[APP][Pro] Power by the Hour: Insights per hour, day, month and year

[Gruijter]

New test version 4.3.3 is ready for testing: Power by the Hour | Homey

• Added highest price flow cards.
• Added lowest price before time flow card.

The new flow card enables you to plan the cheapest energy usage before a fixed time. A use case is always having the car charged at 07:00. Assuming the charging time is 4 hours, the following flow will make sure that the 4 cheapest hours are used:

Shared Flow | Homey

At this moment it is not possible to trigger this flow more than 8 hours before the end time. This is because the tariffs for the next day are unknown until late in the afternoon. But by making three flows, each with 8 hours, you can approximate the best scenario in a 24/7 situation.

[Wout_van_den_Dool]

Hi @Gruijter, on Youtubechannel Ketelklets I saw a nice table of several values. I was wondering if it would be possible to create the same overview on a hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, periodically basis:

I do have the SMA inverter app and a PBTH app (Solar panels)
I do have the Youless app and PBTH app (for Gas & Electric)

Is there a smart way to calculate these values:

Yield solar panels
Direct power usage
Network power usage
Netting energy

I am buying a heat pump, which would increase my energy consumption and its peaks.
With this I can calculate when to consider a battery or electric car.

[Gruijter]

Not really something I want to add to the app. A lot of work for me and it adds more complexity to PBTH from a user perspective. And for a one-time consideration whether to buy an appliance you can do the calculations manually based from Insights.

[Gruijter]

v4.3.4 is ready for testing.

• Lowest price before time flow card extended to 12hrs.
• Added lowest number of hours this day.
• Update to homey-api@1.6.0

[Wout_van_den_Dool]

I totally understand your arguments:-) it is very hard to get this data, I can get it from greenchoice partly, but hard to find the peaks… And cannot be solved by flows also I guess… Nevertheless thanks for your reply

[Gruijter]

Version 4.3.5 is ready for testing: Power by the Hour | Homey

• € set as default currency for DAP.
• Configurable currency unit and decimals.
• homey-api@1.7.0

This version allows you to set your own currency in the device settings.

Enjoy!

[Sharkys]

@Gruijter

Configurable currency unit and decimals

That was the only stuff I have been missing.
Btw, even I will never use some of the functionalities, it’s unbelievable how far this app went !
Kudos to your development.

Thank you.

[Mats_Nygren]

Hi,
I have search the forum, but not find an answer on my query.

I want to calculate income of produced and sold solar power. I´m using the app solar panels an of course PBTH.
How do i set up a flow to calculate income of the produced energy using the price that actual hour?

thanks.

[Gruijter]

@Mats_Nygren

How do i set up a flow to calculate income

With PBTH you do not need to setup a flow to calculate anything. PBTH does this calculation for you. You might need to setup a flow if you are getting the (hourly) tariff from another app then PBTH. Also you might need a flow to get the kWh meter value of your solar panel if the solar panel app is not natively supported by PBTH.

But in your case: The Solar Panel app is already natively supported by PBTH. And although you could send the active tariff to PBTH from e.g. the Tibber app, it is best to setup fetching the hourly prices in PBTH itself. I added powerful flowcards to PBTH that help optimize your income / reduce your energy cost, and these flow cards are only available when you use the built-in PBTH day-ahead pricing device.

From a top level perspective this is what you need to do:

1. Add a PBTH power summarizer as Homey device, and select your solar panel device from the presented list

optional fine tuning:
in the new PBTH device go to advanced device settings and change settings on your demand.

1a) For some solar power panels the kWh meter is reset to 0 at midnight. So you probably need to check the ‘has daily reset’ option. For the solar panel app I already set this to enabled as default.

1b) PBTH will start counting kWh from the moment you added the PBTH device. If you want to have the correct total kWh values available for ‘this day’, ‘this month’ and ‘this year’ you need to tell PBTH what the cumulative kWh meter value was at the beginning of this day, this month and this year. With a meter that resets to 0 every midnight this means you have to fill in a negative value. So if for instance you know that your panels produced 1000kWh since January 1st, you fill in -1000 at 'this year start`.

2. Add a PBTH day-ahead pricing (1 hour spot prices) as Homey device, and select your market from the presented list. For Sweden (I believe you are Swedish :)) you can select from a number of market options:
   
   

To find the one you need you can ask your energy supplier, or check this site and find a match with the pricing you receive from your provider: Data view
Note that all market pricing is in Euro, and excluding taxes and markups.

2b) Add the taxes and markups to the market pricing. For this go to the advanced device settings:

In above example I set 25% sales tax, and 0,0346 euro fixed tax. But I am sure you need to add more fixed markup, e.g. the markup your energy supplier is adding. Important: all fixed markups must be entered in Euro!

2b) Change the currency and exchange rate.
In the above example I set the currency to SEK, and the exchange rate from EUR to 10,6738.

2c) activate sending the active tariff to your solar panel summarizer (see checkmark)

Now the basics should all work for you
You might want to do some more tweaking in the device settings, like also set the summarizer currency to SEK.

[Mats_Nygren]

Many thanks!
I manage to set up the devices as you described. Although the calculation seems to be of the 0,25 that is default in advanced settings “actual tariff per kWh”, not hourly rate from PBTH. What am I doing wrong?

[Gruijter]

You need to activate ‘send tariff’ in the day ahead pricing device, and you also need to activate ‘tariff via flow’ in the solar panel summarizer.

Oh, and the tariff is only updated on every hour or after app (re)start. So maybe you need to restart the app or just wait for the next full hour.

[Mats_Nygren]

Hi,

now it seems to work! Many thanks!

[Glenn_Dijkstra]

Hi there,

First of all, thanks for all the hard work you ve put into this app.
My app always worked great, but since a couple of days, it doesnt seem to update the prices anymore. Also, i cant change the settings of the devices anymore. Would be lovely to get some help

Thanks!

[Gruijter]

Pls send an app diagnostics report.

[Glenn_Dijkstra]

Hi there,

Here is the code.
205be269-a6bf-402c-830e-874e76e382f8

I just realized… There is an firmware update. I guess I should do it.

[Glenn_Dijkstra]

Sadly the firmware update didnt fix the prices.

[Gruijter]

Looks like the source if the data (entso-e) is offline. Only thing we can do is wait for it to come back online…

[Glenn_Dijkstra]

Ah, so everybody has this problem?

[Gruijter]

Yes…

[Gruijter]

New version 4.3.6 is ready for testing: Power by the Hour | Homey

• Set DAP markups and exchange rate via flow.
• Added DAP capabilities for hour of lowest price.

In some countries (like Denmark?) the fixed markup that is charged depends on day or night time. You can now set the Day-ahead pricing markup via a flow. Also it is now possible to set the exchange rate via a flow.

Secondly I added new capabilities for Day-ahead pricing. You can now see what the lowest price is of this day, and also at what hour this price starts. This information is also available in your flows INCLUDING THE BRAND NEW ADVANCED FLOWS [FAQ] Advanced Flow (Announcement : June 28th 19:00 CEST)