Home Assistant Fixed Our Heat Pump!
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- Опубликовано: 6 авг 2024
- Our heat pump wasn’t working very efficiently in our old house. I dive into how I’ve integrated the pump with Home Assistant and used that to automatically manage the flow temperature and on / off state of the pump to improve efficiency and save on electricity costs.
YAML for the automatons is available here:
rodmcbain.com/can-you-boost-h... 
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Fantastic! I just got inspired and I like heat pumps now 😂 I was not aware how many smart functions are needed to get an older house back to the future!
Running a heat pump efficiently in an older house is certainly more complicated than it should be.
You could try setting the flow temperature based on the outdoor air temperature and the 'heat curve'. This is called weather compensation and is the normal way of varying flow temperatures of a system. Might give you longer more effecient run times as you won't have the half hours on/off cycles once at stead state and the system will adapt automatically to your heat loss created by the weather for the day.
Thanks, others have also suggested this. I expect in a modern well insulated house the built in weather compensation will work OK but in an old house like this I have my doubts. It's also hard to imagine how a system that relies only on the outside temperature could possibly do a better job than a system that has the outside temp, wind speed and direction, temps for for every internal room, presence detection and any other data that's available to home assistant, such a system has a lot of potential. It could turn out to be no better than a basic weather compensation system but it's worth experimenting with and is certainly a lot more fun and interesting.
With my system as it currently stands home assistant will only turn the pump off when the flow temp has dropped below the desired heating temp, in winter this never happens and when the weather warms up a bit I think it's desirable.
I run weather compensated systems. One with underfloor heating in a 25 year old building and one in a 50 year old building. In both it is working. In the older building the room temperature is included with 10% in the flow calculation. In the newer building no temperature sensors or thermostats are connected to the heating system.
Agreed, go for weather compensation with internal temperature shift.
Also don't cause the compressor to cycle too frequently or it will significantly lower it's life expectancy. If it's possible to limit it's output frequency on your heat pump its possible to get it to run slower but longer.
I've seen benefits from this on my own system. For efficiency run 24/7 at as low a flow temperature setpoint as you can at the lowest compressor output frequency.
Consider using an electricity meter for the heat pump like a ShellyEM instead of a heat meter to monitor energy use as it's much easier to install.
@@RodMcBainthe built in short, weather compensation modifies the max value for your water temperature.
It will calculate automatically the max water temp to external temperature curve, by reading the fluctuations on the temperature sensor inside the house (not an ON/OFF switch).
I have it in my gas boiler. Brick house whit no insulation, radiators in winter are always a little warm 24/7 and they automatically get warmer as the temperature outside falls, to compensate for the losses of the walls.
example: in my case whit an outside temperature of 5-10°C and thermostat set to 20°C, water set point will vary from 30°C to 40°C.
The inside temperature sensor switches off the heating if it gets too hot, and helps the algorithm calculate the climatic curve required.
Got a 30% savings from the same system when I mounted it, whitout the external probe.
works best if you set & forget. set a temperature and leave it there, no schedule or manual turn on/off. that way it heats the walls and you'll get confy even whit 18-19°C
We live in a well insulated, modern house with very little heat loss, and controlling the heating (any heating) purely based on outside temp and heating curve still isn't optimal. It works of course, you won't be cold, but it won't be best for efficiency or the longevity of the heat pump.
Hi Rod,
I have a Panasonic Inverter Heatpump and the standard controls are really dumb too. So I connected it to Home Assistant using the Heishamon project. Different hardware, same approach. I have thermometers in every relevant room and a desired temperature for each room. So I can calculate if there is a heating request or not. The weakest room determines the runtime. My heating is hydraulicly balanced well, so it works fine. I also have a selectable minimum runtime (normally 1.5h) and heating lock-time (1h) to prevent heavy clocking of the compressor. Inlet temperature is set by the machines weather compensation. In addition i can lock the heating in case of high hourly energy prices, because I have a dynamic tariff with hourly changing prices.
Thanks for watching and the comment, some great ideas in there.
Commenting to feed the Google algorithm, hopefully more folks will see your videos. 👍
Thank you 😀
Thanks for sharing. I am just starting my Home Assistant journey and have been investigating Heat Pump options. There seem to be quite a few integrations for A2A, hopefully we'll see more support added for ASHP soon. I definitely want to pick an AHSP brand that supports a protocol that may be interrogated locally.
If you haven't come across them yet, it's worth learning about Trigger IDs in Home Assistant automations, they enable you to have several different triggers in a single automation that you may use to define which actions should occur. For example, rather than an automation for on and another for off you can add the two triggers, give each a unique ID, then in the actions you start with a "choose" that has several "when triggered by..." options.
Thanks, I'll definitely look into trigger IDs, sounds very useful, although I guess sometimes it's still going to easier to keep track of what going on when split up into smaller automatons.
Hey mate, great video / edit. Subbed. Thanks for sharing. Hoping to move to a heatpu,p when our current AC unit dies. Thanks.
Thanks and really appreciate the sub.
You could try the node-red integration in Home Assistant, it also includes mod bus integrations as well as many other functions for automating processes. I use it control my, ahem, gas boiler for weather compensation.
Thanks for the tip, I've looked at node-red in the past but was never really sure why I needed it, I guess as a better GUI for creating automation's it makes sense, the home assistant automation GUI and YAML are fine but far from good.
@@RodMcBain yes, for a few years I resisted it but have now transferred all automation to it. I found it especially beneficial for those asynchronous or complex tasks , such as a weather compensation curved response
You don't need a heat meter, you can read the flow/return temperature and the flow rate from the modbus registers.
I wish that was true, but for the model I have the flow rate is not returned over modbus, everything else works but the flow is blank.
Hey Rod, great video. I'm going to award you with the '2023 Most Nerdy Green Video of the Year' (just joking) You've beaten some heavy competition there from 'Gary Does Solar' and 'EV Puzzle'. Well done. No-one knows how all this 'green energy' malarkey is going to pan out. It's so dependent on whether the petrodollar becomes the petroBRICSS or something else. It's good to have options though and I'm still fascinated when my 8.7kW solar rig powers my 2011 Nissan Leaf. Good luck.
Wow thanks, does that award come with a trophy 😀
Great video. Surprising how much more optimising you can do on a heatpump. I'm walking the path of monitoring and optimising my heatpump.
Be interesting if you added you data to the My Heatpump Open Energy Monitor. There, you can monitor flow, return, ambient, power in and heat output.
This way I can see what I need to tweek.
I'm trying to do the same. Keep the flow Temp as low as possible to maximise the COP which out excessive cycling of the HP.
Thanks, cycling the heat pump was a big problem with my original z-wave thermostat, none of the built in TPI options came anywhere close to being suitable for a heat pump.
I'd love to setup open energy monitor to accurately monitor the COP, but for my heat pump it looks like that would cost £785.99, It would have to result in some serious efficiency gains to make that a worthwhile purchase. I think for now I'll have to rely on the data have in home assistant.
@RodMcBain I don't have a heatmeter. As long as you know your flow in m3/hour or litres/min flow, return temps it can all be calculated quite easy in HA or node red.
Rod you are clearly in your element with the more geeky side of all the technical side of stuff you tackle with competence.
Clearly your property is a work in progress and special measures are required to keep your home at acceptable temperatures without busting the bank - but.
For the longer term and I n my opinion, you are overthinking and seeking to micromanage the control of the heat source to a level that is likely wholly unnecessary.
Yes, all the information you are grabbing is very useful as part of performance monitoring (and using the open energy type kit would be a good idea) but from a control perspective it is OTT. As other have said - all you need is weather compensation. Yes I know you have misgivings but it is tried, tested and proven. The house in control terms is a very slow system (inertia) and fast sampling reactive control systems are just inappropriate.
I will give you my personal example. Large 5 bed house not well insulated, Viessmann 200W gas boiler running on weather compensation with no internal room reference (thermostat). Took me one heating season to home in on the sweet spot on the curve settings for my home. Currently it is 5C here and flow temp is 35C - I have independent thermometers deployed around the home (not geeky enough to automate) but the average internal temp of the house over a 24 hour period varies by less than 0.25C at worst and that is with a 4C change in ambient over the same time. . The boiler has no direct idea of what the house temperature is - it controls entirely on outside temperature and what the curve is asking for in terms of flow temperature. It is as simple as it is remarkable in terms of results. The key is sizing your emitters to the heat loss of the rooms.
Europe has been doing this for over 20 years - we are just clutching into it with many UK heating engineers struggling to understand it.
Thanks for the detailed comment. I have little doubt you and the others who have mentioned it are correct that weather compensation alone can work very well. Hopefully by next winter I'll have a more uniformly insulated building with all the required emitters installed and I can try simpler weather compensation again. Still very much a work in progress at the moment.
This is fantastic!! Thank you!! I tried to do the same but warranty was always a problem!
One question I have: how does your controlling have effect of switching in and out as part of the lifespan of your capacitor(S)?? So far the constant switching on and off took many times replacement of these. I am not an AC mechanic…
Thanks for watching, I can't imagine adding LGs own WiFi module to your setup would have any effect on your warranty. Maybe I've just been lucky but I've had no problems to date with the capacitors in my heat pump.
If they didn’t put in a better control then it’s pretty likely that they didn’t spec the heat pump correctly. Design is critical to getting the efficiency that heat pumps can provide.
The advantage with boilers is that overspecing doesn’t really have a massive impact, sure it’s not as good as getting the boiler matched to the heat loss so the return temperature gets down to the most condensing level, but it will work without costing a fortune.
Heat pumps need good installers and designers who can do accurate calculations and then they can be much more efficient. The problem you have is the better you insulate the house the more your heat pump will cycle leading to lower cop. Again swapping a boiler out is a cheep process but swapping a heat pump out is way more expensive.
Interesting video, although I’m not sure about using home assistant to run a mission critical system like the heating given it’s propensity to Lunch itself on an upgrade. Have to say I’d be investing in dev and production units and decent automated backups. All of which would probably involve a ton of cost negating the savings for a while.
Thank for the comment, fortunately in my case I'm taking a 150m2 old inefficient house and plan to extend it into an efficient 300m2 house. I expect in the end the size increase will essentially compensate for the heat loss improvements when it comes to our heating requirements and our 16kW pump will still be suitably sized.
LG also claim that their scroll compressor is able to efficiently adjust to the required load, I don't know how true that is.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but so far I've had no problem with Home Assistant crapping out on upgrades, also with everything I automate I try to ensure it can still be used without automation, worst case I could manually turn the heat pump on / off and adjust the temp until home assistant was fixed.
You’re now essentially running the heat pump in load compensation mode. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s already built into the LG controller. If you adjust the ‘temperature sensor’ setting parameter to ‘air+water’… obviously disable/remove all external on/off controls.
Thanks, not sure that would work in my case with the internal controller in the same room as the tank, it's always hot in there. Also the RHI scheme where we get payments for the pump requires the use of an external thermostat, crazy requirement that would reduce the efficiency of the pump.
@@RodMcBain yet another reason why mcs and the rhi are not worth the paper they are printed on…..
@@RodMcBain the LG controller should be placed somewhere sensible in the house, not in the cylinder cupboard. Yet another fail from the pre-packaged installer brigade here in the Uk.
Hi Rod,
As I couldn't get the modbus installation to work, I finally bit the bullet and went for the ThinQ module - and this works fine. I am interested in trying to optimise the heat pump in a similar way to you. I have one question though. What thermostat + receiver are you using? The installers stuck in a wireless Honeywell which I cannot integrate anything with. I would like to change this of course so I can add this extra layer of control.
Thanks in advance
Hi, Probably not helpful but I use an old Secure SRT321 z-wave thermostat and receiver, I'd removed it from our previous house and it seemed sensible to re-use it. I really only use it as a wireless switch. I've not looked in detail but I expect there are wi-fi based options that cost less and have local control from home assistant.
Is that heat pump really tall or ...? Anyway, would be good to have an idea of scale, I'm looking at a similar sized heat pump. Really good video, and provides good advice on home heating automations. I currently use google nest, with the existing heating system (which is being replaced), which is set and forget.
It's a bit of both, I'm about 173cm so not tall but also not tiny 😀 Being a 16kW heat pump with double fans it is quite tall, the unit itself is 145cm but it's on rubber feet that probably add another 15 cm and that sits on a slightly raised concrete pad.
I too have an LG ThermaV ASHP, but I’ve got two 9kW units in a master/slave config as the heat loss sizing indicated I needed an 18kW setup and there wasn’t an MCS certified heat pump of that size. So two ASHP’s it is but does mean any smart integration costs are going to be x2 ☹️
The LG menu and setup system is awful. Can’t believe they’ve made it so complex and difficult to use, no native WiFi app, only via the control panel and in my case they’re in the loft.
I’ve progressively been trying to find the optimal solution for my ASHP control. Turning the flow temp down and increasing the run time of the unit so that the heat pump isn’t running at full tilt to heat the house up. That’s when they get expensive to run, when they’ve got high heat demand to achieve. Partly this feeds into the advice to keep them on 24x7. In May this year I turned on the AI mode; too late to see what winter difference it made for me.
Definitely interested in seeing how you achieve modbus integration, what you can do with it, and integrating it to HA. Thanks
The Wifi module is stupid expensive what it does, I just posted a new video with details of the modbus integration ruclips.net/video/Xuj2YFZ5zME/видео.html it's certainly better and a lot cheaper than the WiFi option.
Not sure if I got everything correctly but what you’re doing here with HA should already be built in the software of the unit itself. Of course you want the lowest flow temperature possible but normally you just need to find that spot once and never touch it again. Just adjust the heating curve correctly according to the outside temperature.
Also, constantly switching the heat pump on and off will significantly reduce the lifetime of the unit. Normally you want it to run as long as possible with minimal power to increase the lifetime
Not constantly switching the pump on / off was one of the main reasons for setting this up, with the thermostat that was used when it was installed it was constantly toggling on / off when near the target temp. With this setup when the heating is scheduled to be on the pump only actually come on when needed and then only gets switched off when the flow temp has dropped to below the heating target temp for some time, I think leaving it on at that point is just pointless.
Like I said in the video, I've not really messed around with what LG call their AI option, that attempts to adjust the flow based on the outdoor temp (I think the AI bit is just marketing BS). I really don't think it would work well in an old house like this where some is well insulated and triple glazed and some is old cold and single glazed. I know the solution to that is to fix the house but for now this works well. In home assistant I have a lot more data available than the pump does, i'm not there yet but with that data available I'm sure I can make better decisions about what the flow temp should be.
I've been trying to get the LG ThermaV 12kw into home assistant. I found a modbus module made by lg, but the headers on the main board of the heat pump are missing. I have resulted to using two shelly relays for each cooling and heating mode. And are running the heat pump in auto mode.
Looking at the modbus accessible data. You should be able to calculate cop based on the internal lg sensors.
Would love to know how you got your modbus working.
I'm definitely planning to make a video on adding modbus, hopefully in the next few weeks.
@@RodMcBain i m interested to the modbus module and what can we do with it?
Using weather compensation in the LG controller is the easiest way to do this, no need to do an extra automation. A smart thermostat and dumb TRV's will also help enable the right temp you want, especially if the LG controller is wired into a room that isnt an ideal location for temperature for example a garage. The HP and the rads/UFH all use the whole home as a heat store, if you start trying to manage rooms to radically from adjacent rooms you will lose efficiency, this is why all HP pro's will tell you to leave running 24/7 with perhaps a small offset overnight.
I'm just not convinced the concept of using your house as a heat store works in an old solid-walled house. It makes sense in a well-insulated house but that's not currently this house and my experience showed it to not work efficiently.
It would certainly be interesting to collect some better stats and run some experiments to compare this setup to the basic weather compensation in the LG controller.
@@RodMcBain insulation, in this case, is your answer. Solid wall is a poorer heat store, it needs more constant heat.
Is your heat pump an "inverter" style?
IF it is an Inverter style, then 24/7 would likely work better, along with a thermostat in HA
Hi, It is an inverter style and I did try what you suggest. I expect 24/7 might work with weather compensation, a properly situated internal control panel and well insulated house, but that's not my use case.
Do you actually have both the Wi-Fi control and the MODBUS controller functioning at the same time? I am trying to achieve this with my Samsung HTQ. I have a Homely controller active via the MODBUS and I was hoping to use the Wi-Fi to read data into HomeAssistant but no dice so far.
I have now also setup modbus and it seems to working fine alongside the Wi-Fi module. I think I'll leave the Wi-Fi connected so I can additionally use the LG app to control the pump, new video coming soon with the modbus install.
@@RodMcBain Seeing your video spurred me to try again and I now have both the Homely via Modbus and the Samsung Wi-Fi kit working. Now all I need to do is work out how to get HomeAssistant to turn on the hot water control on the heat pump - sort of an automation version of a Myenergi Eddi. Thanks for your reply.
Have you looked into Opentherm control which modulates the heat pump?
I've not, a very quick google search suggests the LG Therma V is not OpenTherm compatible, at least I can't find any info on it. I'm also sceptical that a single thermostat would work well in my old house, where some rooms are modernised and well insulated and some are not.
OpenTherm does sound like a good solution to the on/off only problem, I'd not come across that before, thanks.
Opentherm is mainly used for modulating gas boilers. Almost no heat pump manufacturer uses it
If you are switching off the pump, doesn't the water that's in the pipes outside the building freeze when the outside temperature is below zero degrees Celsius?
That's a great question, I'm not switching off the pump to the point where it doesn't have power, it's only being told to switch the heating on / off. My pump and I think all monobloc pumps have protection built in that monitors the outside temperature and if it gets close to freezing the pump will switch on it's internal circulating pump and heat the water a little to prevent freezing, so as long as the pump has electricity it should never let the pipes freeze.
On top of the that pumps are either installed with glycol in the water to reduce the freezing point or anti freeze values that will open when the temp of the water in the pipes approaches freezing, that drains the system and prevents damage.
I didn't know any better at the time and let our installers use glycol, but that reduces the overall efficiency of the system and makes working on the plumbing of the system more difficult, glycol also needs to be topped up regularly at a significant cost. Given the fact that under normal conditions the pump will never let the pipes freeze I'm planning to switch from glycol to anti freeze values.
@@RodMcBain Is switch.thermostat_receiver created by SmartThinQ LGE Sensors integration?
@@martinspukitis1954 Nope, it's a zwave switch that in my setup first opens a way valve and once opened switches on a circulating pump and tells the heat pump heating to start. If you don't have valves / pumps that need to be on you can just switch on the heating using the ThinQ Integration.
16Kw to heat a cottage, holy shit!
I wouldn't describe the house as a cottage, but yes at 150m2 it's not but, but it is old with high heat loss. Recently had planning approved that will increase the house to approx 300m2, combined with efficiency improvements a 16kW heat pump will probably still be appropriate.
What about domestic hot water? Isn't the heat pump used to heat that?
The heat pump does also do our hot water, that can also be controlled from home assistant, setting if the hot water is enabled and the target temp. When hot water is enabled the heat pump automatically kicks in an heats the hot water when the temp in the tank is 5 degrees bellow the target temp.
I don't currently do anything but monitor this from home assistant, I use the scheduling built into the pump to control when hot water is enabled and what the target temp should be, I do plan to shift control of this to home assistant to have more fine grained control.
Dude, wear sunglasses when outside... you always look angry. :D Great video though!
Thanks for watching and thanks for the feedback, I'm not sure sunglasses will help, I fear that grumpy look is pertinently etched into my face 😂
How old is that heatpomp ? Those are smart so that domb switch is a domb installation
Installed Sept 2021, so not that old. The installation is certainly not perfect and is borderline bad, but even if the LG controller was in a sensible location it still wouldn't work that well in an old house.
No modern heat pump work with the classic on/off, considering all modern one work with inverter technology, LG for sure. And it's impossible for an heat pump to work alone during winter, fun fact the heat pump it's not the heart of the system, but normally it's combined with gas or electric stove, mostly depend on the brand of the heat pump. LG doesn't make gas stove, so normally it's installed in combination with an electric boiler.
Of course everything, it's controller by a smart controller.
In your case, probably how installed this solution, doesn't install it in the right way.
The on/off thermostat was really just scheduling when the heating should be on, the pump itself was looking at the flow temp to decide how hard it needed to work, but obviously to increase efficiency you want to heat the water to the lowest possible temp that will work. Not sure where you live but in southern England it's certainly not true that a heat pump can't be your only source of heating and would almost never be combined with a gas or electric stove. That said in my old inefficient house I do have a wood stove that helps take the edge off the coldest days. The only way I can imagine an electric boiler making any sense for heating is if you're in a climate cold enough that your heat pump can't operate otherwise, it would make no sense at all.