UPDATE
I have disconnected my Homely controller for last 6 days and reverted back to WL.
I wasn’t happy with the control of the heat pump with the Homely Controller. It was turning the heat pump on & off too regularly, and not working low and slow, like it should. Here are 2 screen shots, 1 from the last week before the Homely was disconnected, and 1 for the last week. Coincidentally, the mean average outdoor temp for both of these periods was 4.6 degrees.
Homely Controller
Samsung WL
You can see that my COP has drastically improved, even with an extremely cold snap last night.
I also simultaneously switched from Octopus Cosy to Octopus Go to make use of a cheaper overnight rate. (this coincided with changing from a PHEV to a BEV and needing to charge more than I used to) But even though I no longer have as many cheaper hours, I’m fairly sure it it costing me less money to run, and is more comfortable. I have been playing around with turning the heat pump off for a few hours at the beginning of the night, or simply reducing the WL curve by a few degrees over night from the controller home screen.
What next?
I’m still not 100% happy, I thought the Homely controller would the the answer to some of the shortcomings of the Samsung controller, but it doesn’t seem to be the answer I was looking for. So I am looking at a few of options now.
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Use home assistant to set up my own method of setting the Outlet temperature based out outside temperature, time of day & inside temperature (and anything else I want to add later on). I have absolutely no experience with HA though. A guy at work said he’d be willing to help me out, but I see this is a potential ‘further down the road’ option.
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Using the Samsung ‘Smart Grid Control’ functions with relays on timers to adjust the flow temp in 4 modes. a) force off operation, b) normal operation c) 1 Step-up operation (WL+between 0.5 - 5C) d) 2 Step-up operation ( WL+5C).
This seems to give me most of what I’m after in Option 1, but obviously missing the internal temperature input. This is something that I think is only available on MIM-E03EN controllers, which I have. This is really useful to get any kind of setback without using the thermostat as an on/off switch. I would have to change my WL settings so that they are set up for Mode 1 (cooler/overnight) periods and boost them to day time temps from there. This could be really useful with Cosy; Mode 1 4pm-7pm, Mode 2 overnight, Mode 3 day-time, Mode 4 during cheap periods.
- I have the option to switch back to the Homely controller at any point.