Predictive charging — Dynamic Pricing mode

Automatically selects the cheapest hours of the day to cover the calculated energy deficit.

Compatible price integrations

• Nordpool
• PVPC (ESIOS REE, Spain)
• CKW (Switzerland)

Configuration

Field	Description
Price integration type	Nordpool / PVPC / CKW
Price sensor	HA entity with the current price (and hourly forecast attributes)
Max price threshold	(Optional) Price ceiling; does not charge even during "cheap" hours if the price exceeds this value
Contracted grid power (ICP)	Grid limit used to calculate required charging duration
Only discharge when price exceeds daily average	(Optional) Price-gated discharge — see below

Daily evaluation (00:05)

At 00:05 the controller:

1. Calculates the energy deficit (battery + solar vs. expected consumption).
2. Fetches today's hourly prices from the configured integration.
3. Selects the cheapest hours needed to cover the deficit.
4. Calculates and stores the daily average price from the hourly price profile.
5. Schedules the charging slots for the day.

Retry logic

If price data is unavailable at 00:05, the system retries every 15 minutes for the first hour.

HA restart mid-day

If HA restarts after the 00:05 window without a prior evaluation, the controller runs an automatic evaluation at startup (after 15 seconds) considering only the remaining slots of the current day.

---

Price-based discharge control

The "Only discharge when price exceeds daily average" option adds an extra condition to discharge behaviour.

When active, every controller cycle (~2.5 s) checks whether the current price allows discharge:

If current_price > daily_average_price:
    → Discharge allowed (PD controller operates normally)
If current_price ≤ daily_average_price:
    → Discharge BLOCKED (battery holds)

The daily average price is calculated automatically during the 00:05 evaluation from the hourly price profile. The goal is to preserve battery energy for the most expensive hours of the day.

Fallback threshold

If the 00:05 evaluation has not yet run (e.g. HA just restarted before midnight), the threshold automatically falls back to the configured max price threshold. If no fixed threshold is configured either, discharge control does not act.

Interaction with time slots

If discharge time slots are configured, both conditions must be met for the battery to discharge:

Discharge allowed = within_time_slot AND current_price > daily_average

Outside the slot the battery never discharges. Inside the slot, it only discharges when the price is high enough.

Effect on the PD controller

When discharge is blocked by price, the controller completely freezes its state (power to 0, no derivative term update), the same as during a time slot restriction. The battery resumes smoothly as soon as the price exceeds the average again.

---

Diagnostic attributes

The predictive_charging_active binary sensor exposes:

Attribute	Description
charging_needed	Whether charging is needed according to the balance
selected_hours	Selected hours with individual prices
average_price	Average price of the selected hours
estimated_cost	Estimated charging cost
evaluation_timestamp	When the last evaluation was performed
price_data_status	Price sensor status (ok (N slots), sensor_unavailable, no_slots, not_evaluated)