Getting Started¶
miniEMS is a Home Assistant add-on that automatically manages the charging and discharging of a solar battery using real-time electricity prices, Solcast PV forecasts, and your own historical consumption data.
What it does¶
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Smart grid charging | Charges the battery from the grid only during cheap-rate windows when Solcast confirms the sun won't do it instead |
| PV surplus charging | Detects PV surplus and switches the inverter to charge the battery from solar |
| Battery protection | Blocks discharging when SoC falls below your configured minimum |
| Cost tracking | Tracks daily grid cost, PV savings, feed-in revenue, and grid-charge cost |
| HA sensors | Publishes 28 computed sensors under sensor.miniems_* via a custom integration |
| Live dashboard | Ingress panel with auto-refresh, warnings banner, and mode-change log |
| Solcast integration | Reads your Solcast PV forecast directly from HA entities |
| Prediction fallback | Temperature-rule fallback when Solcast or historical data is unavailable |
Requirements¶
| Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|
| Home Assistant OS or Supervised | The add-on uses the Supervisor API |
| Deye inverter + ha-solarman integration | Provides PV, battery, grid, and load power sensors |
| Dynamic electricity price sensor | e.g. Tibber or Octopus Energy integration |
| (Optional) Solcast integration | For accurate PV forecast data |
| (Optional) Weather integration | For temperature-based load prediction |
Quick Start¶
- Install the add-on — copy
miniems/to/addons/local/miniems/and install from the Add-on Store (see Installation). - Install the custom integration — copy
integration/to/config/custom_components/miniems/, restart HA, then add via Settings → Integrations → miniEMS. - Open the dashboard via the HA sidebar → miniEMS.
- Configure — go to Settings tab and enter your entity IDs and thresholds.
- Enable Battery Control — use Simulation Mode first to verify the logic is correct.
- Disable Simulation Mode when you are satisfied with the behaviour.
Simulation Mode
With Simulation Mode enabled, miniEMS logs all inverter commands with a [SIM] prefix but never sends them. A SIM badge appears in the dashboard. Always test with simulation first.