The UK is currently experiencing some prolonged windy weather and my all-renewable energy provider offers dynamic pricing. That means cheap energy and even negative-cost energy. This is where my HA instance shines and saves me a fortune on my power bill. Thanks again to the HA devs for this incredible project.

For the curious, I’m using bottlecapdave’s excellent Home Assistant Octopus Energy integration via HACS.

  • rmuk@feddit.ukOPEnglish
    18·
    5 days ago

    Yup! No EV here, sadly, and I live in a flat but I’ve got storage heaters and a big hot water tank. I’ve got an incredibly janky template sensor that works out how many hours of heating I need for each room based on the weather forecast and an automation that activates the heaters for that many hours a day at the cheapest times. It can also turn the heating on when the price drops below a certain threshold, currently 0p.

    • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
      6·
      5 days ago

      Are there any creative energy sinks you could run when the price goes negative? I can only think of mining crypto or transcoding video or stuff like that.

      • rmuk@feddit.ukOPEnglish
        19·
        5 days ago

        Dingdingding! Correct. For the chepest two hours a day (or any time cost is negative) Home Assistant gives Portainer a kick and I sail the high seas. Whenever costs are negative I saturate my servers with BOINC CPU-heavy workloads like ClimatePrediction, Rosetta@Home, LHC@Home and World Community Grid.

      • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        5 days ago

        Flip side of heating could be to lower the temperature of freezers. If the energy is free anyways.

        • rmuk@feddit.ukOPEnglish
          7·
          4 days ago

          In my old place I actually did this: replacing my fridge and freezer’s thermostats with an ESP Home controlled relay and thermometer. This place has a fancy integrated unit that I don’t want to play with too much.

      • deur@feddit.nlEnglish
        4·
        5 days ago

        One of those giaaant resistors and a significantly higher current service from the utility!!

      • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        Flip side of heating could be to lower the temperature of freezers. If the energy is free anyways.

    • Matt G@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      That sounds good! I can see how that would save a lot of money on the bills. I especially like that you’ve got a “janky” template sensor haha. HA is so good for it’s openness and letting you bodge things together which have no right to work but do so all the same!