smartboiler 1.5.6

Smart boiling of household

SmartBoiler

Intelligent water boiler controller for Home Assistant. Predicts household hot water consumption patterns and schedules heating at the lowest-cost hours — using day-ahead spot electricity prices, photovoltaic surplus, and HDO ripple-control awareness.

Originally developed as a master's thesis at FIT VUT Brno (2024). v2.0 is a complete rewrite: no LSTM, no InfluxDB, no external APIs required beyond HA itself.

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How it works

SmartBoiler runs two parallel workflows inside a Home Assistant add-on:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ForecastWorkflow  (runs every hour)                 │
│                                                      │
│  HA entity history ──► Rolling histogram predictor   │
│  Spot price API    ──► Greedy scheduler              │
│  HDO learner       ──► 24-hour heating plan          │
│  PV surplus        ──►  (persisted to /data/)        │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
         │  heating_plan[24]
         ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ControlWorkflow   (runs every 60 s)                 │
│                                                      │
│  Read boiler temperature  ◄── 4-level estimator      │
│  Check legionella due?    ◄── every 21 days          │
│  Execute plan hour        ──► turn relay ON / OFF    │
│  Observe HDO patterns     ──► update HDO learner     │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Prediction — Rolling Histogram

Instead of an LSTM network, SmartBoiler uses a per-(weekday, hour) quantile histogram over the last 12 weeks of actual consumption data pulled from HA entity history. This approach:

• Works from the very first weeks of data (global quantile fallback until enough per-slot samples accumulate)
• Requires zero GPU, zero model training time
• Adapts naturally to changing household routines (old data ages out of the 12-week window)
• Uses p50/p75/p90 quantile — configurable via prediction_conservatism setting

Scheduling — Greedy Cost Minimisation

The scheduler assigns 24 hour-slots an effective cost and fills from cheapest until the minimum water temperature constraint is always satisfied:

Priority	Condition	Effective cost
1 (highest)	Calendar boost event	−2.0 (forced)
2	PV surplus > 0.1 kWh	−1.0 (free solar)
3	Known day-ahead spot price	spot EUR/MWh
4	No price data	75 EUR/MWh (medium)
✗ blocked	HDO relay cut / vacation_off	∞ (never)

A standby-loss penalty adjusts the cost of heating early: a slot cheaper by 5 EUR/MWh is only preferred over a later one if that price advantage exceeds the extra energy lost to standing-by while waiting.

Temperature Estimation — 4-Level Fallback

L1  Direct NTC probe inside boiler  (most accurate)
 │  (if entity unavailable)
L2  Power feedback: relay ON + power < 50 W → T = T_set
 │  (relay energised but internal boiler thermostat cut the element — target reached)
 │  (if power > 50 W: actively heating; no inference possible from this level)
L3  Thermal model: Newton's law cooling from case sensor
 │  (if no calibration data yet)
L4  Last known value  (stale — logged as warning)

HDO Ripple-Control Learning

Czech/Slovak low-tariff electricity uses an HDO relay that physically disconnects the boiler switch. SmartBoiler detects this automatically: when the switch entity enters the unavailable state in HA it records a blocking observation for that 5-minute slot. After data from ≥ 2 distinct ISO calendar weeks is accumulated, the slot is considered reliably blocked and excluded from scheduling.

An explicit schedule can also be set in configuration (e.g. "22:00-06:00,12:05-13:35").

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Requirements

Minimum (no sensors)

Component	Purpose
Home Assistant	Data source + service calls
Shelly Plus 1PM (or any HA switchable relay)	Boiler power control

Without sensors the system can still control heating based on time-of-use tariffs and HDO schedule — just without consumption-aware optimisation.

Recommended

Component	Purpose
NTC thermistor inside boiler casing	Direct water temperature reading (L1 estimator)
Power monitoring relay (e.g. Shelly 1PM)	Temperature feedback + HDO detection
ESPHome flow meter + outlet thermistor	Accurate consumption measurement
PV inverter with HA integration	Solar surplus scheduling

See DOCS.md for hardware wiring and ESPHome configuration.

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Architecture

See ARCHITECTURE.md for:

• Full module dependency diagram
• Dual-workflow timing
• Prediction pipeline detail
• Scheduling algorithm walkthrough
• Savings simulation with real example

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Installation

Install via the Home Assistant add-on store:

1. Add repository https://github.com/grinwi/smartboiler-add-on to HA Add-on Store
2. Install Smart Boiler
3. Start the add-on; open the web UI via Open Web UI
4. Complete the setup wizard (entity pickers, boiler parameters, optional features)
5. The controller starts automatically once setup is saved

No manual YAML editing required. All configuration is persisted in /data/smartboiler_setup.json inside the add-on container.

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Repository structure

smartboiler/
├── src/smartboiler/
│   ├── controller.py          # Main orchestrator (ForecastWorkflow + ControlWorkflow)
│   ├── ha_client.py           # Home Assistant REST API wrapper
│   ├── state_store.py         # Persistent JSON + pickle storage (/data/)
│   ├── predictor.py           # Rolling histogram predictor
│   ├── hdo_learner.py         # HDO ripple-control pattern learner
│   ├── scheduler.py           # Greedy day-ahead heating scheduler
│   ├── spot_price.py          # energy-charts.info day-ahead price fetcher
│   ├── ha_data_collector.py   # Hourly consumption data from HA history
│   ├── temperature_estimator.py  # 4-level water temp estimation
│   ├── thermal_model.py       # Newton's law cooling model (L3 estimator)
│   ├── legionella_protector.py   # Periodic 65 °C safety cycle
│   ├── web_server.py          # Flask dashboard (HA ingress, port 8099)
│   ├── web_routes.py          # Route handlers
│   ├── web_setup.py           # Setup wizard field metadata
│   └── setup_config.py        # Configuration persistence
├── tests/                     # Unit + integration tests
├── README.md                  # This file
├── ARCHITECTURE.md            # Deep-dive with diagrams
└── setup.py

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Development

pip install -e smartboiler/
python -m pytest smartboiler/tests/

Entry point (matches the add-on run script):

python -m smartboiler.controller