nordpool_planner custom component for Home Assistant

Requires https://github.com/custom-components/nordpool

NOTE: This is a based on https://github.com/jpulakka/nordpool_diff

Nord Pool gives you spot prices, but making good use of those prices is not easy. This component provides various a boolean if now is the right time to activate high consumption based on future prices in a specified range. Given a time-span from now and an number of hours forward it searches for the start-time that has the lowest average price over a specified duration window.

Apart from potentially saving some money, this kind of temporal shifting of consumption can also save the environment, because expensive peaks are produced by dirtier energy sources. Also helps solving Europe's electricity crisis.

Installation

Option 1: HACS

1. Install and configure https://github.com/custom-components/nordpool first.
2. Go to HACS -> Integrations
3. Click the three dots on the top right and select Custom Repositories
4. Enter https://github.com/dala318/nordpool_planner as repository, select the category Integration and click Add
5. A new custom integration shows up for installation (Nordpool Planner) - install it
6. Restart Home Assistant

Option 2: Manual

1. Install and configure https://github.com/custom-components/nordpool first.
2. Copy the nordpool_planner folder to HA <config_dir>/custom_components/nordpool_planner/
3. Restart HA. (Skipping restarting before modifying configuration would give "Integration 'nordpool_diff' not found" error message from the configuration.)

Configuration

1. Add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

   binary_sensor:
     - platform: nordpool_planner
       nordpool_entity: sensor.nordpool_kwh_fi_eur_3_095_024
       entity_id: activate_heating
   
       moving:
         search_length: 8
       <or>
       static:
         end_hour: 7

   Exclusively either of moving or static shall be specified, determines the behavior of the sensor. See further down about usage.

   Modify the nordpool_entity value according to your exact nordpool entity ID, give the entity a describing name and select one of two planner types moving or static.

   moving planner searches in a constant window in the future

   static planner searches for an ammount of cheap hours until a set time (work in progress!)

2. Restart HA again to load the configuration. Now you should see nordpool_planner_2_10_0_0_0_0 binary_sensor, where the 2_10_0_0_0_0 part corresponds to default values of optional parameters, explained below.

Optional parameters

There are some optional parameters that could be provided to the sensor, they can be grouped in some categories.

Generic optional: duration (2), var_duration_entity (""), accept_cost (0.0) and accept_rate (0.0). Default values in parenthesis.

duration can be in the range of 1 to 5 and specifies how large window of censecutive hours to slide forward in search for a minimum average price.

var_duration_entity an entity that provides a numerical value in hours.

The integration will use var_duration_entity if supplied and can be interpreted as int, otherwise duration or the default value.

A simple way to get you a slider to manually select an input entity value is by an input_number as below

input_number:
  np_time:
    name: Time to Nordpool Planner
    initial: 2
    min: 0
    max: 24
    step: 1

accept_cost specifies a price level in the currency of your nordpool_entity, that if an "average over a duration" is below this value, it is accepted and used. Even if not the lowest in the range specified.

accept_rate specifies a price rate, that if an "average over a duration" divided by nordpool average (nordpool_entity.attributes.average) is below this rate, it is accepted and used. Even if not the lowest in the range specified. E.g. if set to 1 an "average over a duration" <= "nordpool average" is accepted. If 0.5 it has to be half the price of "nordpool average". The idea is to not be as sensitive to offsets I price levels but just a generic rule to accept low section, not just the lowest.

The planner types has some additional configuration variables

Moving

Optional parameter var_search_length_entity (""). Default value in parenthesis.

binary_sensor:
  - platform: nordpool_planner
    nordpool_entity: sensor.nordpool_kwh_fi_eur_3_095_024
    entity_id: "heat_house_when_cheap"
    duration: 2
    var_duration_entity: input_number.needed_ammount_of_hours
    accept_cost: 0.0
    accept_rate: 0.0
    moving:
     search_length: 10
     var_search_length_entity: input_number.look_this_far_ahead

search_length can be in the range of 2 to 24 and specifies how many hours ahead to serach for lowest price.

var_search_length_entity an entity that provides a numerical value in hours.

The integration will use minimum of var_search_length_entity (if supplied and can be interpreted as int) and duration (or the default value).

Static

WORK IN PROGRESS: This version of entity is still not fully tested, may need some more work to work properly.

Optional parameters var_end_hour_entity ("") and split_hours (false). Default values in parenthesis.

binary_sensor:
  - platform: nordpool_planner
    nordpool_entity: sensor.nordpool_kwh_fi_eur_3_095_024
    entity_id: "heat house when cheap"
    duration: 2
    var_duration_entity: input_number.needed_ammount_of_hours
    accept_cost: 0.0
    accept_rate: 0.0
    static:
     end_hour: 7
     var_end_hour_entity: input_number.need_fully_charged_car_at
     split_hours: false

end_hour can be in the range of 0 to 23 and specifies at what time within 24 hours the ammount of active hours shall be selected.

var_end_hour_entity an entity that provides a numerical value in hours.

The integration will use var_end_hour_entity if supplied and can be interpreted as int, otherwise end_hour or the default value.

NOT IMPLEMENTED: No support implemented to use this setting split_hours tell if allowed to find low-cost hours that are not censecutive

Attributes

Apart from the true/false if now is the time to turn on electricity usage the sensor provides some attributes.

starts_at tell when the next low-point starts

cost_at tell what the average cost is at the lowest point identified

now_cost_rate tell a comparison current price / best average. Is just a comparison to how much more expensive the electricity is right now compared to the found slot. E.g. 2 means you could half the cost by waiting for the found slot.

Usage

Some words should be said about the usage and how it behaves.

The search length variable should be set to to a value within which you could accept no high electricity usage, and the ratio window/search should somewhat correspond to the active/passive time of your main user of electricity. Still, the search window for the optimal spot to electricity is moving along in front of corrent time, so there might be a longer duration of passive usage than the search length. Therefor keeping the search length low (3-5h) should likely be optimal, unless you have a large storage capacity of electricity/heat that can wait for a longer duration and when cheap electricity draw as much as possible.

If to explain by an image, first orange is now, second orange is search_length ahead in time, width of green is duration and placed where it has found the cheapest average price within the orange.

Try it and feedback how it works or if there are any improvment to be done!

Tuning your settings

I found it usefull to setup a simple history graph chart comparing the values from nordpool, nordpool_diff and nordpool_planner like this.

Where from top to bottom my named entities are:

• nordpool_diff: duration 3 in search_length 10, accept_cost 2.0
• nordpool_diff: duration 2 in search_lenth 5, accept_cost 2.0 and accept_rate 0.7
• nordpool average: just a template sensor extracting the nordpool attribute average to an entity for easier tracking and comparisons "{{ state_attr('sensor.nordpool_kwh_se3_sek_3_10_025', 'average') | float }}"
• nordpool
• nordpool_diff: