Python library for communication with LG ESS power converter / energy storage devices for photovoltaic solar generators
This library is not endorsed by the manufacturer. It was written for lack of an official API. It should allow to design home automation around the current state of a solar energy system - e.g. turn appliances on when there is surplus solar power. LG only offers access via a badly scriptable web page or alternatively via a proprietary app that - at least on my phone - crashes at least twice for every successful startup.
Disclaimer: For this python module I reverse-engineered the communication between the LG EnerVu Plus 1.2.3 Android App and the Energy Storage / Inverter device, so there is some likelihood that it will work for devices that can be accessed via that app. Nevertheless it looks like some of the interface is delivered by the ESS as html via the network. Therefore it may be that not all commands work against all boxes. I only have customer-level access to my own box, so this module only offers those parts of the API that are accessible to me as a customer. As far as I can tell the installer has higher privileges and can fiddle with internal parameters of the system from what I saw him do when he installed the system.
This module comes with a rudimentary command line interface that allows for the following actions.
Caveat: To fetch the device password you need to be connected to the devices wifi. Once you are on the wifi you can run the following to get the password. Write it down, it seems it is a static password per device:
esscli --action get_password
The command assumes that the ess device is listening on 192.168.23.1 on its own wifi, in my setup it reproducibly
chooses that IP.
Get a list of ESS devices on the local network (your home wifi, not the one of ess):
esscli --action list_ess
fetch a bunch of json states as json and display the result on the command line:
esscli --action get_data --password <your ess_password>
Examples for the data available: - current power from and to the grid and the battery - current voltage and power from both strings of the photovoltaic system independently - current ip address - details on grid power, battery state, daily and monthly statistics
The log_against_graphite command will fetch the home and common info from ess every 10 seconds and log them against a graphite
server (assuming standard port and udp as protocol). Running this command requires the ess password to be passed on
the command line:
esscli --action log_against_graphite --password <your_ess_password> --graphite <ip_of_graphite_server>
To connect your ESS with an mqtt server run the following in your venv:
essmqtt --mqtt_server=<your_mqtt_server> --mqtt_user <your_mqtt_username> --mqtt_password <your_mqtt_password> --ess_password <your_ess_password>
Your ESS will show up in ess/# on mqtt.
Available values to control the ess (write true/false) Remember that this is an MIT-Licensed software and I take no responsibility for the usage of this library. That being said I send the same commands the app would send to trigger these actions to my best knowledge.:
ess/control/winter_mode ess/control/fastcharge ess/control/active
Available paths with metrics to read from:
ess/home/statistics/pcs_pv_total_power 0 ess/home/statistics/batconv_power 190 ess/home/statistics/bat_use 1 ess/home/statistics/bat_status 2 ess/home/statistics/bat_user_soc 81.25 ess/home/statistics/load_power 191 ess/home/statistics/load_today 0.0 ess/home/statistics/grid_power 1 ess/home/statistics/current_day_self_consumption 0.0 ess/home/statistics/current_pv_generation_sum 0 ess/home/statistics/current_grid_feed_in_energy 0 ess/home/direction/is_direct_consuming_ 0 ess/home/direction/is_battery_charging_ 0 ess/home/direction/is_battery_discharging_ 1 ess/home/direction/is_grid_selling_ 0 ess/home/direction/is_grid_buying_ 1 ess/home/direction/is_charging_from_grid_ 0 ess/home/operation/status start ess/home/operation/mode 1 ess/home/wintermode/winter_status on ess/home/pcs_fault/pcs_status pcs_ok ess/common/PV/brand LGE-SOLAR ess/common/PV/capacity 5850 ess/common/PV/pv1_voltage 26.500000 ess/common/PV/pv2_voltage 26.700001 ess/common/PV/pv1_power 0 ess/common/PV/pv2_power 0 ess/common/PV/pv1_current 0.110000 ess/common/PV/pv2_current 0.000000 ess/common/PV/today_pv_generation_sum 0 ess/common/PV/today_month_pv_generation_sum 438389 ess/common/BATT/status 2 ess/common/BATT/soc 81.2 ess/common/BATT/dc_power 190 ess/common/BATT/winter_setting on ess/common/BATT/winter_status on ess/common/BATT/safty_soc 20 ess/common/BATT/today_batt_discharge_enery 135 ess/common/BATT/today_batt_charge_energy 0 ess/common/BATT/month_batt_charge_energy 72692 ess/common/BATT/month_batt_discharge_energy 51250 ess/common/GRID/active_power 2.790000 ess/common/GRID/a_phase 230.899994 ess/common/GRID/freq 49.959999 ess/common/GRID/today_grid_feed_in_energy 0 ess/common/GRID/today_grid_power_purchase_energy 0 ess/common/GRID/month_grid_feed_in_energy 266094 ess/common/GRID/month_grid_power_purchase_energy 7037 ess/common/LOAD/load_power 191 ess/common/LOAD/today_load_consumption_sum 135 ess/common/LOAD/today_pv_direct_consumption_enegy 0 ess/common/LOAD/today_batt_discharge_enery 135 ess/common/LOAD/today_grid_power_purchase_energy 0 ess/common/LOAD/month_load_consumption_sum 157890 ess/common/LOAD/month_pv_direct_consumption_energy 99603 ess/common/LOAD/month_batt_discharge_energy 51250 ess/common/LOAD/month_grid_power_purchase_energy 7037 ess/common/PCS/today_self_consumption 0.0 ess/common/PCS/month_co2_reduction_accum 311256 ess/common/PCS/today_pv_generation_sum 0 ess/common/PCS/month_pv_generation_sum 438389 ess/common/PCS/today_grid_feed_in_energy 0 ess/common/PCS/month_grid_feed_in_energy 266094 ess/common/PCS/pcs_stauts 3 ess/common/PCS/feed_in_limitation 70 ess/common/PCS/operation_mode 0
I use mosquitto_sub to find the values I'm interested in while debugging like so:
mosquitto_sub -v -h <your_mqtt_server> -p 1883 -u <your_mqtt_user> -P <your_mqtt_password> -t "#"
To set up essmqtt as a daemon (systemd service) it is recommended to install it in a venv first:
python3.7 -m venv <path_to_venv> <path_to_venv>/bin/pip install pyess
set up your essmqtt config file from then on essmqtt can be called via <path_to_venv>/bin/essmqtt.
A systemd service file /etc/systemd/system/essmqtt.service could look like so:
[Unit] Description=ESS MQTT wrapper [Service] # all essmqtt command line arguments can be used here. it is recommended to configure essmqtt in a config file # for this use case ExecStart=<path_to_venv>/bin/essmqtt # Restart will keep the service alive for instance in case the mqtt server goes down or isn't up yet # when esmqqt starts Restart=on-failure # a sensible restart delay prevents fast restart loops potentially denial-of-servicing the ess. RestartSec=10 [Install] # we'd like to start, but only after network is up WantedBy=default.target Wants=network-online.target
It can be started like any regular service via systemctl start essmqtt or enabled for boot up starts via
systemctl enable essmqtt. Logs can be displayed using systemctl as well via systemctl status essmqtt or for
more lines systemctl status -n 100 essmqtt
To permanently configure essmqtt you can create a config file in either /etc/essmqtt.conf or ~/essmqtt.conf
of the user running essmqtt or you can specify which config file to load by using the argument --config_file.
The config file can contain any of the command line arguments. Example:
ess_password = <your_ess_password> mqtt_server = <your_mqtt_server> mqtt_user = <your_mqtt_username> mqtt_password = <your_mqtt_password> # optional settings ## sensors for homeassistant MQTT discovery (default is not set -> homeassistant autoconfig disabled) # hass_autoconfig_sensors = ess/common/BATT/soc,ess/home/statistics/pcs_pv_total_power,ess/common/GRID/active_power,ess/common/LOAD/load_power ## update interval for MQTT values in seconds (default is 10 seconds) # interval_seconds = 10 ## only send the values below common every n'th update of those for home ## this is a debugging option that shouldn't be required, (default is 1) # common_divisor = 1
essmqtt can provide autoconfiguration for homeassistant.
prerequisites: mqtt must be set up with mqtt discovery in homeassistant
To select the sensors that should be autodiscovered by homeassistant, provide the --hass_autoconfig_sensors
argument with a comma separated list of all mqtt pathes you want to see as sensors in homeassistant. Some autodetection
of the value type is done so for instance if an mqtt path contains power it is assumed to be a power
value in watts. Of course this can also be configured in a config file.
Example config file:
ess_password = <your_ess_password> mqtt_server = <your_mqtt_server> mqtt_user = <your_mqtt_username> mqtt_password = <your_mqtt_password> hass_autoconfig_sensors = ess/common/BATT/soc,ess/home/statistics/pcs_pv_total_power,ess/common/GRID/active_power,ess/common/LOAD/load_power
For the time being please use the docstrings in the code on https://github.com/gluap/pyess as documentation for the API. A good place to start is pyess/cli.py where you can find the implementation of the CLI. One thing available via the API but not yet via the CLI is the data for the daily / weekly / monthly / yearly statistics graphs that can be accessed via the EnerVu App.
- 2022-03-15 0.1.14
- fix typo in mqtt autoconfig
- 2020-06-12 0.1.12
- Only publish homeassistant autoconfig information once
- 2020-06-01 0.1.11
- for cleaner restarts pass exceptions out and set up the full communication freshly when MQTT or ess crashes
- 2020-06-01 0.1.10
- add another possible fix for #7 after logging showed that an MQTT error might be the cause.
- 2020-06-01 0.1.9
- add homeassistant auto config
- 2020-05-30 0.1.8
- refactor uploading to MQTT to avoid accidentally trying to access a string by key (should fix #8)
- 2020-05-30 0.1.7
- add config file to allow storing settings for essmqtt
- 2020-05-30 0.1.6
- repair crash introduced with 0.1.5
- 2020-05-30 0.1.5
- some extra logging, timeouts and exception handling. Might fix #7
- 2020-05-13 0.1.3
- add argument to increase polling time for "common" by a factor.
- 2020-05-05 0.1.3
- add argument to set ess hostname explicitly (avoiding mdns timeouts if necessary)
- 2020-04-29 0.1.2
- fix issue where esscli and essmqtt were incompatible with the app and confusing the web interface
- 2020-04-26 0.1.1
- fix issue where commands via mqtt were not working
- add
--interval_secondsparameter for mqtt client to allow experimenting with poll timeouts on user side - fix logout handling on aiohttp
- 2020-04-15 0.1.0
- fix issue with fetch_password using wrong IP
- fix documentation
- add new mqtt synchronization service script
- 2019-11-03 0.0.3
- add aiohttp-based backend for use with asyncio
- 2019-10-12 0.0.2
- some minor fixes
- 2019-10-09 0.0.1
- More documentation
- Initial commit for pypi relase
License:
Copyright (c) 2019-2020 Paul Görgen Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.