Separate DHW and Space heat monitoring

[Zapaman (Dominic Daniel McCann)]

I think a few people are separately tracking hot water and space heating efficiency and kWh.
How are people doing this?
Are people using a 2nd / 3rd heat pump dashboard in EmonCMS to track these values separately?
What tips or pointers could you provide for other people wishing to do this?

[Timbones (Tim)]

The key is to know when the heat pump is doing space or water heating. There are several techniques for doing this:

• monitor state of 3-way valve which switches circuits
• monitor the status of the circulation pump(s)
• guess from the flow rate, if reliable indicator
• ask the heat pump what mode it’s in

Some discussion of how this can be done can be found in the middle of this topic: Introducing HeatpumpMonitor.org - a public dashboard of heat pump performance - #127 by glyn.hudson

Once you know which circuit the heat pump is heating, it’s easy to populate feeds for W and kWh for each of space heating and DHW. Then either separate apps for each or create own dashboards, like this:

The MMSP app does a great job of showing both at once.

Computing COP for each isn’t so simple, so I do that externally and upload them to their own feeds.

[Zapaman (Dominic Daniel McCann)]

Thanks Tim, yeah I can already do this via MMSP although isn’t live and needs the data to be down-loaded as CSV file.
I think that having a standard way of doing this in EmonCMS would be good.

[Timbones (Tim)]

Introducing HeatpumpMonitor.org - a public dashboard of heat pump performance

With the amazing recent chatter on Twitter about hot water performance, i’m wondering how it could be possible to isolate just DHW performance of the heat pumps on the list? I know we’ve talked about this before, but it seems more relevant than ever. And I’m keen as anyone to understand my own performance to try and improve it. Could some hardware be created to somehow know when the diverter is in hot water mode? Or can we use a CT clamp or something? I’m just thinking about a generic way th…

[greentangerine (Nick Ireland)]

Many three way valves have a switched/live output when activated so that could presumably be used.

[Zarch (Mick Wall)]

I’ve managed to split mine as I have a CT clamp on my heat pump controller. In essence, this is the boolean indicator for my system. yes/no, heating/DHW.

The Vaillant heat pump controller normally only draws 1 to 10W in normal operation, but when doing a DHW run it drives a pump connected to my Mixergy cylinder.

So when watts are greater than 20W I know i’m doing hot water, so I record electric in and heat out to separate feeds. That way I can create a DHW only heatpump app.

Note: this method would not be usable for anyone with a standard coil cylinder attached to a Vaillant.

Then on my normal heat meter power feeds I also subtract the DHW only figures to give heat only feeds.
Again, I create another Heatpump app just with the heating only feeds.

Finally, do similar for the power recorded via the SDM meter.

So I’ve got 3 Heatpump apps

1. Normal combined heating and DHW
2. DHW only
3. Heating only.

This all came about via magic from @glyn.hudson and @TrystanLea

[Zapaman (Dominic Daniel McCann)]

@Zarch

So I’ve got 3 Heatpump apps

1. Normal combined heating and DHW
2. DHW only
3. Heating only.

Yeah This is what I am planning to do.
I have already created a “DHW only” flag so the rest will be pretty much as per the above.

[Zarch (Mick Wall)]

So the big challenge is how do we create a solution for folks with standard heat meter setups?

For example those with a standard Vaillant Arotherm setup and a cylinder based coil?

[Timbones (Tim)]

@lukso was able to implement separate energy feeds with hardware:

Samsung EHS mono 5kw settings

Last weekend i played with cables and rewired Shelly EM - two channel energy meter so it logs power consumption for DHW under first channel and space heating under second. 3 way valve signal is used with relay switching the meter clamp for corresponding channel so I have the consumption in two separate graphs. [20231028_162455] We still don’t have cold enough here to use floor heating fully. I am courious how the regulation of room temperature will work. While using Glyn’s settings (constan…

[Timbones (Tim)]

@Zarch

So the big challenge is how do we create a solution for folks with standard heat meter setups?

I suggest that we separate it into two problems: {h/t @dMb}

1. how to detect dwh vs. space heating - this is the bit that will vary a lot between installations, and depends what pumps and valves are in place. Maybe the lads at OEM had provide an easy to install kit?

2. how to report energy usage separately for dwh vs. space - ideal solution is for My Heatpump app to take a single additional feed that indicates DHW or not, and works out the three sets of stats based on that, without needing to create more input processes or feeds.
   (Maybe this’ll only work for the zoomed in view (W), and not the (kWh) bar charts)

IMHO, this’ll make it much easier to provide a standard solution that will work for most heat pump owners.

[Ian_Calderbank]

I wonder if it’d be possible to write code to do the detection piece purely in software, and therefore run it within the MyHeatpump app, needing no new hardware. A hot water reheat has certain characteristics : FlowT rises steadily and constantly, reaching a value significantly higher than the “typical” value for that system in space heating mode.

this would be my idea , in psuedo maths:

• compute the mean flowT when the system is running (ignore non-running temps) and stdev
• scan the data set for flow temps greater than N stdev higher than the mean (N TBD)
• starting from those outlier temps fwd’s and backwards in time look for a block of monotomically increasing flow temps of a reasonable (TBD) duration . Where the flowT increase starts and stops, define those times as the begin and end of the HW reheat run.

It ought be possible for a competent coder (I am not!) to write code to look for data matching that, and therefore classify a block of the data from TimeX to TimeY as being “DHW mode”.
as a debug, the matched times to be logged so the user can confirm or deny.

reporting - I agree. I’d like to see a filter on the app , and also on the heatpumpmonitor.org dashboard , to allow the datasets to be viewed as DHW/ CH/ Both. May not work for all datasets as you say.

[gck303 (George Campbell)]

I run monitor the DHW and CH as seperate apps. Only a combined (DHW and CH) one is published publically.

All my data is sent to a local emon installation (on ubuntu) via MQTT from loxone. The loxone controls the heating valves and gathers the meter data/kamstrup values and publishes it.

So, it is quite easy to split the data by CH and DHW.

I must say, I have never quite got my head around the emon feeds. And I never did get the heatpump hardware working. Sorry.

[Timbones (Tim)]

@Timbones

2. how to report energy usage separately for dwh vs. space - ideal solution is for My Heatpump app to take a single additional feed that indicates DHW or not, and works out the three sets of stats based on that, without needing to create more input processes or feeds.

Announcement: My Heatpump app will now accept two extra feeds:

• heatpump_dhw is used to separate out the power data when heating the hot water cylinder, and highlight those cycles on the power graph. Additional UI elements will appear, as detailed below.
• heatpump_ch is used to highlight heating cycles (optional: is not required to compute stats)

Stats for heating and hot water will be shown beneath the chart (excluding standby consumption):

There is also the option the exclude DHW data from the “when running” stats:

Please give it a try and feedback your thoughts on it.

(self-hosted installs will need update the Modules/app component)

[TrystanLea]

This is really nice @Timbones, thanks for contributing this!

[Zarch (Mick Wall)]

@Timbones

Please give it a try and feedback your thoughts on it.

Amazing.

I just need to work out how to get this onto my energystats remote emoncms version.

Local emonHP > energystats emoncms account (and heatpump app)

Local emonHP / emontTX / emonPi > personal emoncms personal (and heatpump app)

I do all the separating of inputs/feeds etc on my personal emoncms as that is where I have all the CT clamp data.

But I don’t have that data on my emonHP as it’s standalone.

[Zarch (Mick Wall)]

@Timbones

Please give it a try and feedback your thoughts on it.

Could the breakdown be moved directly under COP in Window?

When I copy/paste the graph into twitter etc, it would be awesome to have that directly underneath.

So I could include it in the copy/paste without needing to include all the details from the other fields, if that makes sense?

[Zarch (Mick Wall)]

Little bug here:

Looks like the legend wraps around and you lose the top left of the graph?

[Timbones (Tim)]

@Zarch

Could the breakdown be moved directly under COP in Window?

Yeah, I had considered that but wasn’t sure. Screenshots is a good justification.

[matt-drummer (Matthew Gregory)]

Hi Tim,

Can I do this?

Do I need anything more than I have?

[ajdunlop (Andrew Dunlop)]

Excellent thanks @Timbones
Are heatpump_dhw and _ch the watts separated out or a flag to indicate when in heating or ch mode?
I have a melcloud feed that includes the mode (think 1 is DHW and 2 is CH) is there a way of can use this?