Pylontech in Home Assistant Energy Dashboard

[meisterlampe]

Hi,

I guess many of you are using openDTU-onBattery and Pylontech Battery along with the home assistant, so maybe you can help me out. :)
My question: What is the best way to integrate the battery into the energy dashboard? Are there total counters for incoming and outgoing energy somewhere that I maybe missed?
Or are you manually calculating this within home assistant using the victron mppt and hoymiles counters? (in this case I'll have to wait for the support of my second victron mppt O: ) )

Thanks in advance.

[Somtom]

Hey @meisterlampe ,

I recently had the same issue and can share what I did to solve it.

In my case, I have a Pylontech US2000 connected with the DTU via CAN

Step 1: Make sure you populate your data to MQTT

• In home assistant I am using the Mosquitto broker addon to setup a MQTT broker.
• Having done that, you need to make sure to enable the MQTT publishing in Open DTU:
  
• I am using the MQTT Explorer addon to check whether I receive values. Apart from Pylontech information you get way more but here is an example on how the information for Pylontech specifically can look like (topic solar/battery in my case):
  

When you have set up everything correctly, the dtu devices (including the battery) and its sensors should show up as MQTT integration in Home Assistant

Step 2: Create custom helper sensors to measure the charge and discharge

Now we need 2 data points from the MQTT data to calculate the power that charges or discharges the battery:

• voltage
• current

What I did was that I created custom sensors. You can add them to the /config/configuration.yaml file (e.g. using a File editor addon).

Here is how my sensors look like:

sensor:

  - platform: template
    sensors:
        # Current charge/discharge power of the battery
        pylontech_battery_power:
            unit_of_measurement: 'W'
            value_template: >-
              {{ states('sensor.battery_0001_battery_current')|float(0) * states('sensor.battery_0001_battery_voltage')|float(0) }}
              
        # Sensor for discharge power (if the value is negative)
        pylontech_battery_power_discharge:
          unit_of_measurement: 'W'
          value_template: >-
           {% if states('sensor.pylontech_battery_power')|float(0) < 0 %}
              {{ states('sensor.pylontech_battery_power')|float(0) * -1 }}
            {% else %}
              0
            {% endif %}
        
        # Sensor for charge power (if the value is positive)
        pylontech_battery_power_charge:
          unit_of_measurement: 'W'
          value_template: >-
            {% if states('sensor.pylontech_battery_power')|float(0) > 0 %}
              {{ states('sensor.pylontech_battery_power')|float(0) }}
            {% else %}
              0
            {% endif %}

Quick explanation:

• pylontech_battery_power: Current * Voltage -> Indicator for the power that charges or discharges the battery (depending on the sign)
• pylontech_battery_power_discharge: Discharge power (is 0 if charging and has a positive value in case there is a discharge going on)
• pylontech_battery_power_charge: Charge power (is 0 if discharging and has a positive value in case the battery is currently charged)

Step 3: Create Rieman sum integral sensors" that can be used by the Energy Dashboard

Now that we have the sensors, you can create helper sensors. This also works In the Home Assistant interface when you go to `Settings -> Devices & Services -> Helpers (tabs at the top).

In my case I created 2 "Rieman sum integral sensors"

The settings could look something like this:

Step 4: Add your Rieman sum sensors to the energy dashboard

This is how you could do it:

Note that even though there is a warning for me, it still works:

[meisterlampe]

Strange.. my battery also stopped reporting new values in HA on January 20th. I guess I updated on that day, but I don't remember exactly. All the other openDTU-Values still show up and in the openDTU-WebUI I can see the battery values as well.
So maybe we have an issue, that was introduced by a recent openDTU-onBattery-Version. I had no time to investigate any further though. I hope I can have a look at it on the weekend.
Which version did you use for your brother's openDTU-onBattery-Installation?

[futzicomp]

Sorry to hear that!
.. unfortunalty i have no access right now to my brothers installation.
But it was a fresh, new installation aprox. 3 weeks ago an last updated last week. So i guess it is a very new version

Do you see your battery in the discovery section of mqtt?

I had to manual add the missing Battery, victron and Powermeter
something like that in mqtt.yaml:

sensor:

• name: "powermeter_Power_W"
  state_class: measurement
  device_class: power
  icon: mdi:meter-electric
  unit_of_measurement: "W"
  state_topic: "solar/powermeter/powertotal"

[meisterlampe]

thank you for your reply. I can see Battery, Victron and Inverter in the discovery section of mqtt. But the battery values are "Unavailable". All other values are displayed and up to date. So it's most likely a different problem than yours. :)

When I'm at home on the weekend, I will try to check what actually is send via mqtt. Maybe I just configured something completely wrong, though I cannot remember me changing anything beside the firmware updates. ;)

[meisterlampe]

OK. So I checked using mqttexplorer and the problem is, that there is no battery entry in the homeassistant/ topic. All other devices are shown there (and if I delete them, they are recreated after i.e. restarting opendtu). The battery values are also shown and beeing updated in the solar/-Topic. I can also integrate them manually in HomeAssistant, but it really should work automatically using Home Assistant MQTT Auto Discovery.
Disabling and re-enabling the battery, mqtt or HA-Autodsicovery did not help.
I will try to investigate a bit further. I guess it is not a general problem with openDTU-onBattery because many other users would have complained already in this case :)

[meisterlampe]

I was able to solve the problem with the missing AutoDiscovery. At least for the battery: I just needed to modify main.cpp.
Inverter and Victron are already published, so I still have no idea, why the victron was missing in your case. Regarding the powermeter, I could not find code for autodiscovery (I get the powermeter values in homeassistant from tasmota via mqtt)

I opened an issue addressing the problem: #633 . There you can also find the single line, that I needed to add to get the battery auto-discovered.

[swingstate]

With the recent ESPHome Update Pylontech Batteries are now supported.

Details here: esphome/esphome#4688

[futzicomp]

No. We are three! You, my Brother and me. We should start an issue. I think others are also affected . U. Freundliche Grüße U. Dörr

…

________________________________ From: meisterlampe ***@***.***> Sent: Friday, February 2, 2024 6:27:34 PM To: helgeerbe/OpenDTU-OnBattery ***@***.***> Cc: futzicomp ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [helgeerbe/OpenDTU-OnBattery] Pylontech in Home Assistant Energy Dashboard (Discussion #523) OK. So I checked using mqttexplorer and the problem is, that there is no battery entry in the homeassistant/ topic. All other devices are shown there (and if I delete them, they are recreated after i.e. restarting opendtu). The battery values are also shown and beeing updated in the solar/-Topic. I can also integrate them manually in HomeAssistant, but it really should work automatically using Home Assistant MQTT Auto Discovery. Disabling and re-enabling the battery, mqtt or HA-Autodsicovery did not help. I will try to investigate a bit further. I guess it is not a general problem with openDTU-onBattery because many other users would have complained already in this case :) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#523 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABOXJYU7YSFEFUAXPP6J3PTYRUOYNAVCNFSM6AAAAAA64E3QKKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM4DGNBZGE3DO>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[meisterlampe]

Replied to the wrong comment, sorry.
Issue created for the battery problem ( #523 (reply in thread) )
Powermeter Autodiscovery is not implemented, i guess.
But Victron should work. Can you show the homeassistant topic on your mqtt server?

[meisterlampe]

The issue #633 I opened is now fixed in the current version. Can you test the new version 2024.02.09? Is the Victron-Issue still present?

[futzicomp]

Thx a lot!
I can confirm that the update solved my Brothers Problems Pylontech related..

Victron Issue: After a while victron appeard somehow in MQTT discovery HA. So this was no problem anymore.

Anyway i now have to reorganise some entity names, automation , Mqtt.yaml ect... whitch i use ;-)