Home Energy Management System (HEMS) hardware

My current energy management arrangements are designed to maximise use of the output of my solar panels for lowest energy cost by diverting any excess to PowerVault storage system, car charger or immersion heater.  I can also manually configure the PowerVault and ImmerSUN to minimise costs of bought energy from the grid (I get 7 hours of cheaper night time electricity) by setting time periods for charging.

However as I move to a smart meter and smart tariff then I’m looking to start automating the selection of when to draw power from the grid based on costs that change half-hour-to-half-hour and day-to-day.  The hardware to achieve this is illustrated here.  To the right is a Raspberry Pi – a small computer with a wide range of connectivity – and to the left is a module that sIts on top and has four relays able to switch mains loads, although at the moment I only anticipate needing 2 of them.

One of the relays will switch the boost input to the ImmerSUN to enable water heating, potentially when electricity is cheaper than gas, and a second relay will operate the transmitter that turns the car charger on alongside the ImmerSUN’s relay output during the cheapest available energy times.

The image to the right shows the timers that can be used to enable the ImmerSUN outputs to draw power from the grid.  I never use this for water heating as currently gas is always cheaper than bought electricity, but do use it to more or less effect seasonally to charge the car from cheap night rate power when there isn’t enough daytime solar.  For the new HEMS I plan a table of 7 days specifying the number of hours required for each output and let the HEMS find the cheapest half hours to deliver the total hours required and enable the charger or water heating as required.

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One thought on “Home Energy Management System (HEMS) hardware

  1. admin

    Since this was written the third of the four relays on the HAT has found a use – disabling the output from the ImmerSUN that drives the car charger when in solar surplus at times when the HEMS also wants to enable the car charger due to electricity being relatively cheap.

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