smartplug-energy-controller 0.1.4

Turning smartplugs on/off depending on current electricity consumption

smartplug-energy-controller

A microservice to turn a smartplug on/off depending on current electricity consumption. The intention of this service is to use all energy you produced, e.g with a balcony power plant, by e.g. loading a portable battery. This can be achieved by plug in your battery into a smartplug. The smartplug is turned on/off dynamically, depending on your current electricity consumption.

The service is especially useful when your electricity meter supports OBIS 1.8.x only (no OBIS 2.8.x). In such a scenario you can give this service your current electricity meter value (obtained watt from provider) and your current watt production (e.g. from a balcony power plant) and it calculates a reasonable point when to turn your smartplugs on/off.

Installation

The python package can be installed from PyPi (https://pypi.org/project/smartplug-energy-controller/)

1. Navigate to the folder where the virtual environment shall be created (e.g. your home dir):

cd ~

2. Create virtual environment (this will create a new folder smart_meter_py_env):

python3 -m venv smart_meter_py_env

3. Activate the virtual environment

source smart_meter_py_env/bin/activate

4. Upgrade pip and setuptools

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools

5. Install smartplug-energy-controller

pip install smartplug-energy-controller

6. Provide environment variables (e.g. in your ~/.profile).

CONFIG_PATH=full/path/to/config.yml
SMARTPLUG_ENERGY_CONTROLLER_PORT=8000

Configuration

Everything is configured in the respective config.yml file. See https://github.com/die-bauerei/smartplug-energy-controller/blob/main/tests/data/config.example.yml

Autostart after reboot and on failure

Create a systemd service by opening the file /etc/systemd/system/smartplug_energy_controller.service and copy paste the following contents. Replace User/Group/ExecStart accordingly.

[Unit]
Description=smartplug_energy_controller
Documentation=https://github.com/die-bauerei/smartplug-energy-controller
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
Group=ubuntu
UMask=002
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
Environment="CONFIG_PATH=full/path/to/config.yml"
Environment="SMARTPLUG_ENERGY_CONTROLLER_PORT=8000"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -lc "source /home/ubuntu/smart_meter_py_env/bin/activate && uvicorn --host 0.0.0.0 --port $SMARTPLUG_ENERGY_CONTROLLER_PORT smartplug_energy_controller.app:app > /dev/null"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now execute the following commands to enable autostart:

sudo systemctl --system daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable smartplug_energy_controller.service

It is now possible to start, stop, restart and check the status of smartplug-energy-controller with:

sudo systemctl start smartplug_energy_controller.service
sudo systemctl stop smartplug_energy_controller.service
sudo systemctl restart smartplug_energy_controller.service
sudo systemctl status smartplug_energy_controller.service

Usage of Tapo Smart Plugs

The service can control Tapo Smart Plugs via the plugp100 library (https://pypi.org/project/plugp100/). Have a look at the example config at https://github.com/die-bauerei/smartplug-energy-controller/blob/main/tests/data/config.example

Usage in conjunction with openHAB

To use this service you need to get the consumption values from your smart-meter. There are of course lots of different ways to achieve this. A possible setup could include:

• Read data from your smart-meter and push them to openHAB:
  • https://github.com/die-bauerei/smart-meter-to-openhab
  • https://tibber.com/de/store/produkt/pulse-ir
  • ...
• Let openHAB send the requests to this service.

This project includes a service that performs this requests by using HABApp (https://github.com/spacemanspiff2007/HABApp) You can start habapp by e.g.

HABAPP_CONFIG_FOLDER=$(source /home/ubuntu/smart_meter_py_env/bin/activate && pip show smartplug_energy_controller | grep Location | sed "s/Location: //")/oh_to_smartplug_energy_controller
source /home/ubuntu/smart_meter_py_env/bin/activate && habapp --config $HABAPP_CONFIG_FOLDER

NOTE: Make sure to first start smartplug_energy_controller as this will setup the configuration for HABApp.

The service expects the smartplug_energy_controller API on http://localhost:$SMARTPLUG_ENERGY_CONTROLLER_PORT

Create a systemd service /etc/systemd/system/oh_to_smartplug_energy_controller.service to setup autostart for this service as well:

[Unit]
Description=Post smart meter values from openHAB to smartplug-energy-controller
Documentation=https://github.com/die-bauerei/smartplug-energy-controller
After=smartplug_energy_controller.service

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
Group=ubuntu
UMask=002
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
#Provide environment variable (e.g. in your ~/.profile). Assignment example see above
Environment="SMARTPLUG_ENERGY_CONTROLLER_PORT=8000"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/bash -lc "source /home/ubuntu/smart_meter_py_env/bin/activate && habapp -c $HABAPP_CONFIG_FOLDER"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

By setting up a connection to your openHAB instance you can additionally use any Smart Plug you have configured inside your openHAB instance. Have a look at the example config at https://github.com/die-bauerei/smartplug-energy-controller/blob/main/tests/data/config.example

Troubleshooting

• Have a look at the log-file you have given in your config.yml
• Have a look at the HABApp log-file located in $HABAPP_CONFIG_FOLDER/log/HABApp.log