now that also works with Node Red for automation?

 

[Texican]

My daily switching between grid and off-grid power is managed this way.

However I plan longer term to move my HA controls into Node Red instead. As good as HA is, I'm finding issues creeping in with each HA upgrade where certain integrations no longer work and this sort of operating uncertainty is unsuitable for a home energy management system. Solcast PV forecasts and IoTaWatt energy monitoring integrations for instance are not working with HA Core since their April updates.

I haven't been able to update HA from 2023.3.1 because of these issues. And this ultimately means my HA system will stop functioning as other integrations will ultimately require an updated core.

that sucks about Iotawatt, I have 4 emporia vues, and keep wishing I had got Iotawatt instead for its non-cloud based data
maybe not anymore

 

[1201]

very nice! next level

 

[400bird]

However I plan longer term to move my HA controls into Node Red instead.

I've played with HA some and never really gotten into it. Been running Node-Red controlling my system for 2 or so years, it's run great other than when my crappy influxdb database filled the SSD and ground everything on that Pi to a halt. The influxdb problem was my fault and I still need to go back and make that right.

I've never had an issue with Node-Red dropping any integration.

HA seems to have more home automation appeal, but I can't figure it out (because I haven't spent the time) and Node-Red has been good to me.

 

[wattmatters]

What inverter are you using with HA right now that also works with Node Red for automation?

I'm using Solar Assistant, so would use SA's MQTT function for that.

that sucks about Iotawatt

It's more than likely fixable but when you are not an IT genius then sorting it out is a PITA. When you are an IT person then it's probably still a PITA but at least you are better equipped to know how to even identify and understand the cause of the problem, let alone what to do to fix it.

 

[wattmatters]

The HA Energy dashboard is quite nice.

 

[wattmatters]

I have my own little dashboards for various things, e.g. a quick glance at this tells me the status of the off-grid system:

 

[Ellcon123]

I've been using HA for some months now to monitor and have some control over my off grid system. I interface thru esp32's so integration support is not an issue for me. Using smart plugs to control the ac side. Need to work on my dashboards more butnot a priority. Hard to screen capture on the phone.

 

[ChrisG]

I'm using Solar Assistant, so would use SA's MQTT function for that.

Understood and I am as well. Just wondering what inverter you use with SA.

 

[wattmatters]

Just wondering what inverter you use with SA.

It's an EASun 8kW, pretty much the same as an MPP 8048MAX.

 

[Pierre]

Which system is recommended for use with a Victron MultiPlus II ? I don’t think SA supports Victron. Also have a Growatt SPF 5000ES downstream , which can run on SA , but I want to control the Victron. Any advice please.

 

[ChrisG]

Which system is recommended for use with a Victron MultiPlus II ? I don’t think SA supports Victron. Also have a Growatt SPF 5000ES downstream , which can run on SA , but I want to control the Victron. Any advice please.

I’d look at VenusOS and Node-Red for Victron or just use a Cerbo: https://www.victronenergy.com/live/venus-os:large

 

[unexpected]

that sucks about Iotawatt, I have 4 emporia vues, and keep wishing I had got Iotawatt instead for its non-cloud based data
maybe not anymore

FYI: https://github.com/emporia-vue-local/esphome

I followed this guide and flashed my VUE in under an hour, super easy

 

[Pierre]

Stupid question , guys. Loaded the HA app onto my iPad 10 . Running SA on a Pi Zero W on a Growatt SPF 5000ES. Also have a Victron MultiPlus II 5000 on VRM. Can I MQTT the SA to the HA app without it having an active device e.g. HA running on a Pi ? Need to connect to the HA server ? I understand HA does not support Victron at this time. Would love to have everything running on HA. Also have other devices like Tuya , eWeLink devices I want to add.

 

[webbbn]

Stupid question , guys. Loaded the HA app onto my iPad 10 . Running SA on a Pi Zero W on a Growatt SPF 5000ES. Also have a Victron MultiPlus II 5000 on VRM. Can I MQTT the SA to the HA app without it having an active device e.g. HA running on a Pi ? Need to connect to the HA server ? I understand HA does not support Victron at this time. Would love to have everything running on HA. Also have other devices like Tuya , eWeLink devices I want to add.

Have you tried this for the Victron: https://github.com/KinDR007/VictronMPPT-ESPHOME

I don't have a Growatt inverter, but they seem to be pretty well supported as well: https://esphome.io/components/sensor/growatt_solar.html

 

[ChrisG]

Stupid question , guys. Loaded the HA app onto my iPad 10 . Running SA on a Pi Zero W on a Growatt SPF 5000ES. Also have a Victron MultiPlus II 5000 on VRM. Can I MQTT the SA to the HA app without it having an active device e.g. HA running on a Pi ? Need to connect to the HA server ? I understand HA does not support Victron at this time. Would love to have everything running on HA. Also have other devices like Tuya , eWeLink devices I want to add.

You need a device/system running HA. I run it as a virtual machine in my Synology NAS. Can also run on a second RPi or a docker container elsewhere. On the HA system you then add the MQTT Broker integration and make the connection to SA.

 

[Quattrohead]

I am getting an orange pi 3w to experiment with as it is the cheapest pi you can buy right now. Not officially supported by solar assistant but I don't see why it shouldn't work.