I’m new to home energy monitoring & just prior to buying my first EV a couple of months ago I purchased an emonTX connected to my house & EV circuits with a temp probe outside, logging to emonCMS running on a Pi that we had lying around.
I’m on the Octopus Agile tariff & I’d like to be able to control my immersion heater (rated at 3KW@240v/2.76@230V) at the cheapest electricity rates, not specifically to save money because the gas boiler will almost always be the most cost effective method. There are a multitude of reasons; to be able to heat the DHW in summer without using the boiler and as an exercise in automation in preparation of a potential air/ground SHP as well as that it seems an interesting thing to do.
My question is, what is the simplest way to control the immersion heater, I have had a trawl around the site but cannot find the answer to:
Can I use the ‘WiFi MQTT Control Relay Thermostat’ and utilise the Demand Shaper Module?
Also could a 16A Sonoff or Shelly (MQTT controlled) wifi switch unit be used instead?
Or is the solution to go down the home-assistant.io route, which I’d prefer not to do at present because not only do I not have the need for additional home automation but also due to a lack of time setting it up and the ongoing maintenance and inevitable diagnosing of issues later on.