Open flautze opened 11 months ago
marq24
commented
10 months ago sounds great... but it will take me a bit of time to check the details... And obviously I would like to understand the content in detail - "now" is a bit too late for me on Sunday
flautze
commented
10 months ago No worries. This was not meant for "now". Take your time and let me know..
marq24
commented
10 months ago So how do you like to proceed? Do you want to create a gist - or a repo - or do you want to email me your sources? [I am totally open minded...] - When you ask me for a opinion, that creating a own repo with the resources sounds currently most practicable - you as owner have then the full control...
I have to admit, that I did not understand yet the overall picture - I mean, what I actually see :-) [no I am not blind :-D] - I guess I have to see this in real life with my waterkotte (EcoTouch Ai1 Geo) in order to understand the details...
And could be, that my personal usecase(s) are a bit different... And also it could be that my local installation is a bit confusing too... (but could be that this is also a common setup?)
So I guess the simples is, that I am describing my local installation:
Heating, Warmwater & Mixer I are in use. There is a separate buffer tank installed from which a) the radiator-heating is feed and also (from a lower position at the tank) the floor heating get's the warm water... Also attached to the lower part of the buffer-tank is a temperature sensor - this temp is considered as temperature sensor of the heating (while also a separate value for the buffer-tank exists - but both values are always identical). The tank itself is a single container (there exists also buffer-tanks with two separate tanks inside (connected via an heat exchanger) - but for me, this is not the case.
There are three circulation pumps that have a certain meaning/function:
Easy - this is the circulation pump for the floor heating - important detail: feeded from the lower part of the buffer tank
Feeding the radiators of the house - getting hot water from the upper part of the buffer-tank (and returning it also to the upper part of the tank)
When the heating-circulation-pump is running the water in the buffer tank itself get's in rotation... This is an "important" detail since when I increase the temp of the heating (in the waterkotte) the upper part of the tank get's much hotter then the lower part... and so the floor heating don't get the water in the required/requested temperature... (since at the bottom of the tank the temp can be 10-20°C lower!) But this is some sort of self made problem I just have created few weeks ago...
So I can run in the situation where the radiator cycle get's +45°C of temperature (and return almost the same to the buffer tank) and the lower tank (feeding the floor heating) is running at 28°C (or less)... As said before, the sensor for the heating/buffer-tank temperature is attached to the lower part of the tank - so even if the temp is at 45°C (or higher) the waterkotte heatpump is starting again (and then just running for a couple of minutes)... That's why it came so important for me to find a TAG in the waterkotte, that allow me to control the heating-circulation-pump. Since when this circulation pump is running, the water temperature inside the buffer-tank get well mixed...
Together with the installation of the heatpump we have also installed a 16,8 kWp PV with a 10kW battery... While during the summer period the energy management is very simple, for the winter season I have started with some experiments. 10kW are not enough to get me though the day (beside the fact, that I am a Senec customer - which means I am only getting 70% of my storage for reasons)...
To make it even mor complicated I have also switched my electricity provider to Tibber and now I want to optimized my power consumption based on the lowest daily prices... So since the battery is not enough, I want to use the buffer tank to store thermal energy over the day... I hope now all the explanation above start to make sense...
When energy-price is lowest for the day I increase the buffer-tank temperature by at least 15°K - or might be more - currently set to 55°C - and then use this energy over the day (since only really few radiators are running (bath only)).
Of course "lowest" Tibber prices and expected PV output still have to be synced with each other - but that's another complexity on top of all this...
At the end of the day I would like to have an overall overview of the "required thermal energy" in relation to the "available electrical energy" (at minimal costs)... and of course I like to see all the current temperatures and all the things that are currently running :-)
marq24
commented
10 months ago ... just allow me to add, that I shared all this simply because you get better insides of my personal setup - I do not expect at all, that anything of that must become part of the waterkotte-card you are currently working on...
flautze
commented
10 months ago Hello, Actually I am not working on a „special“ dedicated card. It’s just a setup of the picture elements entity. however I also agree that your setup is completely different from my setup (which is pretty basic - just a heatpump, no buffer nor anything else).
this does not mean that in the future I might work on something like this.
best regards and thanks for all the work on this integration.
devfaz
commented
10 months ago @flautze may I ask you to share your files/config in a MergeRequest?
marq24
commented
10 months ago @flautze I am on the same page as defaz - would be really cool, if you could share your config (yaml) - so that others can use it too - that's how my initial reply started - explaining the option, that we have to start with the sharing...
Might be that it will not match my setup - but I am confident, that others will appreciate your work - and might be I can create an extended version as well [or even provide some sort of "toolbox"]
flautze
commented
10 months ago @devfaz @marq24 sure I can do that. However I am not too familiar with GitHub yet. So do I create a Fork first and then a MergeRequest?
EDIT: I have just put everything I did in a repo. Nothing fancy. However the background graphics I have still on my computer (designed with GIMP), so If you would like to have something more there I certainly can adjust/add/expand. https://github.com/flautze/home_assistant_waterkotte
marq24
commented
10 months ago thanks a lot @flautze! - IMHO everything is at the right place (starting with a own repo) - from the first look all looks quite understandable - Of course I know, that the templates.yml have to be merged with my existing templates...
When I started this year with home automation and smart home stuff I found it very complicated to understand, what should go where - and how the things play together in HA... Your readme is already very nice - you might like to make one step back and also explain, how to integrate the templates (as initial step) - so they than can be used by the custom dashboard card...
For the tibber integration I have tried to explain something similar - https://github.com/marq24/ha-tibber-pulse-local#additional-entities-to-get-status-information-about-your-tibber-pulse-itself - assuming, the user does not have ever added a (template) sensor before...
and 'yes' would be cool, if you can include the image source (gimp) file in a src subfolder - so when somebody want to add something, then this can be done with the right tool - I hope this has some different layer... mmmmh might be a SVG would be even better... but let's see your riginal source first! :-) Thanks for all your efforts!
Hey marq, Just an idea. I made this card using picture-elements card for my Waterkotte Heatpump (EcoTouch Geo). My goal was to imitate the initial Screen when you are directly working on Waterpump display. This gives me a great overview of the heatpumps current state.
I am willing to share the background graphics as well as the yaml of the card if you are interested - you could even use it for this repository.
Used Frontends:
Features: