this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Home Automation

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Discussion about general home automation ideas and projects, home automation protocols like Z-wave, Zigbee, Matter, etc, and home automation software and hubs like HomeSeer, Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Homey.

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Use excess Solar to run your pool pump (Node-Red & Home Assistant) (blog.grieve.com.au)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I am in the process of building this in my system. I want to add a couple of extra features. such as minimum run time, the ability to run a few minutes each hour over night (for skimming) and some other bits an pieces.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i need to say, this is not mine! i actually posted it as i didnt want to lose the page :-/

For pump flow, i would use power draw as a proxy for flow. if the power is really low, it equates to a low flow. I already have them on Athom smart plugs, which have power monitoring. I actually use this to auto-prime my bore pump, which will turn on-off as needed to get the flow through. I'll post it at some point.

I have at atlas scientific wifi pool monitor which does auto-sampling but there is a bunch of maths and a lack of motivation/time to implement! one day maybe!

[–] BathyFan 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Haha! Nothing wrong with keeping track of some inspiration.

Sounds like you already have the ideal setup for that part then. You could set an automation that loops with a timed delay to handle the night time pump circulation.

Would you need the pump to observe the same behavior with longer run times during the day? If so you can set it to check the time or sunrise/sunset and run the corresponding loop you need. That might solve the minimum runtime issue as you would be achieving your goal runtime by dividing it across the day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

i think i want to try and run between the sunny hours, only off of solar. but at some point it will be obvious i wont get my minimum run time in, so i will need to run it anyway.

Shouldn't be too hard to track the sun in the sky, and start the solar-powered run when it is above an angle, and move to a maximum time limited schedule when it is not possible to actually generate enough power to run the pump.

  1. track the time that the pump is running, and reset it to zero at the start of the day
  2. when the solar allows for it, run the pump
  3. when solar is not longer able to power the pump (ie max potential power is less than trigger), move to a timer based schedule
  4. if the pump run time is >required, stop the pump (and dont restart it)