How does the Battery for Amber automation work?

How does the Battery for Amber automation work?

The Battery for Amber Automation uses your Amber Price to control the behaviour of your battery. You can adjust settings based on prices, schedule other control periods, and set other behaviours like charging, discharging, Self Consumption mode and Idle mode. Your battery will then be automated based on your settings, giving you savings when power is cheap, and avoiding charges when your Sell Price (Feed in tariff) is negative. 


The Battery for Amber automation executes every 5 minutes and performs the following steps:

Step 1: Call the Amber Price API

Call the Amber Price API using your Amber API key to retrieve your buy and sell (FiT) price.

Step 2: Determine the battery mode for the next 5 minutes

Using your preferences (or default preferences) determine the battery mode for the next 5 minutes.

2a) Start Charging if your Buy Price is below the Maximum Charge Price.

2b) Start Discharging if your Sell Price is above the Minimum Discharge Price and SOC is above the Discharge Threshold.

2c) Hold if my Buy Price is below the Maximum Hold Price and SOC is above the Hold Threshold. This puts the battery into 'idle' mode and is intended to have room for charging the battery with very low Buy Prices.

2d) The default battery mode SCM is set if the above steps didn't meet any criteria.

The steps 2a to 2d are evaluated in sequence and if a step meets the criteria to set a battery mode then the remaining steps are skipped. For example, if step 2a determines that the battery mode should be set to 'Charge' the steps 2b to 2d are not evaluated. If enabled, the 'Advanced Settings' are also considered in the steps 2a, 2b, and 2c.

Step 3: Set the Battery Mode

The Voltello LinkPro (or LinkZB) device communicates with the battery to set the battery mode as determined in step 2.

Step 4: Wait 5 minutes

Wait 5 minutes and continue with step 1 as long as the Battery for Amber automation is active (and not suspended).

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