Home Assistant: What’s new in AIO Energy Management 0.5.0 – 0.8.0

AIO Energy Management has got a few updates in the last half a month without having the ‘what’s new’ post written up. Nothing major, but the latest 0.8.0 is having some drastic changes that will (hopefully) help people configuring the integration more easily.

v0.5.0

This release was truly a major one – support to new 15 min MTU was added. When Nord Pool finally moved to support 15min MTU, I had to implement it to the AIO Energy Management as well obviously 🙂

To set the 15min mtu in use, just set variable ‘mtu: 15’. If omitted, 60min is used by default. (example below of 15min mtu)

aio_energy_management:
    cheapest_hours:
      - nordpool_official_config_entry: 01K4QBH1H606SDS1V28KGR32K7
        unique_id: cheapest_hours_mtu_15
        name: Cheapest Hours MTU 15
        first_hour: 21
        last_hour: 12
        mtu: 15
        starting_today: true
        number_of_hours: 6
        sequential: false
        failsafe_starting_hour: 1

Another big addition was price_modifications. While I made the official Nord Pool integration support to AIO Energy Management I noticed that the prices were always eur/mwh and no VAT could be added within the integration. The price_modidifications variable uses Jinja2 template variable where you can define whatever modifications to the prices before calculations. Want to do tariffs, add taxes or just convert to snt/kwh, now you can!

Some examples below, one where price is modified to snt/kwh and adding 25.5% VAT. Second with night tariff included

aio_energy_management:
    cheapest_hours:
      - nordpool_official_config_entry: 01K4QBH1H606SDS1V28KGR32K7
        unique_id: cheapest_hours_water_boiler
        name: Cheapest Hours Water Boiler
        first_hour: 21
        last_hour: 12
        starting_today: true
        number_of_hours: 6
        sequential: false
        failsafe_starting_hour: 1
        price_modifications: >
          {%- set as_snt = price / 10.0 %}
          {%- set with_taxes = (as_snt * 1.255) | float %}
          {{ with_taxes }}
      - nordpool_official_config_entry: 01K4QBH1H606SDS1V28KGR32K7
        unique_id: my_cheapest_hours_tariffs
        name: My Cheapest Hours With Tariffs
        first_hour: 21
        last_hour: 12
        starting_today: true
        number_of_slots: 3
        sequential: false
        failsafe_starting_hour: 1
        price_modifications: >
          {%- set as_snt = price / 10.0 %}
          {%- set with_taxes = (as_snt * 1.255) | float %}
          {%- if time.hour >= 22 or time.hour <= 7 %}
            {{ with_taxes + 3.1 }}
          {%- else %}
            {{ with_taxes + 5.0 }}
          {%- endif %}

v0.6.0

A long awaited feature was introduced with 0.6.0 – archive. Previously you only could see calendar values until data expired at the last hour of the sequence. Now you can set retention to keep them visible in calendar up to 365 days – just set retention_days configuration variable as you wish.

aio_energy_management:
    cheapest_hours:
      - nordpool_official_config_entry: 01K4QBH1H606SDS1V28KGR32K7
        unique_id: cheapest_hours_water_boiler
        name: Cheapest Hours Water Boiler
        first_hour: 21
        last_hour: 12
        starting_today: true
        number_of_hours: 6
        sequential: false
        retention_days: 30

This one also introduced the 15min MTU support to Entso-E configurations. Entso-e integration was a bit late for the launch of 15min mtu so I had to bring my part a bit late are well.

And last (and maybe the least) there were new configuration variable brought in – area. It’s possible to have multiple areas configured within the Nord Pool official integration and without this, only the first area on the list can be used with cheapest hours. Area can be configured with variable ‘area’ and is only effective with Nord Pool official integration. Area is the same visible in Nord Pool integration configuration page (e.g. SE1, SE2, FI…)

aio_energy_management:
    cheapest_hours:
      - nordpool_official_config_entry: 01K4QBH1H606SDS1V28KGR32K7
        unique_id: cheapest_hours_water_boiler
        name: Cheapest Hours Water Boiler
        first_hour: 21
        last_hour: 12
        starting_today: true
        number_of_hours: 6
        sequential: false
        area: FI

v0.7.0 (+v0.7.1)

In 0.7.1 release number_of_hours configuration was deprecated and number_of_slots was brought instead. While you can still use number_of_hours, I’d suggest to make the move to number_of_slots.

Number_of_slots will follow the value of selected MTU. If you are using 60min MTU and want to find two cheapest hours, set the number_of_slots to two. When using 15min MTU and if still looking for the two cheapest hours, this should be set to eight (8*15min = 2 hours).

This makes it easier to find for smaller amount of slots than one full hour for some (rare) use cases.

Examples below. First where two HOURS are selected with 15min MTU(number_of_slots -> 4 * 2 = 8), second where MTU is 60 and where two HOURS are selected (number_of_slots: 2).

aio_energy_management:
    cheapest_hours:
      - nordpool_official_config_entry: 01K4QBH1H606SDS1V28KGR32K7
        unique_id: cheapest_hours_mtu_15
        name: Cheapest Hours MTU 15
        first_hour: 0
        last_hour: 23
        mtu: 15
        starting_today: false
        number_of_slots: 8
        sequential: false
        failsafe_starting_hour: 1
      - nordpool_official_config_entry: 01K4QBH1H606SDS1V28KGR32K7
        unique_id: cheapest_hours_mtu_60
        name: Cheapest Hours MTU 60
        first_hour: 0
        last_hour: 23
        mtu: 60
        starting_today: false
        number_of_slots: 2
        sequential: false
        failsafe_starting_hour: 1

v0.8.0

0.8.0 feature, config flow, is currently a Beta feature and this FINALLY brings a nice utility for users who struggle with the YAML configuration. Now it’s possible to set everything through the UI totally – of course it’s still possible to use YAML configuration if you wish to continue doing so.

All the configurations remain the same, so go and see references from the original GitHub project README.md. Just bear in mind that there’s this advanced ‘enable entities’ selection on the beginning on the configuration flow that is disabled by default. Enabling this allows you to select entities for certain configurations to be used as dynamic entities, rather than hard coded values (like number_of_slots and offsets).

Oh, and starting_today is now deprecated as it’s not necessary anymore. It will be determined automatically from the first_hour and the last_hour configurations. You still can provide it with YAML configuration (backward compatible), but it’s not necessary to do so.

Few tips when configuring through UI:

• Only one instance of calendar is allowed to made, but defining from the YAML and UI it can be defined twice – don’t do this though
• ‘Allow dynamic entities on configuration‘ is disabled by default and only static values can be added. Enabling this checkbox will allow you to define dynamic entities for certain items. This is to make it more easy for new users to make basic configurations.
• The entity data is cleared automatically when the configuration is edited through UI – please keep this in mind when experimenting -> no need to call clear_data from AIO Energy Management service.
• The config flow still might have bugs as this feature is on beta, please report them at the GitHub project page!

For detailed configuration flow usage, check out the AIO Energy Management configuration flow guide!

What the future holds…

I’m currently developing version 1.0.0 of AIO Energy Management, which finally brings support for excess solar management. This has been the original plan all along, but for one reason or another, I’ve been postponing it. The logic is now clear and the code is half done, so it should be ready in the next few months! It will be published as a beta first—probably for a month or two—to gather some real-world statistics while the sun is up.