Energy Manager Overview

Energy Manager is a Home Assistant-based energy management optimisation system that can be controlled both manually and automatically. When automation is enabled, Energy Manager will intelligently charge and discharge your battery to reduce your costs.

Depending on your electricity provider and plan type, it can also optimise exporting behaviour to maximise the return on investment of your solar and battery system.

Energy Manager supports two optimisation approaches:

• Wholesale-exposed optimisation (e.g. Amber Electric, LocalVolts), where buy/sell decisions can be made directly against wholesale pricing.
• Retail-optimised optimisation (e.g. Flow Power), where decisions are made to reduce monthly bills and improve PEA outcomes, without wholesale energy trading or arbitrage.

Energy Manager consists of two components:

1. A selection of Home Assistant-based entities that measure your energy system (inverter, solar generation, power usage, import/export status, etc.) via Modbus and select Home Assistant integrations and add-ons.
2. A connection to Energy Manager servers where intelligence and decision logic is performed on your data to provide the best customised instructions for your Home Assistant device to follow, based on the information that your system provided to the Energy Manager servers.

Component 1: Home Assistant

The first of the two components, your Home Assistant instance, is free to be used by anyone. Home Assistant is built on the Apache2 licence, meaning that it is free to be used and modified for any purpose.

Features of the client-side Energy Manager [FREE]

The following are features of the client-side Home Assistant, which are all free to use whether you decide to use the second component (see below) or not.

These features are applicable to both wholesale-exposed providers (e.g. Amber Electric and LocalVolts) and retail-optimised (e.g., Flow Power), except where stated.

• Solar curtailing - When you have excess solar generation (i.e., your battery is full and you can't use all the power generated yourself) and the sell price on the wholesale market is negative, solar curtailment will automatically restrict your exports, saving you from being charged to export [not applicable for retail-optimised (e.g., Flow Power) users].
• Current pricing - Current buy and sell pricing, as obtained from your electricity provider, are displayed. Current AEMO pricing is shown for Flow Power users, though this is indicative of the market only as you will not be charged these rates, but your agreed upon Flow Power rates.
• Forecasted pricing - Graphs of your predicted buy and sell pricing are provided. Forecasted AEMO pricing is shown for Flow Power users, though this is indicative of the market only as you will not be charged these rates, but your agreed upon Flow Power rates.
• Energy Dashboards - Detailed dashboards showing what is going on with your energy management.
• Inverter controls - Manually charge/discharge your battery from/to the grid by changing a couple of drop-down boxes. Change your minimum or maximum state-of-charge through easy-to-use sliders. Is there bad weather coming? If so, easily set a reserved state-of-charge for if you lose grid connection (device dependent).
• Inverter status - Easily view your inverter status - is the battery charging or discharging, what level is your battery currently at? How much power are you currently drawing from the grid? How many kW is your solar system generating right now?
• Power Usage Profile - Displays a graph of your personal power usage profile. Shows the hours when you use the most power based on intelligently learning from your historical usage patterns. The learning takes into consideration the season and the changes to your habits over time.
• Weather forecasts - Taken from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, weather forecast displays are provided.
• Solar forecasts - Solcast is used to obtain solar forecasts for your specific location, updated multiple times per day. These are displayed in easy-to-understand gauges so you can see what the predicted solar is for your location for the coming week. This allows you to organise your energy usage - put the washing on today or tomorrow? Is it best to do that power-hungry cooking today or not?
• Costs - Based on sensors measuring import and export costs, indicative usage graphs are provided (note, this is an estimate from the system, not from your electricity provider - the final price will always be set by your electricity provider).
• Updates - Updates to the Energy Manager software installed on your Home Assistant device are easily performed, with a simple update button.

Component 2: Energy Manager servers

The second of the two components consists of connectivity to the Energy Manager servers. These servers intelligently analyse the data from Home Assistant and send back the best decisions to optimise your energy and save (or make) you money.

Energy Manager server functionality differs depending on your electricity provider:

• Wholesale-exposed providers use market-driven optimisation and trading logic.
• Retail-optimised providers (Flow Power) use tariff-aware optimisation focused on bill reduction and PEA outcomes, rather than wholesale trading.

The Energy Manager server's primary purpose is to provide the smarts to intelligently manage your energy.

Depending on your provider, the following may be taken into consideration when calculating the best decisions to provide your Home Assistant device:

• Price Spikes - Monitor for buy and sell price spikes and automatically discharge your battery when the price that you have personally set is met (wholesale-exposed providers).
• Price Spike Preparation - Monitor the price forecasts and charge your battery up when a price spike is predicted. Applicable for both morning and evening price spikes (wholesale-exposed providers).
• Solar Forecast - How much solar is your specific solar array expected to generate from this point on, until it is no longer generating?
• Power Consumption - Based on your personal energy usage patterns, how much power is your household predicted to consume before your solar array stops generating for the day?
• Importing from the grid - Do you have enough solar generation to be self-sufficient today, or should there be a period during the day when your battery should be charged from the grid?
• Best time to charge - If there is a requirement to charge from the grid (generally because there is not enough solar today), when is the best time to do it? Energy Manager will take future predictions into account when deciding when to charge.
• Export or charge? - Decisions on whether to export excess solar or retain energy in the battery are made based on predicted generation, usage, and pricing or tariff structure.
• Import or discharge? - Sometimes it is better to import from the grid when the price is cheap rather than discharge the battery, due to battery wear and lifecycle considerations (wholesale-exposed providers).
• Demand periods - During demand periods, the battery is prioritised as the energy source to avoid costly imports (tariff dependent).
• Negative Buy Pricing - If negative buy pricing is detected, Energy Manager may intentionally import energy or restrict inverter behaviour (device and tariff dependent, wholesale-exposed providers only).
• Weather and Storm monitoring - Weather conditions and forecasts are used to adjust exporting and battery usage in anticipation of low generation or potential outages.
• EV Charging - Scheduled periods can be configured where Energy Manager temporarily relinquishes control to allow grid-powered EV charging.
• Safety features - If the electricity provider API or the Energy Manager API is unavailable, Energy Manager automatically falls back to Self-Consumption mode to avoid unintended imports or exports.
• Personalised Decisions - Energy Manager adapts to your system size, usage patterns, seasonality, and personal preferences.
• Customisation - You control how aggressive charging, discharging, importing, and exporting should be. Behaviour is tailored to your preferences and provider type.

Free vs Premium Features

The below table outlines the differences between the free and premium plans.

Notes:

• The Free subscription applies to wholesale-exposed providers only (e.g. Amber Electric, LocalVolts).
• Flow Power requires a Premium subscription (30-day free trial available).