That’s helpful. Is there any issue with warranties and support with the installer and manufacturers if this equipment is attached to the system?
I don’t think I can give you complete reassurance on warranty impact.
I guess if you break something during the installation (or removal) of ESPAltherma, then that’s on you. But it’s just a matter of removing the case, finding the right connector and plugging in 5 little jumper-style DuPont cables or a proper connector if you can find one. Not difficult if you’ve done some DIY and hobby electronics.
What I can say is that when I spoke to a Daikin technical expert about my poor heat pump performance and shared some of the data, he was interested to learn about ESPAltherma. Although he was very clear that external equipment is unsupported.
And when I had the Octopus annual service this week I explained to the engineer what the extra white cable was and he didn’t give seem to care. He was here to do his job (just clean the filters!) and that was it.
And of course If the heat pump develops a fault, one could remove ESPAltherma before an engineer visit…
PS: you’ll probably want Home Assistant or some other setup to connect ESPAltherma to. (I already had that.)
Yes I’m not sure having something attached to the system would look great in the event you need an engineer visit for something under warranty, you could of course remove the device before they arrived (which is what I would do) and there would be no way of them knowing something was attached previously. Also, there are Daikin official devices that plug-in to this port for exactly the same purposes, reading the outputted data, so it’s not as if ESPAltherma is doing something that is likely to invoke a warranty call. Of course to install the ESPAltherma you need to remove the cover and attach a cable to a logic board, so there is some potential risk of causing damage, that’s up to your own appetite for risk.
As you say the MMI is presenting the same data that ESPAltherma would be reading. However, as I mentioned, the data presented is rounded to the nearest whole kWh so is essentially valueless as that introduces large amounts of error, 0.5kWh +/- for heat production/electricity consumption which makes the (S)COP values meaningless. With ESPAltherma you are going to get more accurate data than the MMI, honestly I’d just ignore the MMI and not worry about getting it working. Attaching an ESPAltherma is going to show you if your heat pump has data reporting problems anyway.
Adding ESPAltherma is not very expensive (in cost) but more expensive in time. If you already have something like Home Assistant or EmonCMS you are well on your way to getting data out of your Heat Pump. If you don’t have something like this running in your home already, you are going to need to set that up so that you can track the data being read by ESPAltherma.
Hi Mark @1nc , I’ve just had an EDLA 6kW installed by OES with an existing Mixergy tank and heat plate exchanger + OEM level 3 monitoring kit. I’m now on a journey to learn what the common basics for my hardware set up should be. I wondered if you’d be kind enough to share your experience and findings you’ve learned please?
I’m waiting for a second visit in the coming days in order to finish off some installation snags after which I will have an operational ASHP and live Heatmonitor data.
Many thanks DavidB
Hi David,
Sure. I have tried a number of settings configurations and even tried stepping up the power limits using relays via ESPAltherma modifications, this did work and imporved the efficency a bit but I do not think it is worth the hassle. However what I have found to have the biggest impact is limiting target temperatures, doing as deep a ‘charge’ as possible (letting it get low), and picking warmest times of day to heat the water. Unfortunately due to my shower mixer tap always mixing (i really should sort that out) I tend to target 50C, would rather do 45C.
I have also enable the ‘geek mode’ Mixergy and heat geek integration - Mixergy which i think has helped but i have not done any proper experiments on that but it likes to target the warmest time of day.
But my general strategy is this. Last summer I had it to heat the DHW at around 1pm when it is normally the warmest, but i did not have monitoring back then. This summer i moved to the ‘geek mode’ which does its own scheduling to hopefully maximise efficiency. I have a solar diverter but I use a home assistant automation so it only uses that when the hot water is above 90% to keep it topped up a little bit as i get more form my export than it costs to use the heat pump. I then have another automation which heats the whole tank up if it gets under 20%. In the heating season however i put it back into schedule mode so it heats it in early morning, this is bad for COP but I want to make use of my cheap night night tariff and not use the battery as I need that for the heat pump to heat the home.
My system is the Whitchurch one on heat pump monitor. For DHW I have an overall SCOP of 2.93 since being individually measured in mid Nov. Form March to now it is 3.85. I have obviously played a bit to get to where it is now so it will be interesting to see what it does over the coming winter.
Thank you Mark, @1nc
I’ll look into the heat geek settings and the 1pm DHW cycle, although like you with our battery we will try preserve it for the ASHP daytime usage and use the IOG time slot to run the DHW over winter.
My Madoka is sensing 1°C warmer than the OEM and Govee room thermometers, even with Madoka LEDs off. Wondering if just weather compensation is sufficient. The design temp was at 50oC, but I hope we can run lower for the majority of the time. Do you have any specific Daikin MMI settings which have been essential to the efficient running? You have good COP for the Daikins on OEM, that’s very encouraging and great to see.
Thanks
There is a setting to put an offset for the Madoka so you should be able to calibrate it (but only in 0.5 C steps).
With pure weather compensation vs the madoka. I kept it on the madoka setting (‘Room Thermostat’ control) but with a small modulation and adjusted the slope down if it was getting too hot (which it did at first).
Once it started getting very cold i went to pure weather compensation (‘Leaving Water’ control) and properly tuned in the curve to be just right. Once done I put it back into the madoka mode and increased the modulation it is permitted to do. My home is south facing with full view of the horizon so having it able to auto tune the leaving water temp down on sunny days is good.
Oh and I put my Delta T to 4 as my flow seems to be fine with that, might try moving putting it to 3 once it is colder and see if it makes any difference.
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I think this can happen if the external meter setting is turned on by accident?
Maybe, but my system has “Energy metering” set to None but still shows essentially no electricity usage - 60kWh in 18 months. My system should be Top of the SCOPS 