Logicmachine as Home Energy Management System

[Monolithos]

hi,

We've been running is this issue quite a few times recently : PV-panels, battery, EV-charging point, lots of high electrical load applications (airco, heat-pump, cooking ovens, high power induction cooking stoves, ... and simply not enough power available to do it all at the same time.

For EV-charging points, Schneider has some software running on a Magelis to manage this but it's not really suitable (yet) to take into account battery charge, dynamic PV-panel energy production, kWh-prices,optimizing of self-consumption ...

It's a hot item and will become so even more and also for residential application but surprisingly, many manufacturer's don't have an out-of-the-box solution at hand or it proves to be incompatible with common modbus-rtu or tcp metering.

So, I was looking into modbus-tcp meters to drive modbus-tcp switches and some kind of server to handle the logic.
We could be going back to Gira Home Server or start prototyping with node-red and openhab to handle this but wait a minute...

Logicmachine can be a modbus master to receive meter input and can handle significant logic processing and can directly connect to KNX in order to have priority switching of powered applications... isn't that all we need?

Too bad I'm not good in programming...

So : any input / opinion on Logicmachine as a full-blown EMS (even when it takes a separate unit to just do that)?
@Openrb / Schneider : Any plans on taking this anywhere?
Any-one willing to take this on? (Schneider support would be very nice and maybe/probably they already have plans since there is clearly market demand and no affordable solution, but I'm willing to invest in this)

[edgars]

Hi,
thanks for your inputs. Could you please elaborate more details about possible scenarios how you see this? So we can think about possible form for a separate app inside LM5 to handle this task.

[Erwin van der Zwart]

Well we already have Prosumer Home as a solution for this based on W4K..

https://www.se.com/de/de/work/products/p...r-home.jsp

I also created several scripts to do some load balance, even controlling our EV chargers based on available power.. To be honest, those scripts are quite simple so I don’t use prosumer but modify the scripts i have on custom needs is much faster..

[Monolithos]

Well we already have Prosumer Home as a solution for this based on W4K..

https://www.se.com/de/de/work/products/p...r-home.jsp

I also created several scripts to do some load balance, even controlling our EV chargers based on available power.. To be honest, those scripts are quite simple so I don’t use prosumer but modify the scripts i have on custom needs is much faster..

Hello Edgars and Erwin,

I was made aware by a belgian Schneider business manager something like this was coming... I had no idea something is already avaliable.
I know a Magelis industrial pc unit can be used to manage up to 50 G4 ev-charging points but without (out-of-the-box and as far I was informed anyway) any possibility to interact with other technologies (like KNX or batteries or pv-invertor).

As far as I can deduct (German is not a language I am comfortable with) this Prosumer Home products is already based on LM hardware and uses the EEbus protocol to manage other home appliances (however, online documentation is very limited) but seems to focus on ev-charging.
It's not clear to me wether this uses the standard Homelynk/wiser software or some other pre-loaded application.

Also, recently I followed some webinars organised by the KNX association. The main subject in one of these was protocols used to manage the energy sources and users in order to have total energymanagement (local en wide area smart grids). EEbus was mentioned as one the minor and therefor not significant protocols, not very likely to become an industry-standard. I wouldn't know since I'm no expert.
KNX itself is apparently also looking into extending the protocol to support the market needs.

Anyway, all very interesting but a little too in-depth for a small electrotechnical installer.

@Edgars,
In short, I'm looking for a residential solutions to :
1) prevent the main power switch of tripping when total power consumption is too high with easy configuration of priorities (e.g. cooking over ev-charging, ev-charging over battery charging, battery discharging over net-based electricity)
2) optmize self-consumption and peak-shaving by intelligently using all technologies available (pv-panels, batterijs, electrical vehicle, hot water reservoir, high consumption household appliiances (washing and dish-washing machines, dryers, boilers, heat-pumps, ...), taking into account the users priorities and expectations (e.g. car must be charged at..., clothing must be dry by..., ...)
3) intelligent load-balancing and power-sourcing : adjusting ev-charging power based on available solar power (dynamicly), load-balancing when mutliple charging points are in use (residential-wise, up to 2 can be expected - some manufacturers like Alfen use a lan-based communication to establisch self-management and divide the available power, others use a master-slave setup, some use hardware switches for power throttling and the rest depend on external control), injecting and buying energy based on dynamic transaction tarrifs, ...)
4) supervision and user-interfacing for all the above

All this in an easy to configure package at a reasonable price-tag :-)

Many units (invertor, ev-chargers,...) depend on measurements provided by Modbus meters or can be controlled via Modbus. Both Modbus and Bacnet both go a long way in the HVAC-world and KNX is a good go-between in other places since many products have some kind of KNX-gateway.
Right know, many solutions exist to advice consumers into what to do and when, with fancy dashboard presentations, based on power measurements. But not many (if any) are able to take action to actually optimize.
If they can, it's mostly cloud-based (equals privacy issues, manufacturer dependancy and last but not least too slow to have dynamic interactions) and hardware-dependant or too expensive for residential use.

Too many different protocols to take into account is probably the main problem, followed by not enough knowledge amongst the installers (myself included) to get a system working.

That's why the LM came to mind.
I would be happy to give aid in any effort although, due lack of programming skills, it would be limited to present a integrator/end-user point-of-view :-)

Kind regards,
Hendrik

[sds]

Interested/following this topic

Any progress?

I think the suggestions of Hendrik are already a very good starting point.