Do you have a home battery?

EnergyWizard can control a home battery as part of the whole house, not as an island. The battery competes with the EV, the heat pump, the spa and solar export for the same watts, so its decisions are made in the same engine that controls everything else: EV charging, the peak cap, the main fuse, the electricity price and the solar surplus. Everything goes through the battery's own Home Assistant integration, with no protocol code of our own.

Status: built and tested with simulated calls, but not yet run against a real battery. Have one? Get in touch - that is exactly what we need.

Three control modes

The battery's five modes

When EnergyWizard is in control it picks one of five modes every quarter hour. The battery's own mode names (e.g. "Self Use" or "Force Charge") are mapped to these five:

Which batteries can be controlled?

Everything beyond reading is built against the integrations' source code and not yet run against a real battery.

The rules (in priority order)

1. Stale data: if the battery or the power meter stops answering, the inverter takes over (auto).
2. Main fuse overloaded: the battery discharges to relieve the main fuse.
3. Peak cap reached: the battery covers the peak.
4. Negative price: the battery charges from the grid.
5. The EV charges from the grid: the battery holds - it is never emptied into the car.
6. The EV charges from solar: above your priority level the car gets the surplus before the battery.
7. Reserve level: below it the battery is kept for power cuts.
8. The daily plan: once calculated, it decides the rest (see below).
9. No plan - cheap hour with more expensive ones ahead: the battery is saved for the expensive hours.
10. Otherwise: the inverter's self-consumption.

The daily plan

Every fifteen minutes EnergyWizard works out the cheapest plan for the rest of today and tomorrow, quarter by quarter: when the battery should charge, save, discharge or just cover the house. It takes into account the price (full purchase price and what you get for sold power), the house's expected consumption, the solar forecast, the EV's charging plan, the battery's efficiency, the reserve level and how fast it can charge. Energy left at the end of the plan is valued carefully, so the battery is used when it pays instead of being hoarded. The safety rules above always come first.

Planning style

Under Settings → Battery you choose how much the plan trusts the solar and consumption forecast, in five steps from Very careful to Very bold. A careful plan assumes less solar and more consumption than forecast and keeps more in the battery for later. A bold plan trusts the forecast and uses the battery more, which earns the most when the forecast is right. Balanced is the default.

The reserve level, fuse protection and peak cap are the same in every style. The style only changes how the plan calculates, never the safety.

May the battery sell to the grid?

With Allow the battery to sell to the grid on (default) the plan may discharge to the grid when the price is high enough to pay for losses and wear. Turn it off and the battery only covers the house's own consumption - sensible if your contract pays little for exported power or your grid operator charges for it.

Safety

• The battery returns to the inverter's own mode when EnergyWizard starts and stops (e.g. during an update), so it is never left in "discharge" with nothing controlling it.
• Mode changes happen at most every five minutes (safety rules excepted), since inverters store the mode in flash.
• If the battery lacks a mode, the nearest safe one is used instead (idle → hold → auto).

The plan learns your battery

Wear is counted. Each discharged kWh costs a little battery life - 0.30 SEK/kWh by default (cycle_cost; cell price / (capacity × cycles)). The plan only discharges when the price difference covers both losses and wear, and each mode switch costs a little too, so the battery doesn't flip back and forth.

From history EnergyWizard learns the battery's real efficiency, usable capacity and actual max power, how far off the solar forecast usually is hour by hour at your house, and the house's consumption per weekday and hour. Learned values are only used when there is enough data and they are physically plausible. Every day it also works out what the battery actually saved yesterday.

Solis (with BYD, Dyness and others)

With Pho3niX90/solis_modbus (S6-EH1P, S6-EH3P and other hybrids) the entity picker fills in control by itself: the RC Force Charge/Discharge dropdown and the power numbers in watts. The battery behind it (BYD HVS, Dyness, Pylontech …) is always controlled through the inverter.

• Auto sets None back, so the inverter runs the mode you chose in Storage Mode, which EnergyWizard never changes.
• Solis remote control lets go after a timeout (RC Timeout, 5 minutes by default), so EnergyWizard re-sends the command every three minutes while charging or discharging. If EnergyWizard stops, the inverter returns to its own mode.
• Solis has no clean "hold" mode, so the plan uses auto there. Not yet run against a real inverter.

Fronius Gen24 with BYD HVS

With redpomodoro/fronius_modbus the entity picker fills in Storage Control Mode: Auto, Block Discharging (hold), Charge from Grid and Discharge to Grid, plus the power in watts. Enable Modbus and allow control in the inverter's web page. The built-in Fronius integration can only read.

The BYD battery is always charged through the inverter. bbr111/byd_hvs and redpomodoro/byd_battery_box give good read-outs but control nothing. With both a BYD integration and Solis or Fronius, the entity picker picks the inverter, since that is what can control.

HomeWizard Plug-In Battery

Controlled through Battery group charging strategy on the P1 meter: Net zero (auto), Net zero (charge only) (hold), Standby (idle) and One-time full charge (charge). HomeWizard has no "discharge to the grid"; in auto the battery covers the house anyway. The P1 meter also becomes the house's power meter. Enable Current phase 1-3 in Home Assistant (off by default) so the fuse guard gets real amperes.

Felicity Solar

With partach/ha_felicity (T-REX 5K, 6K, 10K, 25K and 50K over Modbus) the entity picker recognises the battery and fills in charge level and power, but read-only. The integration has its own price-based scheduler (EMS), and two systems controlling one battery fight each other. Its "Backup mode" option also writes Economic mode to the T-REX 5/10K, so EnergyWizard cannot pick modes safely that way. Let ha_felicity run the battery; EnergyWizard sees it, counts it in the fuse guard and the plan for the rest of the house, and never writes to it.

Does power show minus while charging? Add power_invert: true under battery:.

How to set it up

The entity picker finds the battery and writes control: samarbete as a safe start. For styr you map each intent to one of the battery's own modes - exactly the options your select entity shows in Home Assistant:

battery:
  enabled: true
  driver: generic
  capacity_kwh: 10
  control: styr          # samarbete | styr | av
  reserve_soc: 20        # always kept for power cuts
  priority_soc: 50       # above this the EV gets solar first
  max_power_w: 5000
  cycle_cost: 0.30       # wear, SEK per discharged kWh
  plan: true             # daily plan (false = rules only)
  plan_style: balanced   # very_careful | careful | balanced | bold | very_bold
  allow_export: true     # false = the battery only covers the house
  power_invert: false    # true if the power sensor shows + while discharging
  entities:
    soc: sensor.battery_soc
    power: sensor.battery_power            # + = charging
    mode_select: select.battery_mode
  modes:
    auto: "Self-use"
    hold: "..."
    idle: "..."
    charge: "..."
    discharge: "..."

Let Predbat see EnergyWizard's planned EV charging

EnergyWizard publishes its EV charging plan as sensor.smartbox_planerad_last in Home Assistant. Its predbat attribute uses the exact format Predbat's load_forecast reads (checked against Predbat's source). Add to Predbat's apps.yaml:

  load_forecast:
    - sensor.smartbox_planerad_last$predbat

Avoid double counting: enable Predbat's car_charging_hold and point car_charging_energy at the charger's energy sensor, so the car is removed from history and only comes back via EnergyWizard's plan. Not yet verified against a real Predbat installation.