@sheriff-fatman You're absolutely right that there is currently no solution on the market that orchestrates heat pump + battery + solar PV + EV together. 

The 2 modes within Havenwise that I described earlier provide a good intermediate solution, but we won't stop there and further integrations are on the roadmap!  

Posted by: @sheriff-fatman

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Is the Havenwise solution capable of identifying when the heat pump will be running from stored battery power, rather than the grid, during the peak hours, as the effective cost of generation of these is different at any point in time?

Ah... I can see the problem you're identifying.

You could first check how big the issue is by temporarily putting some cheap (Chinese) energy monitors onto the grid connections to your battery-inverter and your heat-pump.

Here's a typical 2-channel energy meter on Amazon.
You can buy a lot cheaper via AliExpress, who also have a wider range of suitable products.

However, may I turn the question around...?

What about running the heat-pump solely from the storage battery?
That reduces the complexity of the issue.
You then only need to decide when to recharge the battery from the grid.

Posted by: @transparent

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However, may I turn the question around...?

What about running the heat-pump solely from the storage battery?
That reduces the complexity of the issue.
You then only need to decide when to recharge the battery from the grid.

It's not a controllable option in the winter months with our current battery storage.  At some point in the day, the battery charge will be exhausted, and the heat pump will make the timing of that more variable.

It's not an issue in the summer months currently, and I doubt that the additional heat pump usage will impact that.

Longer-term the solution will be to add more battery capacity, which removes the issue, but we don't have that luxury yet.

Posted by: @sheriff-fatman

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At some point in the day, the battery charge will be exhausted, and the heat pump will make the timing of that more variable.

To some extent...
... but the energy required by a heat pump is steady and predictable.

Your longer-term solution of adding more battery capacity is of greater interest to me.

Feel free to start a new Topic to discuss that.

Start by

• giving us an overview of youir current inverter & battery arrangement
• tag me so I receive an alert that you've posted this
• a photo is useful

@sheriff-fatman Exactly this is why a lot of our users with a battery choose to do the following: 

• In the shoulder months: The battery and solar PV generation are sufficient to cover the household and heat pump consumption through the day. Havenwise "ignores" the tariff for heating and the heat pump draws from solar PV when the panels are generating, or the grid during cheap periods, or the battery outside of these periods. Result: all electricity consumption is coming from solar PV or from the grid during cheap moments, and the heat pump runs at maximum efficiency. 
• In winter: Obviously the heat demand is larger, and solar PV production is lower. So very often, the battery capacity is insufficient to supply the household and heat pump consumption through the day. So Havenwise shifts a part of the heat pump consumption to the cheap periods of the tariff, and the heat pump needs to consume less electricity outside of the cheap periods. Result: the battery capacity lasts longer through the day, and grid consumption for the house or the heat pump outside of the cheap periods is minimised. 

This is just a switch for Havenwise. There is no need to adjust heat pump schedules or anything else for the user. And the user can choose when is the right time for them to switch between the 2 modes.

@sheriff-fatman : I know you already know this, so I'm describing this for the benefit of other readers.

Our interview with Henri from Havenwise it out: 

@hcas and @editor

I have just watched the above video which makes me lean more and more toward going the Havenwise route.

I do wonder though, as with many new ideas/companies, how the future looks when the success and customer base becomes such that buyers come in to take the company off of your hands.  Say, for example, someone like BG Hive comes and offers a sum of money that you just can't refuse. Suddenly the wonderful hands-on customer service/response times offered by Havenwise go down the toilet. That's a concern that I have.  That said, I am more impressed with the system generally and will probably sign up before the coming winter. You answered one of my other concerns regarding Holiday Mode and being able to still have control of turning the CH off (as is the case here now) during the warm months.

Thank you for the video. Very enlightening.

Posted by: @morgan

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@hcas and @editor

...

I do wonder though, as with many new ideas/companies, how the future looks when the success and customer base becomes such that buyers come in to take the company off of your hands.  Say, for example, someone like BG Hive comes and offers a sum of money that you just can't refuse. Suddenly the wonderful hands-on customer service/response times offered by Havenwise go down the toilet.

...

That's always a danger with any new good idea, @morgan. However, capitalism abhors a vacuum just as much as nature and so if a new owner either skimped significantly on customer service or (even worse, but still pretty common) ran the acquisition down so as to remove a competitor to their existing products then the door would be wide open for another actor to set up business with a similar model. That would likely result in either a new provider giving good service or the original solution being dusted off and being run properly again. Standard market competitive forces at work.

In some cases, a buyer isn't buying a product as much as the intellectual property behind it. In the case of Havenwise, there will certainly be proprietory algorithms but nothing that, if owned and patented, would preclude any other company coming up with their own way of achieving the same thing and competing. Buying out Havenwise wouldn't prevent a Havenwise lookalike from being developed and brought to the market by someone else.

To my mind, the real value of Havenwise is twofold; the plug-and-play simplicity of setting it up (appealing to the many non-techie homeowners) and the openness with which they do business (so the service's benefits can speak for themselves without obfuscation). Those are not expensive attributes for either the current owners or any future owner to keep going so I am optimistic for the foreseeable future. Obviously, as significantly more customers come on board Havenwise will have to rationalise a bit on response times and so forth but not necessarily to a detrimental point.

Posted by: @transparent

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Posted by: @hcas

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while your battery is charging with cheap grid power, your heat pump will run a bit harder [...]    ("loadshifting")

... a mode of operation which increases losses due to phase imbalance at the local substation

... and thermal stress in underground cables because of high current in the neutral. 🤨 

 

 

I don't want to lay the blame at the door of Havenwise and just leave it there.

Their App is based on price, rather than joules.
That's what makes it attractive to consumers looking to save money.

 

No one would want an App which

• uses more electricity when there's excess supply locally
• spreads demand across as wide a timeframe as possible in order to avoid voltage drop on the 11kV network
• avoids using electricity when gas-turbine plants undercut the green energy generators to keep their systems working in combined-cycle mode

All of those strategies are based on sound science, and would help to combat climate change.

But the tariffs for which energy suppliers seek Ofgem approval aren't based on energy efficiency, but on cold hard cash.

 

@hcas and Alex are trying to cope with a tariff architecture which doesn't achieve what we need it to.

Ethics doesn't feature very highly in the energy sector.

That's why homes are spread across the three phases.

I keep getting havenwise ads on my Facebook feed, so clearly the algorithms are working  🤣 

Can someone from havenwise expand on this claim? What is the comparison benchmark ie how the native controls would be set up to achieve this saving?

Ok…a bit tumbleweed.

From our own experience we were talked into third party algorithm/AI based controls (homely) by our installer who told us unequivocally that we'd be saving around 20%. We'd be making a bad decision to go 'native' and try to monitor and control via solely the manufacturers controls, home assistant etc.

All I can say is that from some benchmarking I've done over the last month and comparing consumption now that the heating season has started, I can find no evidence that this is the case. I'm not saying third party controls aren't a good fit for some, or indeed many, who do not want to spend any time fiddling with WCC settings, or indeed want to make the most of more complex TOU tariffs.

Havenwise seems to offer a bit more visibility, versus homely, which seems positive.

I would also note that the above post has now been removed by havenwise. I wasn't the only person to comment on it and others immediatley questioned the veracity of the claim directly via the comments section of the post. Personally I feel that it is a shame that something that is actually quite a good idea and could work well for customers and installers alike, seems to lead to these companies posting somewhat disingenuous claims about savings.

Their headline '40%' saving is compared to a gas boiler and again doesn't provide any data to back up this claim and I really think that they ought to. There is one case study which focusses on savings with respect to DHW, which seems to suggest a mixture of change of bathing habits of the occupants coupled alongside exploiting the TOU tariffs (I can completely see that there is a real benefit of this type of control if using Agile).

In summary, it would be really useful to actually see some real life testing and parameters. The above just doesn’t come across as very ethical, but perhaps it’s just me.

It's not just you, @benson. As I said in a reply to you on another thread about 4 months ago, I have similar concerns.

Back in the other thread, you found a table of scales of savings that Homely posted, and I was able to see both where they were making their £400-ish claim and what the more likely figure would be for most people. My guess is that exactly the same savings scale applies for Havenwise too, hence why I'd be just as skeptical as you about the marketing claim you posted above.

In practice, I'd guess there's a degree of "if they're making big claims, we've got to as well" attitude; it is a competitive marketplace, after all. That doesn't excuse the inflated claims, of course, and I'd be happier if the hyperbole were brought back down to earth on all sides. As you say, though, at least Havenwise aren't marking their own homework by keeping figures away from customers as Homely are doing.