Extend to more Charging Periods

[sebzat]

Hello,
Thank you for the Home Assistant Alpha ESS integration.
The limitation to only two charging periods (cp1, cp2) is insufficient for automations relying on dynamic electricity tariffs. The cheapest charging times often fall into more than two discontinuous time slots.
Request for Extension:
Please extend the alphaess.setbatterycharge service to include the periods cp3start/end and cp4start/end to enable optimal battery control.
Thank you for considering this!

[Poshy163]

Hi @sebzat, within your alphaess app, does it support more charging slots? or is there only 2?

[sebzat]

Hello @Poshy163 ,

Thank you very much for the quick follow-up question.

It is true that only the two charging slots (cp1 and cp2) exist in the mobile Alpha ESS App.

However, via the official Alpha ESS Web interface, up to 16 separate time points can be configured for charging (Charge) and discharging (Discharge).

Best regards

[Poshy163]

No stress at all.

What battery do you have and what does the web interface look like (the charge/discharge settings)?

Looking at the openAPI documentation, there is only 2 charging slots, but i wonder if newer inverters support more, and the mobile app and API documentation was never updated

[sebzat]

Inverter | SMILE-T10-HV-INV
Battery | SMILE-BAT-8.2PH

The attached image (which you should include with your reply) shows the configuration options from the official Alpha ESS web interface.

As you can see, this interface allows setting up to 8 periods (16 separate time points) for both charging and discharging. The labels in the screenshot are in German, but the table structure clearly shows the capability for:

Laden (Charge): CP1, CP2, CP3, CP4, ...

Entladen (Discharge): DP1, DP2, DP3, DP4, ...

This confirms that the underlying system supports the extended functionality, which we hope can be exposed via the Home Assistant integration.

Thank you very much for your effort!

[Poshy163]

Interesting, my smile-5 only has 2, might be either a region restriction (im in Australia), or a battery/inverter restriction

If you don't mind, are you able to start a ticket with AlphaESS to see if they will add support (and/or update the documentation) via the OpenAPI (which is what the integration uses) and im more than happy to add support for the batteries and inverters that support it.

i don't want to go around and add features that might work with a subset of batteries with limited to no acknowledgement about it

[sebzat]

Hello @Poshy163,

I have created a support ticket with Alpha ESS requesting the official inclusion of multiple charge/discharge periods in the OpenAPI, as this functionality is available via the web interface.

I will update this thread immediately as soon as I receive an official response from them.

Thanks again for your willingness to help!

Best regards

[DavidqStokes]

My battery supports three charge and discharge periods, and with a heat pump tariff pending, being able to use all three charging periods would be very useful.

[ckarrie]

My Hi10 supports dynamic electricity tariffs in the app. I use this feature for some days but want to take more control via HomeAssistant over it. Is there a way to get this feature added to the integration? Like setting max charging/discharging power, setting "Hochpreisbereich(%)" and "Niedrigpreisbereich(%)" with HomeAssistant.

Links:

• AlphaESS-Blog Article

Screenshots:

• Screenshots 1
• Screenshots 2

Edit: removed inline Images

[DavidqStokes]

Just an interim idea as a workaround, it is possible to set the charge / discharge periods more than once a day.

This would allow setting charge periods 1 and 2 at e.g. midnight, for e.g. 00:30 - 05:30 & 09:30 - 11:00, and then setting periods 1 and 2 again at midday, for e.g. 14:00 - 16:00. This effectively would provide three charge periods for a regular tariff.

I do this manually when we have the occasional free electricity period and I want to top up the battery, but it would be possible to automate this.