SolarExportControl

Description

This application takes your current electric power consumption (from a digital electricity meter, for example) and compares it to a defined target value.

If your power consumption is higher than your target: Lower the power limit of your solar inverter

If your consumption is lower than your target: Increase the limit on your solar inverter

Also features an optional home assistant integration:

Original setup

• Power reading via esp32 with tasmota and a 'hichi' IR sensor into mqtt broker
• Limiting power of inverter with an esp32 running OpenDTU and receiving the limit over mqtt

Implemented Features

• Configurable command behaviour:
  • Min limit
  • Default limit
  • Relative (%) or absolute (W)
  • Throttle amount of commands
  • Minimum difference to last command (hysteresis)
• Configurable power reading:
  • Offset
  • Smoothing: Average over X samples
• Listen to inverter status: Turn off limit calculation when your inverter does not produce
• Turn on / off via mqtt
• Home Assistant integration
• Scriptable generic limit callback: Send your inverter limit anywhere!

Demo

An ongoing graph/config screenshot collection can be found here

Requirements

• MQTT Broker

• A power reading sensor:

  • Publishes to MQTT Broker
  • The published value must include the inverter power
  • The published value must be negative if power is exported (inverter production greater than consumption)
  • Should publish at least every 10 seconds

• An inverter which can regulate its power production

  • Receive its power limit from the MQTT Broker
  • Power limit can be watts or percentage

• Python3 (min. 3.10)

How to install

1. Fullfill Requirements
2. Clone or download Repo
3. Open a terminal (CMD, Powershell, Bash etc.) in the project root directory
4. Install requirements. Execute:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

5. Create a basic config. Execute:

   python .\src\main.py .\src\config\config.json --wizard

6. Answer the questions. Use the created config file whenver a config.json is passed.
7. Optional: Further modify config to your liking
8. Modify customize to match your devices
9. Run

Config

Edit the .\src\config\config.json to match your environment: Docs

Alternative: Use the --wizard argument to get guided through config creation

Customize

You must at least check 2 things:

1. What data is my electricity meter sending?

This application needs the value as a number, but your electricity meter may publish json or an other arbitrary payload. You must edit the parse_power_payload function to convert the payload to a number. See 'parse_power_payload' for examples.

2. How should the calculated limit be formated before publishing it?

Maybe your inverter wants the new limit as json? For most people it will be as easy as rounding to 2 decimal places. You must edit the command_to_payload function to convert the new limit command to your desired payload. See 'command_to_payload '

How to run

• Run normal: python .\src\main.py .\src\config\config.json
• Run with VSCode ("launch.json" should be included)

Arguments

• Entrypoint: /src/main.py
• Required (positional) argument:
  • (path to config.json): can be relative or absolute
• Optional arguments:
  • --verbose : detailed logging
  • --mqttdiag: additional mqtt diagnostics
  • --wizard: interactive wizard for creating a basic config file

MQTT Topics

See Docs

Docker support

See Docs

Testers and feedback are appreciated

Feel free to share your setup or ask for help in the issue section.