Configuration

The PELS settings UI is organized around five top-level destinations:

Destination	Use for
Overview	Current power, safe pace, hard cap, and what PELS is doing right now.
Budget	Daily budget plan, today/tomorrow planning, and budget adjustments.
Usage	Hourly and daily energy history.
Smart tasks	Current and past ready-by tasks.
Settings	Limits, devices, modes, prices, simulation, and advanced tools.

Most configuration starts in Settings. The Settings landing page links to Limits & safety, Devices, Modes, Electricity prices, Price-aware devices, Simulation mode, and Advanced.

Overview

The Overview page shows the current plan: what PELS wants each managed device to do right now.

Field	What it shows
Power now	Current whole-home power draw.
Safe pace now	The current pace PELS reacts around. It can come from the hourly hard cap, the daily budget, or both.
Hard cap	The configured upper boundary PELS tries not to exceed.
Device cards	Running, Idle, Limited, Resuming, Manual, Unavailable, or Unknown.
Status line	Short explanation of why PELS is waiting, limiting, or resuming.

Use Overview when you want to understand live behavior. Use Settings when you want to change setup.

For the planner-state mapping, see Plan States.

Budget

The Budget page is the daily planning surface. It shows whether the selected day is on plan (Plan view) and lets you preview and apply changes to the daily budget model (Adjust view).

See Daily Energy Budget for the full description of each view and setting (Enable daily budget, Daily budget kWh, Use cheaper hours, Background usage reserve, Managed device flexibility). Read it before changing the advanced tuning values.

Usage

The Usage page helps you understand what PELS has observed.

• Today so far shows hourly kWh for the selected local day.
• Last 7 days shows recent daily totals.
• Typical day shows historical hourly patterns.
• Detailed hourly view shows lower-level hourly buckets.

Hourly data is kept for 30 days. Daily totals are kept for one year. Resetting usage history lives under Settings > Advanced > Data management.

Smart Tasks

Smart tasks show devices with an active target and ready-by time. Tasks are created from Homey Flow cards or the New smart task dashboard widget, then shown in the settings UI so you can inspect the current plan and history.

Card or view	What it does
Add charging task	Plans EV charging toward a target battery percentage by a ready-by time.
Add heating task	Plans heating toward a target temperature by a ready-by time.
New smart task widget	Creates a task from a Homey dashboard, without a Flow.
Smart tasks list	Shows current tasks, targets, and ready-by times.
Task plan page	Shows selected hours, price context, expected work, background usage, and progress.
History	Shows previous task outcomes.

See Smart Tasks for behavior details and Book Cheap Hours With Flows if you prefer a fixed number of cheapest hours instead of a target-based task.

Settings > Limits & Safety

This is where the core capacity settings and whole-home power source live.

Setting	What it does
Hard cap (kW)	The upper boundary PELS tries not to exceed. Set this from your grid tariff step or breaker limit.
Safety margin (kW)	Buffer below the hard cap. PELS starts reacting before the hard cap is reached.
Power source	Where whole-home power readings come from: Flow card or Homey Energy.

Important:

• The hourly hard cap is the only urgent safety boundary.
• The Hard cap breach imminent — manual action needed trigger fires only when PELS projects an hourly hard-cap breach and cannot limit any more load.

Settings > Devices

The Devices page shows temperature devices, on-off devices, and supported EV chargers. Open a device to configure its detail panel.

Top-level controls:

Control	What it means
Managed	PELS includes this device in modes and plans. Turn this on before using Limit or Price.
Limit	PELS may lower or turn off this device to stay under the hard cap.
Price	PELS adjusts the temperature target around electricity prices.

Device detail sections:

Section	What it contains
Temperature per mode	Per-mode target temperatures for temperature devices.
Price response	Cheap-hour boost and expensive-hour reduction.
Power limiting	What PELS does when power needs to be lowered: turn off, set temperature, or set stepped-load level.
Stepped load profile	Step names, planning power values, target-power range, temperature boost, and charge boost where supported.
Setup	Managed by PELS, power-limit control, price-based control, budget exemption, built-in device control, control model, and battery level.
Advanced diagnostics	Read-only blocked time, activation instability, and penalty history.

Notes:

• Devices without a usable power estimate cannot use power-limit control.
• Temperature devices can still be managed for mode and price behavior even when power-limit control is unavailable.
• Built-in device control lets PELS adjust a supported device (such as a compatible water heater) directly, without you wiring up Homey Flows, and is on by default for those devices. For compatible water heaters where PELS can choose between Flow wiring and built-in control, PELS leaves built-in device control off and shows a notice if one of your own Homey Flows already sets that device's power level or turns it on or off — remove that Flow to let PELS take over, or turn the switch on under the device's Setup section to override. EV chargers controlled through their native target_power capability do not have a separate built-in-control switch; avoid adding another Flow that writes the same current or power setting. A Flow that only reads the device, or only adjusts its temperature, is not a conflict.
• Only managed devices appear in Settings > Modes. Only managed temperature devices with Price enabled appear in Settings > Price-aware devices.
• If expected usage looks wrong, check Device -> Advanced Settings -> Energy in Homey and verify the configured power usage values.
• For EV current-control setup, see Configure an EV Charger.

Settings > Modes

Modes let you store different comfort and priority profiles such as Home, Away, Night, or Vacation.

What changes per mode

For each managed device in a mode:

Setting	What it does
Desired temperature	Target temperature for the mode
Priority	Lower number means higher priority. These devices stay on longer and resume first.

Typical approach:

• Keep living-room comfort high in Home mode.
• Move bedroom heating higher during Night mode.
• Lower less critical loads in Away mode.

Changes save automatically.

Settings > Electricity Prices

Price support is optional, but it makes the app more useful for thermal loads, daily budget price shaping, Smart tasks, and cheapest-hour Flow cards.

Setting	What it does
Price source	Choose Norway (spot + grid tariff), Homey Energy, or Flow tag.

If you use Norway pricing, you also set:

• county
• grid company
• tariff group
• price area
• provider surcharge
• threshold and minimum difference values

If you use external flow tags:

1. Set Price source to Flow tag.
2. Feed the full JSON payload for today's prices into Set external prices (today).
3. Feed tomorrow's payload into Set external prices (tomorrow) when available.

Settings > Price-Aware Devices

This page adjusts devices that already have price response enabled. To add a device here, first open the device under Settings > Devices and enable Price or Setup > Price-based control.

Setting	What it does
Respond to prices	Enables or disables price response globally.
Cheap-hour boost (°C)	Temperature boost during cheap hours.
Expensive-hour reduction (°C)	Temperature reduction during expensive hours.

Water heaters and similar thermal loads are usually the best first candidates.

Settings > Simulation Mode

Simulation mode lets you test behavior without switching devices.

Setting	What it does
Simulation mode	PELS shows what it would do, but devices are not switched automatically.

Use this while you are tuning priorities, power estimates, and limits. Turn it off when you are ready for PELS to control devices.

Settings > Advanced

Advanced is for diagnostics, cleanup, and expert tuning.

Setting	What it does
Debug logging topics	Chooses which internal topics emit debug logs.
Show daily budget breakdown in chart	Splits the plan chart into managed and background portions.
Reset usage history	Clears hourly samples, daily totals, and weekday/weekend averages.
Clear device data	Removes stored PELS metadata for one selected device.
Device log	Writes a selected Homey device payload to the app logs for inspection.

Background usage reserve and Managed device flexibility are edited in the Budget page's Adjust view (Budget shaping section), reachable from the Budget page header or the Daily budget row in Settings. Only change them if you understand the tradeoff — they can materially change when devices are limited and resumed.

For the exact formulas, see Daily Budget Weighting Math.

Suggested setup order

1. Get the meter Flow working.
2. Enable management on a small set of obvious devices.
3. Tune priorities and limits.
4. Add price-aware devices.
5. Add daily budget pacing if you want whole-day guidance.
6. Add Smart tasks for devices that must reach a target by a ready-by time.

For EV charging, add EV charger current control after the meter Flow and capacity settings are working.