Getting the best out of a heat pump - is Homely a possible answer?

cathodeRay · 2023-01-03T10:37:51Z

Homely, currently only available for Samsung and Midea heat pumps, claims to be a 'smart' control system for these heat pumps, smart insofar as it can tune the weather compensation to suit varying conditions, thus solving the basic weather compensation curve's Achilles' heel of being a 'dumb' curve. Apparently it uses modbus and RS485 to interact with the heat pump, which makes sense, the Midea unit has these. No doubt Homely have plans to make it applicable to other brands in due course. Has anyone had any real world experience with Homely? If so (a) does it work as in achieve more effective (rooms more reliably at desired temps) and efficient (lowest possible COP at all times) control and (b) what if any monitoring does it do (and if it does monitor, can the data be downloaded, or is it a pencil and paper job, as it is with that blasted Midea app)? Lastly, how does it compare to the various open source home automation projects like Home Assistant and domoticz? Clearly it is proprietary, and it only manages an ASHP, but does it do that better or worse than the open source projects. The latter, so far as I can tell are still at the 'enthusiasts' stage, fiendishly complicated to set up, and more often than not definitely do not work 'out of the box'.

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Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs)

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cathodeRay

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Topic starter 10/06/2025 11:40 am

I found that Homely blog a few days ago and was tempted to do a demolition job, but then decided against it at the time. The methodology is somewhat opaque (a search on the Energy House Labs facility at Salford University website found nothing) and there is definitely some whatiffery (aka modelling) in play eg to make the results 'more relevant to other homes in the UK' which just bumps up the amounts and makes the absolute value of the savings appear larger by using an 'Assumed mean space heating of 11,808 kWh', which rather on the high side. The 'can save £444 / year' comes from comparing Hotly Homely with, by Homely's own admission, the worst case scenario, fixed flow temp with Time of Use (ToU) tariff. On the more realistic comparison to a system running weather compensation on a non-ToU tariff (which is what I have, as do many others), the saving is a more modest £158 on the souped up 'more relevant to other homes in the UK' numbers. The actual test results only achieved a £85 saving, rather far cry from £444.

The blog, posted on 10th May 2024, notes that 'We will be sharing more on these results in future updates'. I can't seem to find any further updates by searching the Homely website...

More generally, we are up against our old enemies, comparing like with like, and efficacy vs efficiency (lab results vs real world experience). Determining what the ordinary heat pump owner might realistically save is far from easy. There might be some savings, but I have to agree with the Major's view that a well set up system running weather compensation at as low flow temps as possible is going to get pretty close to maximum efficiency and savings, meaning there simply isn't that much more to be saved. Any suggestion that there is has to be taken with. to put it politely, a large pinch of salt. That said, there may be other benefits from using Homely that individual owners might wish to make use of, if that works for them.

Midea 14kW (for now...) ASHP heating both building and DHW

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