question

Hello,

Please put two buttons one for solar forecasts and another for consumption. I do not want to see the consumption forecasts.

Fantastic stuff. I'll see if this helps me with forecasting overnight charging with my Octopus tariff in the UK. I charge from grid from 00:30 to 04:30 but only what I need to based on predicted solar and predicted usage. Hoping this provides a better set of predictions to use for this.

...don't have a screenshot ready, but a few days ago I noticed the consumption forecast to show zero (0) kWh for one or two hour-slots....which is impossible, as my consumption baseload in my ESS is approx 450W during the day.

As a side note: I am charging two EVs (normally 1phase up to 32A each, normally not concurrently) with a non-victron solution/walllbox, which then contributes to the total consumption. I will try and investigate how the forecast behaves, when actually charging occurs.

...consumption forecast is way to high...maybe caused by the fact, that two EVs are "suckunig" in all PV available since 13:00 o'clock.

However, since this will reduce the "to-grid" values (should be detected), the algo "should" assume, that consumption is related to excess-PV power and hence should not forecast a consumption way over PV forecast, but maybe just below that.

Edit: now, that cunsumption forecast for tomorrow and day-after-tomorrow is avaailable, I must say, that this forecast is completely wrong.

The algo seems to assume, that a certain load will be the baseline and when the actual consumption is quite high (i.e. when chargeing an EV), it simply assumes that this load will go on forever (tomorrow and day-after-tomorrow)..see piic below.

Hi,

I have two issues:

1. Consumption forecast is to low. There are several hours with zero. Basic consumption is about 500W. Day total should be not less then 12kWh.

2. I found out that you added "tomorrow" and "day after tomorrow". Tomorrow is the same issue as today. Consumption forecast ist to low. In "day after tomorrow" consumption forecast looks better. But in "tomorrow" and "day after tomorrow" is shown the recorded consumption and solar from today.

I like the solar forecast very much, especially for my calculations an programmings with nodered, iobroker etc. The forcasts for tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow ar great.

I hope the day after tomorrow will be supported in the vrm api too, in the moment i see only the first and second 24 hours.

But i support ojack's opinion: The recorded data for consumption and solar for 'today' should NOT be considered and added to the values for tomorroy and the day after tomorrow in the vrm portal (and perhaps later in the vrm-api). There you should only show the forcast data.

Regards,

Roger

I'm liking this feature very much. On my installation the forecast consumption values are looking pretty accurate at the moment.

What I would like to see if it is possible, on both the Solar and Consumption graph is that when the time has gone past the forcasted data (so you are looking at the Recorded Data on the left of the graph), if a line in each hourly block could be placed there that shows what the forecast for both the Solar and Consumption value was so that one can see just what the forecast was in comparison to what was actually recorded.

Apart from that at the moment, great work and many thanks to the VRM team and Victron for this. Looking forward to it going live on the main VRM.

Best regards, Chris.

Hello, In dashboard icon for grid is missing

I've previously seen the consumption forecast in Beta, however just logged back in today and no graphicla consumption forecast. I've tried refreshing, changing days and back to today, hide and unhide forecast but it isn't showing?

It is forecasting consumption as that is showing in the totals box just nothing displayed on graph. Solar forecast is fine and there are gaps in the graph where consumption should be..

...it just occurred to me that, with solar- and consumption-forecasts available, there could be to-grid and from-grid (and generation) forecasts made as well, couldn't it?

@Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) many thanks for for making the previews possible. Keep up the good work! My next wish is a consumption-/solar-forecast based SoC/SoH Management (next gen. Battery Optimizer in the ESS for Lithium Batteries (normally keep SoC between 20% - 80%; top-up to 100% every 5-10 days; prioritize with/against dynamic ESS) ;-)

Hello.

Issue in the past text while forecast is tomorrow.

Hello, is there an option to query this solar forecast and consumption forecast via API for Node-Red? I can already query the solar forecast via the VRM API. (victron-vrm-api)

Yes, if you install the "victron-vrm-api" Node under "Manage Palette" you get access to them from there. You do need to generate a one off token to get access to your VRM instance which was a little confusing but once that's done you get the extra nodes in the palette.

https://flows.nodered.org/node/victron-vrm-api

https://vrm-api-docs.victronenergy.com/#/

Hello, in some installations the whole dashboard is gone.

How long does it take forecast to learn that I charge the car and heat the hot water tank (20kWh+) at 2 a.m., but my base load is closer to 500W, rather than assuming 2kWh every hour all day?

I am testing Dynamic ESS and obviously, the consumption forecast plays a role in this algorithm and this is currently impacting (I think) the effectiveness of the Dynamic ESS.

In my case, the car charging is an "AC Load" (parallel to victron) and the hot water tank and all other loads are "Critical Loads". I assume this shouldn't impact things though, as the forecast I assume is based on total and does not differentiate between critical and non-critical, right?

It woukd be very nice to show a (raw) caclulation of the battery SOC line based on the estimated values for solar and consumtion ..

Regards, roger

I am running my own Dynamic ESS that I wrote in node red. One feature I find very useful that others might as well is a forecast of the spare/excess solar. Ie at the point of the battery being full and the future consumption during daylight hours being satisfied. Given I don't get paid for my export this can then be used to make decisions to charge the car/hot water tank etc.

Hi there... I can see the solar forecast since the start of my Victron system (about a month ago) and generally I am ok with the solar forecast after a month now (= training data for a month). Since a couple days I can see the consumption forecast in my graphs as well, and this is a really nice next step.

If I may, let me give you my background, so that you understand my thinking behind my proposal: I have a 60 kw peak PV system with a 60 kwh battery, grid-connected with surplus feed-in. I have a hourly consumption tariff, which means in an ideal world I want to pull grid-electricity in the cheapest hours of the day. I also have a heatpump in my house and an EV. I guess, for the future that is somewhat of a baseline case. Btw, I am a software architect/CTO kinda person with a team of 300+ devs, so I know just a littlebit about algorithms and software dev as well.

Couple of thoughts for the consumption forecast:

My consumption is largely (80%+) based on the heatpump activity, which in turn is largely based on the outside temparature. I am virtually always loading my EV with surplus PV electricity using a Victron wallbox.

As a consequence, I believe that my consumption is actually well predictable if we accept that the hourly distribution throughout the day might now be perfect - but that is fine. I know that my heatpump will work so many hours throughout the day (because a specific amount of heat needs to be 'created' when the difference between inside and outside temperature is so much). So, for me the daily consumption forecast would have more importance, and the exact distribution through the day is of minor importance.

Key factor for me would be to have an option to exclude surplus EV charging from all these projections... as this might be done by user when he/she needs it and most likely on days only where there is enough sunshine anyhow. When using the Victron Wallbox (as I do), you guys even have the data in your system already to account for that. In the forecast for the next 7 days (or similar), I would show your forecasted consumption numbers, but also a line for the average consumption per day from the last 7 days. When temperature does not change, this gives already a good indication whether daily production will be sufficient to recharge the battery fully or not.

Obviously, if you would just take the averages of electricity consumption of each hour of the last 7 days ( such as 1 am, 2am, 3 am, 4 am and so on), you can easily break the daily total down to the hour and project out the daily distribution of electricity into the 24 hours of each day (always assuming excluding surplus EV charging). That way you can properly display intra-day projections and also 'somewhat' reliably show a project SOC curve.

Next step of course (this is now me dreaming), would be to also show the hourly tariff in the chart, so that the user (and the Victron system) would know when the cheapest electricity of the day would be available so that you can utilize scheduled charging to pre-load the battery when necessary to the level required to make it through the next low without pulling from the grid at a more expensive time.

This way a Victron system would by design largely only pull electricty from the grid when it is utlized lowest and provide the cheapest option for your customers as well. (I am doing all this manually right now on those 30 something days a year where my daily production is not exceeding my consumption!).

In general, I believe it would be really helpful if you Victron guys would put a bit more description into how you come up with your forecast numbers: both solar and consumption forecast. Everybody knows this cannot be perfect, but the more you explain how you come up with these numbers, the better every user can apply it to his/her situation.

Thanks for reading so far and thanks to Victron to provide such a great technology base where so much potential is existing to streamline electricity production, usage and optimizations! ;-)

Hi Everyone,

Consumption forecasting is now out of beta testing and available to everyone via the normal VRM dashboard.

Thanks to everyone who tested it and helped us with feedback.

It was decided that the dashboard consumption would be disabled by default, though you can enable it with a single click here;

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Hi, I have many installation where the consumption forecast as well as the solar forecast work, but one installation, there is no consumption forecast during the night, although there is always 3-4kW of consumption all night... what could be the reason? The installation exists since more than a year.

that was yesterday for example: