grid-aware-energy-load-shifter
Grid-aware energy load shifter for Home Assistant. Reads real-time electricity prices (TOU, time-of-use, dynamic pricing), solar production forecasts, battery state of charge, and consumption data from Home Assistant. Schedules deferrable household loads (EV charging, HVAC pre-conditioning, pool pump, dishwasher, laundry, water heater) to cheapest rate windows. Calculates cost savings, optimizes solar self-consumption, and supports virtual power plant (VPP) demand response signals. Works with Nordpool, ENTSO-e, Tibber, Octopus Energy, Amber Electric, and any utility rate plan worldwide. Built for distributed energy resource (DER) optimization and residential demand-side management.
Why use this skill?
Optimize home energy costs with the OpenClaw load shifter. Automatically schedule EV charging, HVAC, and appliances based on real-time grid prices and solar output.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/mrbese/grid-aware-energy-load-shifterWhat This Skill Does
The grid-aware-energy-load-shifter is a sophisticated OpenClaw agent skill designed to bridge the gap between Home Assistant's home automation capabilities and real-time grid intelligence. By consuming data from energy providers, solar inverters, and battery storage systems, the agent proactively shifts heavy electricity-consuming tasks to periods where energy is cheapest or cleanest. It supports a wide array of utility rate structures, including Time-of-Use (TOU) and dynamic pricing models like Nordpool, Tibber, and Octopus Energy, making it an essential tool for residential energy management and demand-side response.
Installation
To integrate this skill into your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal:
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/mrbese/grid-aware-energy-load-shifter
Ensure your Home Assistant instance is running and you have generated a Long-Lived Access Token. You must set the HA_URL and HA_TOKEN environment variables to allow the agent to communicate with your HA instance. It is highly recommended to create a restricted user in Home Assistant specifically for this agent to follow the principle of least privilege.
Use Cases
- Automated EV Charging: Delay charging your electric vehicle until off-peak hours or when solar surplus is at its maximum.
- HVAC Pre-Conditioning: Automatically pre-heat or pre-cool your home during the cheapest tariff window to maintain comfort without peak-rate costs.
- Load Optimization: Coordinate pool pumps, dishwashers, and water heaters to operate sequentially during low-price periods to reduce total household energy expenditure.
- VPP Readiness: Support Virtual Power Plant programs by automatically responding to grid demand signals to reduce load during critical peaks.
Example Prompts
- "Analyze my energy consumption for the last 24 hours and identify which appliances I should shift to cheaper time slots to save money."
- "Using the grid-aware-energy-load-shifter, create a schedule for the dishwasher and pool pump that prioritizes the lowest electricity rates tonight."
- "Check the current solar production and grid price; if it is currently cheaper than the baseline, turn on the EV charger now."
Tips & Limitations
Always start by testing the discover and energy-summary commands to ensure the agent has read access to your sensors before attempting to control appliances. Note that the skill is restricted to energy-related domains (e.g., switch, climate, water_heater) for safety reasons, meaning it cannot interact with security devices like locks or alarm systems. Ensure your network has a stable connection to your Home Assistant instance for timely execution of shifting tasks.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-mrbese-grid-aware-energy-load-shifter": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: network-access, external-api