PredBat - Powerful Automated Home Battery Management

[@chrismower5173]

I got home assitant when I had my solar system installed last year, planning to do some simple automations. Predbat is absolutely so much more than I ever expected, it's an incredible work of ingenuity by Trefor. Health warning that solar control is the home assitant gateway drug though - have been gradually automating my entire house. Anyone thinking about getting into this should see it as a new hobby, it's open source software not a black box.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

I love this comment - thanks for sharing! :-)

[@springfall2008]

Thanks for the interview Gary, hopefully it’s useful for those new to the battery automation world

[@GaryDoesSolar]

It was a real pleasure, Trefor - and I hope the interview encourages many people to get into Home Automation and try out PredBat 😀👍🏻

[@campbellcopeland]

I started off with PredBat follow a Speak To The Geek video. Started small, in monitor/readonly mode to test it (I had Octopus, GivTCP snd Solcast integrations already in place) and then added to EV planning (with an automation I wrote to trigger my Hypervolt charger) and then the IBoost planning (with another automation to trigger my Tuya WiFi immersion switch) - also suggested some features for iBoost planning over that time. I moved to Intelligent Flux but missed tinkering with Agile and PredBat. Sometimes I override the plan, it’s not always perfect (well, not perfect compared to my expectations) but as Trefor says, it’s much better than tweaking every 30 minutes yourself!

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Hi Campbell, thank you for sharing your experience with PredBat - this should help people take the plunge! :-)

[@geoffreycoan]

Thanks Gary. I’ve been using Predbat since September last year, firstly on Octopus Flux and then Octopus Agile through the winter. Its been absolutely brilliant, predicting and managing the charging of my battery and minimising my electricity bill. As a heat pump owner we have high electricity consumption in winter, bigger each day than the battery size, so making best use of the battery has been invaluable. There’s a lot of work that’s been put into making Predbat easier to access, lots of KZbin videos and extensive and detailed installation and configuration documentation. As Trefor said, Predbat started off with GivEnergy batteries and inverters but has now grown to support lots of other types as well. One extra thing to highlight, as well as running Home Assistant on an old PC, Home Assistant Green or Raspberry Pi, there’s also the option of running it on the Home Assistant cloud; there’s a small monthly subscription but you don’t then need any dedicated hardware.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Thanks for sharing all this Geoffrey - great insight! :-)

[@alanbennett3812]

Hi Gary and Trev. Great info. I'm a solaredge user. 9.24KWp. 15 panels south. 7 west. 10kw battery 6kw solaredge Homehub. To avoid clipping at this time of year I set battery to discharge 30 min before my solar production hits 6kwp I stop discharging when I'm back producing 6kwp. My discharge time at the moment is 9.30 am to 15.30. I do have to remember to stop discharging if the next day is going to be a cloudy day. Yes. I have forgotten. Like wise. If the weather turns and there isn't enough clipped to keep the battery charging I have to revert back to maximum self consumption. I know that home assistant and your excellent predbat will automate what I'm doing, but I'm a very sad 50 year old that enjoys opening the app every day looking how much I'm producing, plus getting annoyed at my son having a shower at 2am. 😅 Keep up the great work all.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Hi Alan, thanks for sharing all this - great to hear! :-)

[@colingoode3702]

I'm sort of tempted but this stuff is way above my pay grade so I would have to get my son to set it all up!! He's a Technical Solution Consultant for a large computer software company & a bit of a HA geek so it should be right up his alley.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

That sounds like a great idea, Colin. Watch though - your son might want a cut of the savings/profit you make! :-)

[@timdee888]

Good stuff we will give it a go

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Cheers, and I’d love to know how you get on with it 😀👍🏻

[@richardbaron7024]

Hi Trefor and Gary, thanks for your video I’m still trying to understand predbat without currently having a battery set up. I’m looking for a specific solution which I’m not clear whether predbat can cater for. Ideally I’d like a battery management system that would trigger force discharge once my solar production teachers a certain amount. I’ve got a lot of roof space so I went to maximise the number of panels, 26, but I’m export limited at 3.68kw which is a bit annoying after being told I’d be good for 7kw! Non the less it’s still worthwhile to go for the bigger array as it’ll balance out and I’m planning on getting an EV in the next year. But, it got me thinking about managing the clipping. I’d see the battery system essentially as a buffer system which will have enough capacity to capture the peak spikes in sunlight between all the cloud we get, but also extending the export period. So rather than solar exporting at 7kw one moment and 3 the next, my battery would ideally smooth out at a continuous 3.68kw continuously. This means that any clipping would be absorbed into the battery and maximise on the solar production from the large array. I can see predbat might be able to do this, but with some reverse engineering and creativity with numbers. But I’m not 100% sure! Any direction to reading material or videos or comments would be greatly appreciated.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Hi Richard, sorry - only just saw your comment. Cheers for the kind words. I'd recommend you join this Facebook group (which Trefor is a member) - it's a great place to lay out what you're trying to achieve and ask questions around that - good luck! facebook.com/groups/489882062425810

[@alexwebber2612]

I tried this, moved from intelligent octopus flux, used Pred Bat on agile for 8 days, lost a lot of income compared to IOF so switched back. In short, if you have GivEnergy kit, hook up to IOF and forget about having to fiddle.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Sorry to hear that, Alex - was it because of the high pricing on Agile during that time, or issues with PredBat itself?

[@alexwebber2612]

@@GaryDoesSolar hey, think it’s more that IOF with a GivEnergy setup has absolutely nailed the algorithm… it does stuff that Pred Bat didn’t to make sure you reliably get over £2 per day of income. IOF will sit with a full battery all day, will draw from the grid rather than run down the battery and then dump it all at 4pm. Then runs the house from the grid all night, and still it’ll make more than Predbat did. I love tech, but think PredBat is more for nerds who think they know best, (I counted myself in this gang, that’s why I tried it :-)) rather than the fit and forget reliable predictable solution which IOF for the last 6 months has been.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

That’s a pretty good endorsement for IOF 😀👍🏻

[@iancollyer9995]

Looks like a great piece of software and thanks for sharing this info. I’m off to make a pc out of old components! I wonder, would predbat work with DFS services such as GivBack from axle energy or would it override these add on services?

[@geoffreycoan]

Predbat can automatically manage the battery in the DFS session for you. If you are signed up to Axle then you’d need to turn predbat to read only mode on a dfs day as it will overwrite any commands Axle sends. If you’re with Octopus the DFS notification and programming was all automatic

[@iancollyer9995]

Thank you. I’m actually with both Axle and Octopus so get a double whammy on DFS days in terms of payback and octopoints. I’m assuming Predbat would need to be in read only mode on DFS despite this?

[@geoffreycoan]

@@iancollyer9995 Predbat assumes it has full control of the inverter, so if it finds the inverter isn’t what it has in its plan then it will just change the inverter settings to match the plan. So in practical terms this means if you want the inverter to do something that Predbat hasn’t planned then you tell Predbat what to do and it instructs the inverter - eg hold the charge, force discharge, force charge, etc. For the DFS sessions, same thing. you can either manually instruct Predbat to mirror the Axel DFS session or you can set Predbat to read-only so it lets Axel make its changes and then turn Predbat back on after the DFS session. I was with Octopus for last winter’s DFS sessions and it did brilliantly. I think the payback was slightly better than Axel as Axel missed out on a couple of sessions and Octopus self-funded a couple towards the end. Having said all that, who knows what shape or form DFS will be next winter and whether it will be anything like this year. But short answer is you have options with Predbat

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Great stuff!

[@nicholaspostlethwaite9554]

It is the sort of thing a big company or three, needs to donate money to and get it made into a proper Windows pc or even mobile programme. Open source is great and how things software should be, but have a tendency not to be user friendly perhaps until they get to a certain level of adoption. For wide use it has to be download and it just works, sorts out the stuff it needs and has available.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Yeah, and maybe we'll see that happening one day... :-)

[@seanelvin4567]

doe this work with the Tesla power wall ?

[@geoffreycoan]

It should do, there’s one person already trying it

[@GaryDoesSolar]

I believe, yes.

[@malcolmtott]

I have an Enphase system with micro-inverters I didn't hear anything in the interview that would suit my needs? Or am I missing g something. M

[@geoffreycoan]

Predbat is principally there to plan and optimise your battery storage of generated solar so if you don’t have batteries and only have solar then it may not be much use for you

[@malcolmtott]

@@geoffreycoan Geoff many thanks for your response. I fully appreciate that fact re: battery management hence I'm not missing the point - the issue I was questioning is that all examples discussed and the inverter chart shown are for system based DC to AC inverters as I understand it? My system uses micro invertors so my batteries have to be AC coupled hence the question does PredBat work with a micro-inverter based system?

[@geoffreycoan]

@@malcolmtott Ah, thanks for the clarification. Predbat works equally well with AC or hybrid coupled inverters, or equally AC micro inverters. This only really makes a difference to the modelling of different conversion losses that you incur for different ‘directions’ of power (i.e. hybrid inverters can charge the battery direct from DC whereas AC coupled will incur the conversion loss). But short answer is yes no problem

[@GaryDoesSolar]

PredBat is agnostic to microinverters...

[@peter.russell]

Hi Gary, been following your channel for a while as am about to get solar & battery. One quote I've had is for Eco Flow Ocean, 5k inverter with 2 x 5k batteries. Have you come across this and any thoughts about the product ?

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Hi Peter, yes I’ve heard of this product (actually they wanted me to promote it). It’s great to see new entrants into the market, but given it’s a large purchase, it’s worth waiting to see how the product actually performs in real life.

[@peter.russell]

@GaryDoesSolar thanks & good advice. We want to install pretty much now so it might be we don't risk a new system. I've asked a few questions but one feature is it comes with a 15 year or 6000 cycle battery warranty which seems good. Thanks again for your thought provoking & inciteful content 🙂

[@skipmcilvaine]

Where is the list of supported inverters? Thanks.

[@GaryDoesSolar]

It’s displayed in the video in that section 👍🏻

[@magnusdons]

Will the app download the actual export from the DCC in the UK? Or does it rely on connecting to investors own data?

[@GaryDoesSolar]

I don’t know the answer to that, but you can join the forum and ask. Link in the video description 👍🏻

[@geoffreycoan]

Predbat usually uses the inverter’s idea of export and import (to calculate £ today). The DCC data is just too lagged to be usable, at least 30 minutes and often hours behind

[@CC_FPV]

So are you getting it on then?

[@GaryDoesSolar]

I’m seriously thinking about. But I want to see how I get on with Intelligent Octopus Go for a few weeks first…

[@CC_FPV]

@@GaryDoesSolar now is the time then to get it on. You can have it in read only mode so it won’t change any settings you can just see how it works ready for when you need it. It’s only my first year on solar staring in February but the plan is Agile in the winter and IOF in the summer. I’ve had Predbat in read only for the last 2 months keeping abreast of the updates etc.

[@antonycharnley]

@@CC_FPV I think the same, but I am interested in seeing what PredBat makes of IOF throughout the summer. ~ I set up the Home Assistant last night, and it's picked up a million things for me to API into, which is all just a distraction. Ultimately, there's a 10.5kw peak actual delivery from my system (2/3 west & 1/3 South) and a 13.5kw battery. Sunny mornings are a great kickstart to the day. It's a strange shift away from conserving battery, getting through the night and waking up to 40% battery, then seeing it top up and sit full all day whilst I export vs. IOF now only ever force charging and discharging in one using part of the battery, part of the time. Importing from the grid with no regard, then maximising export to make up for it, it all just feels forced? And Unintelligent! so far. Like you, I have the Solast setup through Giv AIO. It's predicting reasonably close, so let's see what read-only tells me.

[@CC_FPV]

@@antonycharnley I love IOF. It’s not forced it works really well. The only downside I can see is that it won’t go lower than 20% but all in all it makes you money without a doubt. Predbat is of no use with IOF so I leave it in read only following the updates and making sure it’s ready for Agile time at the end of summer. Sorry one other downside but I’ve not seen it yet is clipping. Predbat will guard against that but IOF won’t. So how much clipping do you expect compared to the extra savings with IOF.

[@jamesgrover2005]

Hi I'm in the Netherlands, I've got solar, heatpump, EV. I've been planning on getting a home battery soon from my energy provider, this includes a gateway that will work with the fluctuating price.. I'm assuming this solution would get in the way of Predbat?

[@geoffreycoan]

If the gateway does automatic charging and discharging of the battery in response to fluctuating rates then this sounds very similar to what Predbat would do for you. Predbat potentially could replace the gateway if there were suitable API’s for your electricity prices and to control the home battery, and since it takes into account solar and home load predictions it might come up with a better answer

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Yeah, the two systems would be competing with each other to control your battery. You would need to disable one or the other, I reckon...

[@GaryDoesSolar]

Yes, I think the two approaches would end up competing with each other...