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Heat pump monitoring - what are you using?

Lucia · 2024-08-24T14:39:45Z

I'm wondering how someone like me, who runs away screaming when pointed at Github, manages to monitor their heat pump system for all the key factors like flow and return temps, power use, outside/inside temperatures, SCOP etc. What are using? From Home Assistant to ModBus, ESPAltherma or whatever - please be specific - which version of HA? What clamps or connections? How did you get all the components installed was it DIY or did you pay someone? If the latter, how much did it cost? What interface are you using? How easy is it to read and understand? Does it give you sufficient information (is it accurate even) to manage your heat pump for best efficiency? ****** I'm asking for self-interested reasons - it seems to be an arcane science - but also because I think it is an under-discussed topic. There's obviously a gap in the market here waiting for someone to jump in and produce a plug & play something or another but until then..... 🤯

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Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs)

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NJT

(@njt)

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Joined: 10 months ago

Posts: 53

30/09/2024 10:46 am

Back to the monitoring,

I've just ordered the kit for the ESPAltherma hook up.

I've no idea into any computer programming but I'm a willing learner.

I know it's not going to be highly accurate like some off the kits available, but it should give a good baseline to start getting better efficiency because as of now I've no idea how often the heat pump cycles, the Cop/Scop etc as the MMI reading kWh usage is in whole numbers 1.4 would be 1, 1.6 would be 2 etc.

Fingers crossed it goes well🤞

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cathodeRay

(@cathoderay)

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Joined: 3 years ago

Posts: 2062

30/09/2024 11:05 am

Posted by: @njt

↑

I've no idea into any computer programming but I'm a willing learner.

Given willingness to learn, and assuming basic literacy, numeracy and ability to think logically, don't be afraid to look at python. It is a fairly high level (by which I mean human readable) programming/scripting language with hundreds if not thousands of packages that can be used to do almost anything. It may well already be on your PC (assuming that is what you use), in use by some other program, but you will need a generic standalone installation to get started. It's not huge. An example of a simple script (found online) that gets the mean for a variable (rows starting with # are comments, the actual script is only four lines):

# pandas is a package that does all sorts of data manipulation
# 'as pd' means I can refer to it as 'pd' (as in the 'hp_data = pd.read_csv...' line below)
import pandas as pd

# read data from a CSV file full of heat pump data, first row has variable names
# data ends up in a dataframe called hp_data
hp_data = pd.read_csv('data.csv')

# perform analysis on OAT (outside air temp)
mean = hp_data['OAT'].mean()
print(f"Mean: {mean}")

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

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NJT

(@njt)

Estimable Member Member

Joined: 10 months ago

Posts: 53

30/09/2024 11:30 am

@cathoderay

Thanks.

Yes I use a windows laptop, bought a raspberry pi 4 to install Home Assistant recently which is another learning curve.

There's a tutorial online at GitHub for the ESPAltherma that looks complicated , but I can use Google to search for terms I've never heard of, which looking at the tutorial is quite a few.

I'll get there👍

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cathodeRay

(@cathoderay)

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Posts: 2062

30/09/2024 12:05 pm

One of the major problems with these types of online projects is that they get hugely over-complicated, making it often impossible for us mere mortals to work out what is going on, or rather more often, not going on. I do realise they are run by community volunteers, so good on them for volunteering, but that doesn't remove the impenetrable complexity.

Home Assistant is a classic Marmite, some people love it, others hate it. I found it to be just too complicated, too volatile and temperamental, and I did not often find the community support actually produced useful answers. I do still have it (too lazy to remove it and install some other basic OS on the mini PC that does what your Raspberry pi will do), but I only use it for one or two things, like backups (HA has a good working backup add-on, so why not use it?). The bulk of my monitoring is done using python scripts I wrote. It took a bit of trial and error, but it has now been set up for getting on for 18 months, and is very robust eg the data is in csv files, much easier and more table than in sqlite or some other database, and the whole thing even restarts itself when the power comes back after a power cut.

I suggest you try HA for a while. You may mind it is just the thing for you! But if it isn't, there are other ways.

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

👍

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