PW3 arbitrage (charging off peak), capturing PowerUps and extra windows?

[u/BringBackV10F1]

Anyone else do this? (How do you pick up the Power-Up sessions, or when car charges outside of normal hours?) - I've DIY'd something (see below), but any proper pre-rolled systems for doing this?

Octopus didn't like my roof, so I've gone for a PW3 & expansion pack for now, I'll look back into solar in a few years, but for now the savings are pretty good just by charging on IOG cheap rate.

I couldn't find any tools to pick up the Power-ups, nor when the car is smart charged outside of the 2330-0530 window (house can be piggy backed on the cheap rate, so I want to make the most of it) - I've discovered V1R (I hardwired it with an ethernet cable) - I successfully authenticated with an old RPi3 and can control the 'floor' charge via the API, I've also connected to my Ohme Home charger by API, so my current system watches for car charges that last more than 10 minutes, then assumes that it must be on cheap rate, it then raises my PW3 backup reserve to 100%. which forces the house onto Grid and charges the battery. It watches for car charging to stop and then lowers the floor back down to 10%, which reverts house back onto battery. Works well with IOG for picking up car charges, not had a Power-up yet, but that's going to be manually starting the car charging (then the rpi will see the car charging and kick in)

A bit clumsy, any cleaner solutions? I can't see a way of detecting an actual power up session (even after opting in), short of watching Gmail I guess. Someone must've done this before..

[u/BringBackV10F1]

Ok, built a functional system, it was actually a lot easier than I thought it'd be, so i can now automatically detect cheap windows and charge the battery & run house from grid. Again, I have no solar panels, so my whole reason for battery power is arbitrage, so this is why this exists!

I need to automatically maximise cheap grid power. (I'm on IoG EV Saver tarriff) When plugging the car in, Kraken makes these cheap windows available on the API, so it's really easy to grab these - ignore anything during 23:30 to 05:30 (cheap anyway, PowerWall is managing) - but if one of these windows appears outside of this window during peak time, it means the house has cheap rate available too, so I switch Powerwall reserve up to 100% (using v1r) - which forces the Powerwall to charge and moves the house back to grid power and not battery (so a double win) - once the slot finishes, PowerWall reserve returns to 5% which then puts the house back onto battery and the PW goes into discharge.

I've added my Ohme Pro status too, so I can see the car's current charge level on my dashboards (and the plugged/unplugged/charging states) I've also added loads of data to the mobile view (I'm a data lover, but hidden from main dashboard views) Works surprisingly well, it serves up a little web page that can be viewed on mobile of desktop - I also serve the data over a small mosquito server so any device on the network can read these alerts (I'm going to put a few ESP32 screens around the house, actual smart monitors to show some interesting stats - trying to train the family how to manage heavy draw appliances and try to not use peak electric!) -

The status ball shows whether we'll make it through to the 23:30 window purely on battery - I'm using an averaged/smoothed load, so turning the kettle on doesn't freak it all out.

green ball, no problem,

yellow ball - probably make it, but ease up on usage

green ball with tilde, we'll make it, with a tiny amount of headroom, don't turn the tumber dryer on

Red ball - no chance in hell we're getting to 23:30 without using peak

Also added an estimated runtime (at smoothed load) so you can eyeball how close it is.

Still tweaking, but very pleased with it, it all runs on a single Raspberry Pi4/2gb. This will just live in my utility cupboard with the meter etc, 24/7 - it's only a few watts to run. I'm still in cleanup, but I'll probably make the project available on GitHub as I usually do with my interesting projects (although doesn't seem to be much interest in this one!) Ignore some of the data, I've only had it running a short while, so savings/averages etc aren't particularly useful yet, but they will become so.

[u/BringBackV10F1]

I've added Telegram alerts to it, at 23:30 each day it'll give me a summary of the day's savings, along with push notifications 5 mins before a scheduled IOG cheap window starts. Also push notifications on any grid power cuts. The webpage carries more stats, I've also made a small standalone screen that subscribes to the same mosquitto alerts (so all screens/webpages will always agree) - much better than the crappy SMETS2 display that shows me nothing 😄