There has been a few related card requests lately, and the plan is to add the following:
“Price level changes to [level] within [hours] hours.”: This is pretty much what you requested only that it will remain true within the given window, not only when you are exactly X hours away from the transition.
“Set the temperature for [device] in [mode] to [°C]”: Change the PELS set point for a given mode to a given temperature. Will include a “current mode” as well.
“Set the [Cheap-hour boost / Expensive-hour reduction] for [device] to [°C]”: Change the price based delta for a given device for a given mode.
“When the temperature of [device] changes outside PELS: [Return to mode target / Keep the new temperature / Save as current mode target]”: Change the recently added “what happens when temperature is manually adjusted/adjusted through a flow” setting through a flow.
OK. I’ve implemented this, but it won’t be merged in until over the weekend. New cards always require manual audit from Homey so it cannot be released before Monday earliest anyway.
Report fc43d56b-679f-4461-acc9-ed4e3f12bc0b executed almost 2hrs after plugging in the car.
Should also include missing water boiler smart tasks. Boiler runs at strange times. I have a flow: at 20.00 o’clock make smart task add 7kWh to boiler before 7.00.
Unfortunately, the report only covers the last few minutes before it was sent, so the plug-in two hours earlier and the 20:00 boiler task weren’t in it. It looks like you have debug logging enabled and at least for the charger issue, it’s best to keep those off. The key events are always logged.
Did you select the Kia on the Easee after the update? If so, that explains the missing battery level. When a car is selected for a charger, PELS stops using the “Report battery level” Flow for that charger and waits until it has matched the car to the charger instead. The match depends on the Kia app reporting the plug-in within about 20 minutes of the Easee, and the Kia app only checks the car every 15 minutes, so it can miss. When it misses, the charger has no battery level at all.
For now I’d untick the Kia on the charger. Your Flow then works as before. PELS keeps trying to match the car in the background and remembers successful matches, so nothing is lost.
If you want to help me get the matching right: before you next plug in, go to Advanced > Debug logging and turn off “Capacity limits” so the report covers more time. Then send a report about 40 minutes after plugging in. That shows whether the Kia was matched, and if not, why.
For the boiler, keep “Deadline & objectives” on and send a report shortly after 20:00, once the low has added the task. Then I can see what the task planned and why the boiler runs when it does.
I’m also looking at showing in the app when a car has been matched to a charger, so you can see that it works before you rely on it.
I have some doubts on the price level calculation. At this moment, the price level is ‘normal’. It’s at the very top of the range… Current price is at the white dot.
@CasperV The price level isn’t based on where the price sits between the day’s lowest and highest price. PELS compares each price to the average for today (plus tomorrow once those prices are published). With the default threshold of 25%, a price counts as expensive when it is at least 25% above that average, and cheap when it is at least 25% below.
That’s on purpose. A change of level costs you some comfort, like a cooler room or postponed hot water, so PELS only changes level when the saving is worth it. A peak that looks high on the chart can still be “normal” if most of the day is priced close to it.
On a day like the one in your screenshot, if most of the day sits around 30–40 ct, the average lands somewhere in the low 30s, and “expensive” starts around 40 ct. So a price of about 40 ct can end up just under the line. The average also shifts when tomorrow’s prices arrive in the afternoon, so a price close to the line can change level then.
If you want the levels to react to smaller differences, lower the Price threshold under Electricity prices → Cheap and expensive prices. If it still looks wrong after that, send a diagnostics report and I’ll check what PELS calculated.
Lastly, there should really be a visualisation of this somewhere. Maybe a widget similar to the one in your screenshot would be helpful that shows price + shading cheap/expensive hours.
Thanks for the log. It starts at 21:10, after the car had been paused and started again, so it doesn’t show what happened. The most likely cause is that PELS saw your pause as the charger being turned off outside PELS and turned it back on.
What do you want the charger to do?
Charge whenever there is room, but respect a pause you make yourself: keep Power-limit control on and turn on Leave off until turned on again in the charger’s device page. PELS then leaves the charger paused until you resume it. After that it charges as usual, and PELS keeps it under your limit.
Charge only when a Smart task runs it: turn off Power-limit control for the charger and turn on Only PELS starts this device. The charger then charges only when its Smart task needs it to, and PELS turns it off if it is started any other way.
If the charger still starts on its own after you change this, please pause it in the Easee app, note the time, wait about 10 minutes and send a new log straight away.
New feature introduced in 3.11: home battery control
PELS can now drive your home battery. A battery whose Homey app lets Homey set its charge and discharge becomes a managed device. Examples are a Marstek Venus, or a Sessy on its local login. It gets a card on the Overview and a place in your priority list, last by default.
How it works:
Near your power usage limit: the battery supplies the house before any device is turned down.
With solar surplus: your devices take what they need first, then the battery stores the rest. Rank it higher to fill it sooner.
When the job is done: PELS hands the battery back to its own mode.
I have unfortunately found it hard to make those flags + smart task behavior intuitive. There are use cases for most of the combinations of those flags, so I don’t want to do a nudge for a specific option. Yet, I have found it frustrating when I have forgotten those toggles for my own setup. If anyone has any suggestions, it would be most helpful to me.
I have started using this app to try to even out my usage and costs and maybe try to get closer to a lower price bracket.
I’m not sure if I’m missing something but I don’t see an option to set prices for grid tariffs. Not sure if this applies to other countries but in Norway we pay for spot price and grid tariffs, sometimes with added sur-charges and fixed monthly price as well.
I would like to be able to adjust price-based control not only for spot prices but also for grid tariffs. Spot prices are usually lower at night, but grid tariffs are always cheaper between 22:00 and 06:00 here. So I want to be able to configure the system to always consume more electricity during this time slot, since it is almost guaranteed to be cheaper due to the grid tariffs. Could you add an option to set and include the fixed prices for the grid tariffs so that the price calculation becomes more accurate?
Maybe this can be fixed by using the Power by the Hour app but I haven’t tried it yet.
I added screenshots from the app from my energy company for reference.
PELS supports Norwegian price scheme natively. Go to Settings > Electricity Prices, set Price source to Norway (spot + grid tariff), and you should be able to fill in all the details required to calculate the combined electricity price.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need more help or find anything else to be missing.
To me it seems like the price-adjustments don’t take the grid tariffs into account but I could be wrong. The price difference between day and night should be well over 25% but I don’t see any changes on the price controlled devices.
I haven’t run this for that long but looking at the smart thermostats power usage and target temperature over a few days they don’t seem to be used more at night when it’s significantly cheaper than during the day.
My guess is that the grid tariffs are included, but the threshold for cheap and expensive prices is too high for your prices.
The threshold is 25% by default, and it is measured from the average price, not between night and day. With the prices in your screenshot, nights are about 17% below the average, so none of them count as cheap. This is there to avoid sacrificing comfort for very little financial gain. You can also set a Minimum price difference in øre, but it is 0 by default.
Try this:
Settings > Electricity prices > Cheap and expensive prices: set Price threshold to 10%. With your prices, the night hours then count as cheap and the late afternoon as expensive.
Settings > Price-aware devices: check that Respond to prices is on and each thermostat has a Cheap and an Expensive adjustment.
To check that the grid tariff is included, make sure a Grid company is selected under Electricity prices (choose the County first, because it filters the list). During the day, Cheapest hour ahead on the Overview should then normally point to an hour between 22:00 and 06:00.
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