tbh im an agile virgin, im on economy 10, but ask the homely lads they are literally gurus about this subject, careful though they are all phds. 

Posted by: @grahamh

tbh im an agile virgin, im on economy 10, but ask the homely lads they are literally gurus about this subject, careful though they are all phds. 

Hi Graham,

I've had a look at the homely website and it would appear that it is achieving the same energy efficiency as what can be obtained by using a heat pump manufacturers controller with weather compensation and auto adaptation.

As far as savings by ToU operation is concerned, I'm afraid the tariff offered by Octopus Agile at the moment is up to 35p per kWh, so paying the £25 per year for the Homely Smart+ service would not seem to be particularly cost effective.

ok. i dont know what to say.

i have no influence over the electricity price or the efficacy of the homely, its just a recommendation. 

@grahamh I think @derek-m knew that but was trying to understand why you'd recommend it. Other than the agile tariff control (which isn't worth the money right now), does it do anything that the usual controller cannot?

(I'm interested because homely says it supports Mitsubishi as well as Midea and I'm wondering if it has any way of talking to the FTC directly or if it's just doing the same sort of melcloud stuff that HomeAssistant and some others can.)

yes homely does more than the controller. it learns how your house heats and cools and adjust the weather comp settings in the unit for you. its like having a service enginner tweaking the unit constantly. it also takes into consideration the run cost per 30 min segment and adds that into the mix.

no idea how it works with the mitsi, im not a fan of the eco dan at all and so steer well clear of it. Homely will know more about this though 

As promised, here I am 10 days later with the test results of a new build with fix flow temperature @35c. Heating coming on at 1pm, set temp 21c downstairs UFH, upstairs 20.5c radiators:

Old settings were, heating coming on 8AM, same teperature setting as above. (Weather cop. was set to 25c@15 and 40@-10).

Observations:

1. The heating was only on for 2.5-3.5 hrs max a day, with the fix 35c flow. Before it ran for at least 9-10 hours a day.

2. As the ambient temperature outside was around 5-9c ( instead of the usual morning temperatures of around 0-4c), the heatpump did not spend any time defrosting and taking heat out of my house.

3. The temperatures in the house before 1pm were around the same, with both heating settings in the house: 19.5c-20.3c downstairs and 18.5-19.5c upstairs.

4. The floor and radiators defenatly felt warmer.

5. After the heating switching of at 21c, the temperature would rise to at least 22c.

Were my results any different than Grahams? In air-tight, new build with UFH, copered to his old house with radiators?

I believe he said it was only 8% worse of with the fix flow.

Before ( with weather com.), I used about 12-15kw/day for heating.

Now, (with fix flow) I only used 8-11kw/day

So, that is a very stagering result that I did not expect around 26% 😳.

How can this be? If I think about it... Just my 3 pumps use about 250watt/hour. The pumps alone running 7 hours less are almost 2kw savings.

No defrost.

Also, I might be pushing the machine harder, but I am using warmer outside air, which, with an ASHP, we all know makes a big difference.

The last thing, if I am correct, an ASHP running around 50-65% at its capacity is where it is most most efficient. When I am in weather comp. my machine, as it is a little oversized, modulates down to its lowest capacity. Using around only 950-1100 watts (around 15% capacity). Which means it isn't running where it would be most efficient.

I mean to say that it seems every house is different. You have to match the settings to the house.

@grahamh Last night the ASHP produced no DHW. Having reverted to DHW on a timer this usually works but not last night (I believe the temp dropped to around zero) however looking at the app I can see the ASHP was trying to run the TBH (immersion in the DHW tank?) however the immersion is connected to a separate timer as per you instruction guide for installers. I therefore checked the DIP switch settings in the ASHP and found S2 are all OFF and checking against the manual this tells the ASHP it has TBH (immersion) it can control which doesnt seem correct to me. Could it be that as the temp dropped to a certain point it uses the TBH (if available) to bring the temp up to a certain point, any thoughts if I should change the setting?

Thanks

Matt

@mookyfoo ignore that booster heater reading. I also get it and its not connected to anything, I have no idea why it says its using it.

@batalto But do you have problems with hot water not being available, ours was 34 degrees this morning having not heated up over night like it should have on the set timer?

@mookyfoo ours is just on constant. I see no average to heating overnight when the air temperature is the lowest. It's the worst possible time to have it heated

@batalto Ours stopped doing it as and when the temp of the DHW dropped x below the set point , hence I had to use the timer to ensure it worked now that seems iffy too. It suits us over night as we are on E7 due to previously having storage heaters.