Solar panels is a very interesting scenarios to support. What you see above is probably a bug where the app reads a 0-value and drops it. But there is probably other parts of the app that would be thrown off by whole-home consumption regularly being lower than the sum of controlled devices. Do you get any data from power production or from the solar panels or anything like that?
Hi! I am setting up PELS and also have solar panels. I have the same problem.
In my setup I have Tibber Pulse reporting Power.
Tibber is reporting Power used - Power produced. If solar panels are producing more power than used, it is reporting a negative value.
While you are working on this, I will try reporting 1W to PELS if Tibber is reporting a negative value just to make PELS work.
Please reach out if you need help with testing
Thanks. I’ll have a look at what kind of data I can get from Homey and update you on a plan. How does the data in Homey Energy look? There should be solar panel info in there. Is that available and does it look correct?
Test version should now have a fix for zero-value samples leading to unreliable hours. Please try and see if this works as expected. Capacity-related features should already work as expected.
In particular, the uncontrolled load calculations will be thrown off though. In order to fix that, you need an inverter that reports how much power is being generated. The exported power reported by HAN-meters is not sufficient here. If any of you have smart inverters reporting data to Homey, I’m happy to take a look. Just go into advanced → Device log → select the solarpanel device and log. Then send me a diagnostics report right after.
I currently manage the power usage of my equipment using PowerGuard. Overall, I think the app works well, but I see a few limitations, which is why I’m considering whether PELS could meet my needs.
With PELS, is it possible to:
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Trigger the switching on and off of Virtual Devices, which in turn use their own flows to control various loads?
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Set up schedules over the course of the day that allow different power limits? For example, allowing 5 MW during daytime and 10 MW at night?
PELS doesn’t ship its own virtual device driver, but I have use cases myself, so it is on the roadmap. I’d be interested in more details on what you would like to do with such a device (e.g control a single device, combine multiple devices or something else entirely).
There is no schedule interface as such as many want to dynamically configure this based on more factors than just time. But you can configure both daily budget and the hourly hard cap through flows. Personally, I just use the daily budget feature and let PELS figure out the hourly limits based on price and usage. But I am interested in use cases here as well.
Regarding “Virtual Devices,” I feel they give me a bit more flexibility as a user for details that don’t necessarily need to burden the app itself.
One use case I can think of is when certain appliances run schedules based on time of day. There is a risk that PowerGuard (or PELS) ramps a load down and back up on either side of a time boundary when another automation is actually supposed to take over. In that case, I would have better control over re-enabling the load after a shutdown using my own flows.
Example: at 08:57, PELS disconnects a consumer. At 09:00, I have an automation that is supposed to turn that consumer off (which is already off). At 09:13, power consumption has dropped, and PELS reconnects the consumer again—even though I actually want it to remain off after 09:00.
Another point is, as you mentioned, that I can group different loads or even complement flows with variables that prevent PowerGuard or PELS from starting to shed those loads—essentially a fully manual mode when I have guests at home.
Regarding different schedules, this is to match the Swedish electricity market and the grid operator I am subscribed to. There, I can draw twice as much power at night (22:00–06:00) as during the day for the same cost.
EDIT: And to be clear, I use the Virtual Devices app to create devices. I then use these devices to switch loads on and off in the power management app.
I believe this one is already handled. There are two cards here:
- Disable capacity management of a device: This basically tells PELS to be hands-off the device, with the risk of going above hard capacity and soft budget constraints.
- Exempt device from budget: this means a device can be controlled by something else, as long as it does not violate the hard capacity constraint (which in Norway triggers a higher price tier).
But I can see that virtual devices can be much more flexible in some cases.
If the rules are that simple, I’d just use flows to set the hard cap dynamically. Note that this will probably throw the budget feature off, but it may be this feature isn’t that useful for you anyway.
I’m slowly starting to understand how PELS is structured, and it definitely feels like a lot can be solved with it. However, I can’t quite shake the feeling that it doesn’t fully allow me to achieve what would be possible with Virtual Devices.
Thermostats are one such example. For my air-to-air heat pump, I have created predefined flows (for example 23 degrees, high fan, etc.). When my current power limiting kicks in, the heat pump switches to air circulation mode, and then returns to its original setting afterward. I don’t see this being possible with PELS. Instead, it could end up increasing the temperature (and thus power consumption) during load shedding. Just imagine it’s summer: the heat pump is running in circulation mode, the power limit is reached, and PELS switches the heat pump to heating at 21 degrees—right in the middle of summer heat. 
Another issue I haven’t been able to solve is an 800 W heater connected via an IKEA smart plug without power metering. This is a significant load that I would like to be able to disconnect, but since there is no power measurement on it, it is not available in PELS. The same applies to my computer monitors in my home office and various lights that together account for about 500 W, as well as my spa tub from Balboa Control My Spa. The latter alone draws 3,000 W when the heater is running.
But perhaps it’s not even possible to achieve good control through the app using virtual devices, even if support for them existed?
First of all, I am all for supporting virtual devices, but since this feature will add a small ton of complexity, I want to get it right.
For the heat pump example, PELS would only control temperature. It wouldn’t be able to affect the operating mode unless changing temperature also affects the mode. Shedding would either turn the device off or it would change the temperature (up or down) based on what you configure. But if you would like it to both change temperature and operating mode, then yes, this is where virtual device would come in handy.
For the smart plug, typically you can configure the Homey Energy settings for the device and PELS will use that. If you go into the device → Advanced settings, you should see something like “Energy used when turned on”. It is static, so it may not be true e.g because the heater itself has reached it’s set point. But it is often better than nothing.
Personally, I have induction stove tops, terrace heaters and such that is not controlled by PELS, yet can draw significant amount of power. But I do get notification that PELS has shed all the load that it can and I still am heading for over-consumption and can manually respond to that (hopefully).
I understand. I’ll try to set aside some time so I can really experiment with the app. I genuinely think it looks very good—I probably just need to fully understand its capabilities and any limitations it may have.
What do you think about Balboa Control My Spa—would it be possible to get support for that?
If this is using Balboa | Homey then there are two challenges from what I can tell:
- The devices doesn’t say anything about what they are, so PELS cannot really know how to handle them.
- They don’t have any on/off feature, so Homey probably doesn’t have any way of setting energy usage.
I am not 100% sure here. But after you install the app, drop me a message here and I can help you help me determine for sure what PELS can do with this device.
Some new features landed in test now. They should hit everyone maybe tomorrow unless something unexpected happens:
- Zaptec Go/Go2 devices should now work like EV chargers that follows Homey standards. For this to work, you need to enable EV chargers under advanced, then open the device settings view from e.g the Overview tab, then click on Use built-in device control. I expect this to become default in not too long.
- Høiax Connected devices can have similar “native” control for power usage. It will go to “low” when it is prioritised, and then it will increase power usage when all devices are active and there is sufficient headroom. Also needs to be enabled using the same device setting as above.
- When making changes to budget settings, they are no longer directly applied. Instead you can preview the changes and approve them in one go on the budget tab. I hope to show a side-by-side comparison in not too long.
Stepped load for ease charger is not working very well 
always keeps on the lowest step. Never moves to more usage even if there is a lot available
At the moment, easee will use whatever the charger itself decides to use. Appologies if that wasn’t clear, but right now only Høiax support dynamic power usage. But since most of the basics is in place, adding support for Easee is a matter of supporting the proprietary toggles. I hope you can expect support for Easee to land shortly.
Ah, if you configured steps, yes, that should absolutely work. I am currently using that myself.
If you drop me a message here or on Homey slack or something with screenshots of what you have configured, I can take a look.
Test version: https://homey.app/a/com.barelysufficient.pels/test/
The features mentioned above are now live for everyone.
I just released a test version with two new updates:
Temperature Boost for supported stepped devices.
This is mainly useful for devices such as stepped water heaters where PELS normally keeps the device at a lower step, but you still want it to heat more aggressively if the temperature drops too far. When Temperature Boost is enabled, PELS can temporarily step the device up when it gets cold. The Overview will show a “Boost” label while this is active.
To use it:
- Open PELS settings.
- Go to Devices.
- Open the supported stepped device.
- Make sure the device is managed by PELS and uses stepped-load control.
- Enable Temperature Boost.
- Set “Boost below” to the temperature where PELS should start boosting.
Boost continues until the temperature has risen a bit above the threshold, to avoid rapid step changes.
Enhanced Daily Budget tuning
The old numeric tuning fields have been replaced with clearer choices:
Unmanaged usage reserve controls how much of the daily budget PELS should keep available for normal household usage it cannot move, such as lights, cooking, appliances, and unmanaged devices.
- Use Balanced if you want PELS to leave more of the daily budget available for managed devices.
- Use Conservative if your home often uses more unmanaged power than expected, or if the daily budget is often missed because normal household usage takes more energy than PELS had planned for. This leaves less budget for managed devices, but gives more room to the things PELS cannot control.
Managed device flexibility controls how freely PELS may move managed-device usage toward cheaper hours.
- Use Low if you want managed devices to follow a steadier daily pattern.
- Use Medium for the default balance.
- Use High if you want PELS to shift more managed-device usage toward cheaper hours, as long as capacity limits and minimum service needs allow it.
The Budget view can now also warn when your current hourly limits make it impossible to allocate the full daily budget. For example, if the daily budget is high but the hourly caps are too low, PELS may not have enough room left in the day to plan all of it. In that case, price shaping may also be limited because there is not enough available capacity to move usage into the cheaper hours.
Note that you need to make these changes in the advanced tab, then go into the budget tab to preview and confirm. This is terrible UX and will be fixed.
There has been a lot happening to EV charging the last few releases and I am quite happy with the outcome now. It is a fairly pragmatic approach where some vendor-specific things were added where things otherwise would be overly complex.
See Configure an EV Charger | PELS for the generic setup (e.g Easee)
And Configure a Zaptec EV Charger | PELS for Zaptec, which requires a different flow.
I expect the “advanced” setting to be removed and enabled by default unless I get any indication that this is not working as expected.
Next up is likely deadline charging, but that will be handled as a more generic feature addition, not EV specifically. See Support for electric vehicle chargers · Issue #147 · olemarkus/com.barelysufficient.pels · GitHub for some discussions on that.
If you have any feedback on this, drop a note in this thread, as a message or in the Github issue mentioned above.
