Question about demand response

[billvon]

Hi all.  I have a question about demand response.  I'm in a DR program called OhmConnect, a service that sends a signal to homes (usually via Kasa smart switches) when a demand-response program needs power cuts.  The way this is intended to work is that you plug your high load appliances into the Kasas, and when a DR event comes along, it cuts the power to those devices.  OhmConnect then compares your average power consumption during that time to your power consumption during the DR event, and you get some money (about $1 per kwhr) for any power you save.

I've asked them and they actually encourage people to feed power back during that time, since this increases the power savings they can offer the utility.  However the DR events usually happen after sundown so none of my solar power (from a simple grid tie inverter) can be used.

To get around this, I built a system that looks at the signal to the Kasa switch, and when it sees it, turns on a 3kw grid tie inverter running from an 8kwhr battery bank.  This sends the power back to the grid and I get credit for it - and there's no manual intervention required.  A second Kasa switch recharges the 8kwhr battery at noon when solar power is available.

My question is - is there any way to program an MN15 to do this?  It would need to receive the same signal (either through an external discrete signal or via a web interface) and then output some amount of power to the grid for the duration of the DR event.  I didn't see any features like this in the manual.

[goldserve]

I do this currently all in HA. It's not as polished as it could be but it works. For example, yesterday was a special 3 hour long OhmConnect even and my automation set up the start and stop timer for 1 hour. I had to go in there and adjust the end time to 3 hours but normally they are 1 hour long.

What you need is HomeAssistant, ethernet to RTU RS485 converter, install Solarman and a custom inverter definition file to be able to adjust many of the inverter settings via HA.