The UK is currently experiencing some prolonged windy weather and my all-renewable energy provider offers dynamic pricing. That means cheap energy and even negative-cost energy. This is where my HA instance shines and saves me a fortune on my power bill. Thanks again to the HA devs for this incredible project.

For the curious, I’m using bottlecapdave’s excellent Home Assistant Octopus Energy integration via HACS.

  • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
    0·
    27 days ago

    Are there any creative energy sinks you could run when the price goes negative? I can only think of mining crypto or transcoding video or stuff like that.

    • rmuk@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      4·
      27 days ago

      Dingdingding! Correct. For the chepest two hours a day (or any time cost is negative) Home Assistant gives Portainer a kick and I sail the high seas. Whenever costs are negative I saturate my servers with BOINC CPU-heavy workloads like ClimatePrediction, Rosetta@Home, LHC@Home and World Community Grid.

    • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      27 days ago

      Flip side of heating could be to lower the temperature of freezers. If the energy is free anyways.

      • rmuk@feddit.ukOPEnglish
        1·
        26 days ago

        In my old place I actually did this: replacing my fridge and freezer’s thermostats with an ESP Home controlled relay and thermometer. This place has a fancy integrated unit that I don’t want to play with too much.