Tips and Best Practices

This page is for the tuning phase after your first working setup.

Start small

Do not hand the entire house to PELS on day one.

• Start with a few flexible loads
• Confirm that power reporting is stable
• Watch the Overview tab during a real high-load hour

Once the behavior matches your expectations, expand the managed device set.

Priority advice

• Water heaters are often good low-priority candidates because they store heat.
• Living-room thermostats are usually high priority because comfort loss is obvious.
• Bedroom heating is often higher priority at night than during the day.
• Different modes should use different priority orders if comfort changes by time of day.

Capacity tuning advice

• Set the limit slightly below the actual grid limit if you want extra safety.
• Start with a larger soft margin, such as 0.5 to 1.0 kW, then tighten later if PELS is too conservative.
• Use Dry run first if you want to observe planner decisions without touching real devices.

Price optimization advice

• Thermal loads are usually the best targets.
• Start with modest deltas such as +3 and -3 C.
• Set a minimum price difference so comfort is not traded away for tiny savings.

Daily budget advice

• Treat daily budget as pacing, not as an emergency brake.
• Leave the advanced tuning values at their defaults unless you have observed a real problem you are trying to solve.
• Change one value at a time and observe a full day before making another adjustment.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to check
No power samples received	Make sure a Flow calls Report power usage whenever your meter updates.
Devices do not appear	Confirm they expose supported capabilities and device classes.
PELS is not controlling devices	Verify Managed by PELS is on, Capacity-based control is enabled, and Dry run is off.
Expected power looks wrong	Check the device Energy settings in Homey or set a more accurate load in the device settings.
No price data	Confirm the configured source is correct and external Flow payloads contain full-day JSON.

When to dive deeper

• Use Daily Energy Budget if you want to understand whole-day pacing.
• Use Technical Reference if you want exact planner rules.
• Use Plan States when the Overview tab wording needs interpretation.