Potential Plugin - Forecasting PV Generation

Posted on
Sun Nov 22, 2020 4:56 am
neilk offline
Posts: 715
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Potential Plugin - Forecasting PV Generation

Hi all,
I have been building interest having moved to an EV in looking at my overall energy usage and done some work around what are unfortunately UK specific plugins for Smart Meter Consumption monitoring (Glowmarkt) and Time of Use Tariffs (Octopus Agile). I am now considering a Telsla Powerwall (or equivalent) and PV Solar array. Fellow UK user Pete is inspiring me as he has both and he has a desire to have Indigo automate the review of the forecast for Solar energy tomorrow in order to decide if and/or how much to charge his Powewall at the lowest rates which are typically overnight.

I have built the functionality to optimise charging (be it EV or Powerwall or indeed any other high cost load) that selects the lowest cost periods overnight to give you the number of hours charge you need (the low prices are not necessarily in consecutive blocks). This can include negative pricing, or more often periods of zero cost electricity. This then allows you to avoid importing energy during the peak period (4 - 7) when the rates are high. I should point out the rates are a proxy for carbon intensity so high rate = less green energy, and in the UK that is mainly when the wind is light, so this is not just a cost optimisation approach.

My question is does anyone do this or have any similar requirements ? I have looked at https://solcast.com and I am considering a plugin that would surface and aggregate their forecast data based on your location, array position and capacity etc. My interest is to review the potential benefit before I commit, but as I do not have an array it will be tough for me to validate the usability and usefulness.

For once it is not UK specific so I wanted to gauge interest, ideas and alternatives. Arguably a plugin is not needed but I am looking for this to integrate into the whole capability in Indigo which I think would make it the most capable HA tool for this use case in the UK for those who do not want to hand crank it with Home Assistant, Node Red etc.

Neil

Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests