[00:00.000 --> 00:10.800] So let us get started, it's great to see such a crowded room here, I hope you're not all [00:10.800 --> 00:15.000] here just for the next talk to grab a seat. [00:15.000 --> 00:20.840] So my name is Kai, I'm a software architect and a project lead and founder of the project [00:20.840 --> 00:21.840] OpenHUB. [00:21.840 --> 00:27.320] I'm not going to talk about OpenHUB for smart home today here in that talk, if you're interested [00:27.320 --> 00:32.640] in that project, come to see me at our booth directly here in that building at the entrance. [00:32.640 --> 00:39.080] But I'm going to talk about more or less my personal story as a consumer, as an end user [00:39.080 --> 00:46.120] in terms of energy management, my experiences there over the years and the story actually [00:46.120 --> 00:51.760] goes much further back than four years, so it all started already 15 years when we built [00:51.760 --> 00:57.440] the house and I more or less electrified everything possible in there. [00:57.440 --> 01:03.480] So starting from the lights, not that many people use candles nowadays anymore, sure, [01:03.480 --> 01:09.080] but also heating is all electric, warm water through a heat pump, photovoltaic system on [01:09.080 --> 01:15.960] the roof, so everything was nicely connected to a K-next system, so controllable, I could [01:15.960 --> 01:21.040] get all measurements, but what was missing at that time was to really have some software [01:21.040 --> 01:26.040] that really helps me to visualize things, to control things and so on, and that's why [01:26.040 --> 01:33.040] I started the OpenHUB project in year 2010, directly as an open source project with the [01:33.040 --> 01:39.720] intention to have a system that allows me to create overarching rules and overarching user [01:39.720 --> 01:45.000] interfaces over all things I have at home that have somehow an API that I can somehow [01:45.000 --> 01:50.440] connect to and to have such a system in place. [01:50.440 --> 01:55.920] The focus and contrast to all the commercial solutions out there was on local control, [01:55.920 --> 02:01.320] I said, well, it's my home, I have all the devices at home there, they should talk locally [02:01.320 --> 02:06.320] with each other, I want to have all my data locally and I don't want to have any dependency [02:06.320 --> 02:08.920] on the internet for that system. [02:08.920 --> 02:13.600] By now OpenHUB grew quite a community and we have more than 400 different so-called [02:13.600 --> 02:21.080] bindings which are more or less drivers for certain radio protocols, other systems, technologies [02:21.080 --> 02:26.880] to reach out and to really combine into one single system and so you can more or less [02:26.880 --> 02:31.680] get everything what is available at home into that solution. [02:31.680 --> 02:39.120] Now, in terms of energy, what I did is that I hooked up such electric meters with an S0 [02:39.120 --> 02:47.840] interface in my electrical cabinet which simply provide impulses as an output and I hooked [02:47.840 --> 02:55.280] them up to a KNEX binary input which then simply provide those on the KNEX bus and created [02:55.280 --> 03:01.520] simple rules in OpenHUB that count the number of ticks for a certain period of time to calculate [03:01.520 --> 03:03.680] the current power out of that. [03:03.680 --> 03:09.080] As you can see here from the graph, I have several of these meters, one for heating and [03:09.080 --> 03:16.080] blue here which usually really turns on and off load, simply the green that was now one [03:16.080 --> 03:23.240] day last week here so winter and not that sunny as the photovoltaic power produced and [03:23.240 --> 03:28.720] then yellow the household energy that we use for more or less all the rest at home. [03:28.720 --> 03:33.280] Now having that in the browser as a visualization is quite nice but how to engage my family [03:33.280 --> 03:40.080] members to actually also get a feeling about the consumed energy where we put up a fairly [03:40.080 --> 03:46.160] simple device here, an energy light which is basically an IKEA lamp with a Philips [03:46.160 --> 03:52.640] U bulb inside and a fairly simple rule in OpenHUB that you can see here which simply [03:52.640 --> 03:58.880] says whenever our household power changes then if it's not night because then we want [03:58.880 --> 04:06.440] all lights off, calculate a U value ranging from green over yellow to red and simply post [04:06.440 --> 04:09.880] that as a new color to that light bulb. [04:09.880 --> 04:16.080] And interestingly that this device that somehow goes a bit to your unconsciousness over time [04:16.080 --> 04:22.360] so we're passing that many times a day in the house and you suddenly feel after a while [04:22.360 --> 04:27.120] that something doesn't seem to be normal, I didn't turn the dishwasher on or the washing [04:27.120 --> 04:31.960] machine and still it's showing red so let's think what I might have forgotten then. [04:31.960 --> 04:38.160] So it really gives a sense of and a feeling about the energy usage at home are not just [04:38.160 --> 04:43.840] for me but also for other family members which is a nice effect on that one. [04:43.840 --> 04:49.000] Now for monitoring heating energy here, this is quite a nice visualization which shows a [04:49.000 --> 04:51.400] calendar here. [04:51.400 --> 04:55.640] This one shows last December where you might remember here in central Europe we had a very [04:55.640 --> 05:01.680] cold phase in the middle and it was fairly mild over Christmas and towards the end. [05:01.680 --> 05:06.280] And so the background color here on each single day shows the minimal temperature of that [05:06.280 --> 05:12.600] day ranging from minus 10 degrees that we had at home to I think on New Year's Eve [05:12.600 --> 05:20.120] it was around 11 degrees minimum temperature that day and the diamonds here show then the [05:20.120 --> 05:26.160] used energy for heating that day and you see a very nice correlation here between those [05:26.160 --> 05:32.960] two figures so that this can be also used to see whether everything works nicely or [05:32.960 --> 05:37.280] if you should actually check if something's not right. [05:37.280 --> 05:44.840] For monitoring photovoltaic system if you set up a bit more complex graph that uses [05:44.840 --> 05:52.760] InfluxDB and Grafana dashboard which both nicely integrate with Open Hub as a system [05:52.760 --> 05:55.720] to really get the data out here. [05:55.720 --> 06:02.760] So you can see in blue the elevation of the sun for that day, in red the luminance in [06:02.760 --> 06:09.040] south direction, in yellow then the power of the photovoltaic system, the gray bars show [06:09.040 --> 06:15.880] when it was raining that day and so you really have a very nice visualization and you can [06:15.880 --> 06:21.320] check that everything's working alright and also a very good correlation here between [06:21.320 --> 06:26.960] really the light intensity and the photovoltaic power so whenever something's off here you [06:26.960 --> 06:34.280] could create alarms on your Grafana dashboard to actually say hey check your system please. [06:34.280 --> 06:38.880] Luckily so far after 15 years with that system everything was smooth and I never needed [06:38.880 --> 06:42.120] a single alarm on that. [06:42.120 --> 06:48.440] Another nice event happened in spring 2015 when we had a partial solar eclipse at home [06:48.440 --> 06:52.880] and it was on a bright sunny day without any clouds and that really resulted in a very [06:52.880 --> 06:59.280] nice curve here and interesting thing is that with a partial solar eclipse when you look [06:59.280 --> 07:04.320] outside you hardly notice it because it's not going dark, it's still daylight but here [07:04.320 --> 07:10.600] see that the power of the sun really went down by factor 3 to 4 roughly and it was almost [07:10.600 --> 07:16.280] as if it's dark so it was quite a nice effect. [07:16.280 --> 07:22.080] So all the monitoring is nice and good but in the end when you're talking about energy [07:22.080 --> 07:28.200] management you really want to do some load shifting, optimizing your consumption and [07:28.200 --> 07:30.240] all of those things. [07:30.240 --> 07:37.080] Now unfortunately at the time that our photovoltaic system went live or at that time there was [07:37.080 --> 07:44.640] no incentive at all for the end customer to self-consume that energy that is produced [07:44.640 --> 07:49.840] but everything goes to the grid and it's paid there and that's it so there's no benefit [07:49.840 --> 07:55.560] for me to actually shuffle around some loads and do things so my only option was to say [07:55.560 --> 08:02.000] well okay our utility should provide different price levels over the day and I can maybe [08:02.000 --> 08:10.160] shift things for that and thinking 10 years back the standard example for shifting load [08:10.160 --> 08:17.280] was hey you can do your washing at night that was what everybody came up with more or less [08:17.280 --> 08:24.560] and so I said well okay sounds interesting let's see such a washing machine that was [08:24.560 --> 08:31.560] smart grid ready usually cost around 300 euros more than the same model without such a feature [08:31.560 --> 08:38.320] okay you could say well one time investment let's go for that fine and at the time also [08:38.320 --> 08:46.960] in Germany the utilities were legally obliged to offer you at least one smart tariff that [08:46.960 --> 08:52.920] had to have two different price levels at least so I said okay let's check that out [08:52.920 --> 08:59.280] and my local utility said okay we have a field trial here and in order to participate in [08:59.280 --> 09:05.120] that you actually have to book our smart tariff which was an additional 100 euros a year I [09:05.120 --> 09:08.840] have no clue why because we already had a smart meter so there was no hardware investment [09:08.840 --> 09:15.160] or anything involved in that but they provided an API then which said for the next day for [09:15.160 --> 09:21.000] that hour of the day it will cost you that much money and the price difference between [09:21.000 --> 09:30.120] high and low was exactly 3 cents per kilowatt hour so I quickly checked okay washing machine [09:30.120 --> 09:35.960] what does that mean actually as a yearly consumption it's roughly 150 kilowatt hours [09:35.960 --> 09:42.880] that you assume here so I did some quick arithmetic and came to the conclusion that hey you can [09:42.880 --> 09:51.600] save four euro fifty a year by doing all your washing at night and yeah so that doesn't sound [09:51.600 --> 09:56.400] that much but you might now argue okay you can also use your tumble dryer at night you [09:56.400 --> 10:02.960] could maybe wash your dishes at night as well and maybe even move your warm meals to the [10:02.960 --> 10:08.040] night when everybody else is asleep but even then you're not coming anywhere close to actually [10:08.040 --> 10:14.680] have any benefit from all of that okay so that that wasn't too interesting for me unfortunately [10:14.680 --> 10:20.520] and somehow my local utility also noticed after a while hey that doesn't seem to be too attractive [10:20.520 --> 10:26.440] nobody really wants that and actually they came by and told me that hey those smart meters [10:26.440 --> 10:33.200] that you have at home they break so often and then they can't read the LC display anymore [10:33.200 --> 10:38.280] and so they can't get the number out of the meter and they have no clue to no clue what [10:38.280 --> 10:45.160] to do about that so they said well in 2016 they ripped that out and replaced it by an [10:45.160 --> 10:51.840] old school Ferraris meter and said hey that one is really lasting 10 years we don't have [10:51.840 --> 10:58.680] to come by everything fine so here you go so that was it more or less with all my attempts [10:58.680 --> 11:05.600] at being really in the front there doing energy management and trying to be cool with all the [11:05.600 --> 11:12.320] smart home stuff and automation here and that stayed like that until more or less four years [11:12.320 --> 11:19.880] ago when we bought this nice little blue Tesla here which had a huge battery and I thought [11:19.880 --> 11:25.760] okay so much battery to store energy I have to do something with that now as I said photovoltaic [11:25.760 --> 11:30.400] system wasn't really helping me here because there was no incentive for self consumption [11:30.400 --> 11:37.240] so I had to put up a second photovoltaic system this time on the garage roof and in 2019 was [11:37.240 --> 11:43.760] now the case that for this one giving power to the grid hardly gave you any money so you [11:43.760 --> 11:51.760] had a big incentive in using all that energy yourself and optimizing that really and so [11:51.760 --> 11:58.480] yeah big parts of the household energy during the day is automatically covered then by such [11:58.480 --> 12:05.720] a photovoltaic system but then with the combination of the car surely surplus charging becomes [12:05.720 --> 12:11.160] very attractive here to say that everything that exceeds what you need in the household [12:11.160 --> 12:19.440] should be used for charging your car quite luckily then for more or less the pandemic [12:19.440 --> 12:25.040] times was that well everybody did at home office so did I so the car was at home during [12:25.040 --> 12:32.280] the day when it was sunny so that worked out really well and this year shows now another [12:32.280 --> 12:41.160] open hub rule that was simply says or that whenever the photovoltaic system power changes [12:41.160 --> 12:47.280] or the household power changes then please check if the car is connected to wall box [12:47.280 --> 12:53.240] and adjust the current that the wall box is delivering to the car and I have a keba wall [12:53.240 --> 13:01.120] box that accepts UDP packets here to control it down to a milli amp granularity which is [13:01.120 --> 13:09.200] really nice because you can steer it very precisely here you have to at least go with [13:09.200 --> 13:15.040] six amps though which is more or less the minimal power to start charging of the car [13:15.040 --> 13:21.480] but with that rule I can do all of that and so on the next slide you see more less than [13:21.480 --> 13:30.280] the outcome on a very nice sunny day so in blue you have here the overall power that [13:30.280 --> 13:36.160] goes to the grid or comes from the grid and the idea is to really level that out on the [13:36.160 --> 13:43.520] zero line ideally so in the morning when there was no sun we had to draw power from the grid [13:43.520 --> 13:50.000] then the sun came up or we gave some power to the grid until the car started to charge [13:50.000 --> 13:56.840] then up a certain level and then you can see that it's really fairly flat at zero so that [13:56.840 --> 14:03.720] works pretty well then came lunchtime when the household power consumption was a bit [14:03.720 --> 14:09.240] more bumpy going up and down so it's a bit more tricky to level that all out but it worked [14:09.240 --> 14:15.560] also quite well then I think at the end the dishwasher went on which used so much energy [14:15.560 --> 14:21.360] already that the charging had to stop completely and it turned actually out that there was some [14:21.360 --> 14:27.360] bug in the car firmware that didn't resume the charging afterwards anymore so at that [14:27.360 --> 14:33.040] time I had to manually then always go there and have to restart it luckily by now this [14:33.040 --> 14:40.360] bug is fixed by Tesla and yeah so the rest of the day the charging rate was a bit reduced [14:40.360 --> 14:51.520] and it works quite well and overall you can see that on the next slide that's the yield [14:51.520 --> 14:58.360] of the photovoltaic system over all of last year and in average that was between 10 and [14:58.360 --> 15:05.560] 11 kilowatt hours per day and if you consider that half of that so five kilowatt hours is [15:05.560 --> 15:12.120] then used for the surplus charging that corresponds to roughly 10,000 kilometers a year of driving [15:12.120 --> 15:19.400] the car obviously a bit more in summertime and not that much in wintertime but it corresponds [15:19.400 --> 15:30.040] to a saving of roughly two tons carbon dioxide which is quite a nice effect here and yeah [15:30.040 --> 15:38.400] that's my experience so far I'm looking in the future to also integrate with other solutions [15:38.400 --> 15:45.080] like EVCC for example which specifically looks into car wallbox monitoring and also going [15:45.080 --> 15:51.720] or like OpenStep which is sounded quite nice into looking into the future predicting and [15:51.720 --> 15:59.520] getting more machine learning stuff in there which might be a topic for next year then [15:59.520 --> 16:11.560] and with that I thank you very much for your attention are there any questions [16:11.560 --> 16:41.040] yeah okay the question is if I can imagine whether I more or less give control more to [16:41.040 --> 16:50.600] the grid operator than controlling it myself in theory I can imagine that but from all [16:50.600 --> 16:58.520] that I've seen out there is that that's still a far far future that really the utilities [16:58.520 --> 17:07.280] would be in a position to really make use of that data and problem that I see is also [17:07.280 --> 17:12.840] you know how do you actually make sure that the data is real that I'm not just giving [17:12.840 --> 17:23.800] anything there for maybe benefiting in some way of a better tariff or whatever and sorry [17:23.800 --> 17:31.000] it's measured by the meter okay if that's all just the pure meter values that's I think [17:31.000 --> 17:37.560] anyhow already possible with the smart meters that are installed not in my case now at the [17:37.560 --> 18:03.440] moment anymore yeah for having the utility allow to decide when to charge and discharge [18:03.440 --> 18:08.480] the car I still want to be in the position to say well I actually needed at that charging [18:08.480 --> 18:14.480] state at that moment and so on if that can be fulfilled that works there washing machine [18:14.480 --> 18:19.840] is also something that really goes into your own personal comfort a lot so if they decide [18:19.840 --> 18:27.920] when to do it and so it's all a bit tricky I think it's better here in the households [18:27.920 --> 18:34.920] to really decide what to do and give incentives to do the right stuff [18:34.920 --> 19:04.240] yeah yeah no from utility and the grid side it's obviously very important [19:04.240 --> 19:11.360] to not see a single household but to see more or less a whole city part of the city and [19:11.360 --> 19:18.280] so on and to be able to control things there to more or less get a decent level that's [19:18.280 --> 19:24.400] for sure but I think it's helpful to provide incentives to the single people by having [19:24.400 --> 19:31.440] an API to interact with and then that might work okay I see my time's up thank you very [19:31.440 --> 19:34.200] much if you want to discuss further I'm at the booth