Automations in Home-Assistant

[sa7lej]

I have finished my first automations in Home-Assistant - my main goal is cut costs by trying to limit heating during very high cost periods (usually daytime). I use Tibber as a provider and they provide an attribute in their api called "Price level" that in turn is dynamic: "Price level based on trailing price average (3 days for hourly values and 30 days for daily values)" - i have mapped that to a simple 1-5 sensor where 1 is very cheap and 5 is very expensive.

My automations build on that sensor and an average temp based on the room temperature from my (daikin) controller and a separate temp sensor in another room of the house. I'm pretty sure i will need to adjust these to dial stuff in and perhaps use calculations based on the actual price instead of their price level. But so far everything checks out and seems stable. :)

Turn off pump when price is to high and temp is above 18 and notify me:

alias: Pump off when price is very high
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: template
    value_template: "{{ states('sensor.elpris') | int(0) > 3 }}"
    alias: Very expensive electricity
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: "{{ states('sensor.medeltemp') | int(0) > 18 }}"
action:
  - service: mqtt.publish
    data:
      topic: P1P2/W
      payload: Z0
  - device_id: 7e429c0ad21a3d746bee3b0dae58cada
    domain: mobile_app
    type: notify
    message: Värmen är nu avstängd!
    title: Elen är dyr
mode: single

Turn on pump when price is low and temp is above 20:

alias: Pump on when temp is low and price is cheap
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: template
    value_template: "{{ states('sensor.elpris') | int(0) < 3 }}"
    alias: Cheap electricity
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: "{{ states('sensor.medeltemp') | int(0) < 20 }}"
    alias: Temp is lower than 20
action:
  - service: mqtt.publish
    data:
      topic: P1P2/W
      payload: Z1
mode: single

And finally to account for the times when the price is "Normal":

alias: Pump on when normal price
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: template
    value_template: "{{ states('sensor.elpris') | int(0) == 3 }}"
    alias: Normal price
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: "{{ states('sensor.medeltemp') | int(0) < 19 }}"
action:
  - service: mqtt.publish
    data:
      topic: P1P2/W
      payload: Z1
mode: single

[Arnold-n]

Hi @sa7lej thanks for contributing!
Later this month I hope to release the climate integration through MQTT discovery adding HA dashboard controls, and then your action could perhaps become a direct HA action instead of a MQTT publish action. And it might be beneficial to post to topic P1P2/W instead of P1P2/W/xxx for anyone who has only one P1P2-ESP-interface running to make the script robust against changes of the IPv4 address.

[sa7lej]

And thanks for building a fine interface - that sounds great! Let me know if i can help somehow.

Ah - that makes sense - i'll change that. :)

[sa7lej]

Since the initial post i have been developing my automations quite a bit (these three automations will not cover all cases of temperatures/prices) - i have also implemented variable temperature settings in expensive/cheap mode - allowing for more temperature drift when price is high - this also enables temperature control when i'm not home:

I initially thought that i would reach write budget pretty fast. That has not been the case:

[trantoriana]

Rather than embedding your MQTT publish command in your automations, it may be more helpful to use a climate objects which hides all the MQTT stuff and set the climate options (on off, target room temp, lwt temperature) from the automations.

For the climate object and automation example based on the climate object, see here:

• Home assistant : Climate object for room and LWT temperature #59