During a recent power outage, I had an issue with my back up battery – a Tesla Powerwall II. It is suppose to send me a text when the grid is down and the battery is powering the house. Last time I didn’t get the text for six hours after the outage!
Being notified in a timely manner is important because if I have too many things running, I need to shut some things off – namely the heat pumps.
So I recently hooked up some IR blasters to Home Assistant to automatically shut off the heat pumps during a power outage.
But I still need to be notified because I may need to shut other things off to make the Powerwall last longer or if there is too much load on the system.
I set up a visual indicator — a smart light bulb — to turn red when there is a power outage and I also set up some notifications that are sent to our phones that indicate that the grid is down. And then there is another notification when the grid comes back that reminds us to check the status of the heat pumps and hot water heater.
This video was very helpful in setting up the notifications with Home Assistant:
Note: “Services” is now called “Actions”
HOME ASSISTANT ACTIONABLE NOTIFICATIONS
Actionable notifications include an action you can take. For example if you leave the garage door open, the notification might ask “Do you want to close the garage door? YES or NO?