I intend to use the Sonoff Loadshedder in conjunction with HomeAssistant and SolarAssistant to automate the control of high-drain devices since I've put the entire house on the inverter.

I have 3 Geysers (1 x 250l with its own Solar Panel); 1 x 150l, and 1 x 100l). Now while I have set auto-schedules with on and off times using eWeLink, load shedding can be unpredictable and the Sonoff Loadshedder should automatically pickup when Eskom is off and then switch off the Geysers (and the Pool Pump) so that they don't accidentally drain the batteries.

For example, all the Geysers switch on at about 04h30 so that there is hot water early in the morning - if it's load-shedding at that time then I don't want them to switch on otherwise they will drain the batteries and I might run out of power if we are in Stage 6-8. I also don't want to have to wake up in the middle of the night and manually switch off the loads, or, if I'm away, rely on anyone else at home to do so.

The Sonoff Loadshedder should allow me to define high drain items as "non-essential" during loadshedding slots - I will then also not have to rely on the EskomSePush API for my HomeAssistant automations eg since I can read the state of Eskom (on or off) from the Sonoff Loadshedder, I can automate a RGB bulb in the kitchen (and elsewhere) to turn red when the Eskom power goes off. Can also do the same for heaters / tumble dryer / washing machine - put them on a Wifi enabled plug adapter, then when Eskom power is off, switch them off to ensure that my batteries don't get drained (or, since I'm going to integrate the inverter into HomeAssistant as well), only switch them off during load shedding if the batteries are below 60 percent and the weather forecast is 'cloudy'

Heh, the possibilities are endless.

On 2023/03/19 at 10:26 PM, Sonoff Africa said:

Hi

I think the simplest solution in the near future for new users that require local automation will be the Sonoff iHost but that remains to be seen.

 

Aleks

As you say ... remains to be seen. I have a whole bunch of bulbs, older switches, wall switches which I would love to control via one of these but nothing on the net shows any promise yet.