Automated with HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy from BottlecapDave

[CraigCallender]

Also posted here, but I was able to set up some automation using the HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy integration to pick the cheapest Agile slots (non-contiguous) to charge my batteries at night. Thought I'd share:

So I borrored a good bit from #284, but the Solis Inverter has three timeslots that can be configured to force charging from the grid. I followed the tutorial here to setup the Target Rate setting in the Octopus integration.

Originally, I configured the automation to look at the binary_sensor for when my binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots changed state to on, I would just start charging and the start and end times were set to the sensor.octopus_energy_electricity_18l2077993_1900013281497_current_rate start and end attributes. I didn't have to worry about the off state since I'm setting the end time. And I was assuming the on state would come on at the same time as the current_rate.start.

This worked well, but I had one more issue... I don't run HomeAssistant 24/7. I will, but I don't now. Also, Solis Cloud will often go down, so I wanted the ability to set all three times as soon as they're calculated in case something happens where I can't set it in real time.

In the end, I ended up with this. You'll probably need to use the YAML editor as I had issues with the true/false states being interpretted as strings when using the UI mode to setup the trigger and condition. You can always use the UI mode then just get rid of the "" around true and false if that's easier.

Trigger - Look for the target_times_last_evaluated to change (this seems to only change when new prices come out).

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots
    attribute: rates_incomplete
    from: true
    to: false
  - platform: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots
    to: "on"

The two triggers are important to me because I also hijack the first charge time slot if electricity rates every go under 0.02 GBP / kWh. So in case that happened, I just reset the values whenever the state of the binary_sensor turns on.

I've added a condition as we can't run this if rates_incomplete is set to true:

condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots
    attribute: rates_incomplete
    state: false

Action - Use the SolisCloud integration to set the inverter's three charge slots. You can only do this with a service, so it's a bit verbose. Also, the mixed strings in the config for the service are like that for some reason.

action:
  - service: pyscript.solis_control
    data:
      days:
        - chargeCurrent: "50"
          dischargeCurrent: "0"
          chargeStartTime: >-
            {% set dt_string =
            as_timestamp(state_attr('binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots',
            'target_times')[0].start) | timestamp_local | as_datetime %} {{
            dt_string.strftime("%H") }}:{{ dt_string.strftime("%M") }}
          chargeEndTime: >-
            {% set dt_string =
            as_timestamp(state_attr('binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots',
            'target_times')[0].end) | timestamp_local | as_datetime %} {{
            dt_string.strftime("%H") }}:{{ dt_string.strftime("%M") }}
          dischargeStartTime: "00:00"
          dischargeEndTime: "00:00"
        - chargeCurrent: "50"
          dischargeCurrent: "0"
          chargeStartTime: >-
            {% set dt_string =
            as_timestamp(state_attr('binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots',
            'target_times')[1].start) | timestamp_local | as_datetime %} {{
            dt_string.strftime("%H") }}:{{ dt_string.strftime("%M") }}
          chargeEndTime: >-
            {% set dt_string =
            as_timestamp(state_attr('binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots',
            'target_times')[1].end) | timestamp_local | as_datetime %} {{
            dt_string.strftime("%H") }}:{{ dt_string.strftime("%M") }}
          dischargeStartTime: "00:00"
          dischargeEndTime: "00:00"
        - chargeCurrent: "50"
          dischargeCurrent: "0"
          chargeStartTime: >-
            {% set dt_string =
            as_timestamp(state_attr('binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots',
            'target_times')[2].start) | timestamp_local | as_datetime %} {{
            dt_string.strftime("%H") }}:{{ dt_string.strftime("%M") }}
          chargeEndTime: >-
            {% set dt_string =
            as_timestamp(state_attr('binary_sensor.octopus_energy_target_battery_charge_slots',
            'target_times')[2].end) | timestamp_local | as_datetime %} {{
            dt_string.strftime("%H") }}:{{ dt_string.strftime("%M") }}
          dischargeStartTime: "00:00"
          dischargeEndTime: "00:00"
      config:
        secret: <<<API Key>>
        key_id: "<<Application ID>>"
        username: << username to log into solis cloud >>
        password: << password to log into solis cloud >>
        plantId: "<< Plant ID >>"

Hopefully that helps the next person out trying to get this configured with the Octopus integration.