I am now in the position that my Heating has to be renewed.
That would be a BUDERUS Logamax plus GB192i
or
VAILLANT Gas-Brennwertgerät ecoTEC plus VC/VCW/VCI 1-5
In both cases I am not happy about available external connections.
As far as I can see for Buderus there is only a MX300 (talking over Cloud) where I dont know how that one is talking to the CH. Has anyone allready “hacked” the MX300 or see other ways from Buderus ↔ OH?
Just found this:
ServiceHotline is very bad @Buderus so I only get the information that EMS+ is the current OS on all their machines. But no info on technical descriptions. (So wondering how far this article can help)
Vaillant is comming up with this one “SensoNET” (Internetmodul sensoNET I Vaillant)
But also supports KNX (600€) over an internal eBus
How good are the chances to talk directly with that eBus? (Has anyone tried or contact Vaillant to get technical details about their eBus?
With 30yr old EBus ?
From Vaillant, the most proprietary of vendors in the marketplace ?
(had one for ages, even my own heating installer was complaining about their proprietary hardware, down to and including even the screws).
Stop burning our planet, get real and a heat pump.
But no Vaillant one, they’re still EBus.
I started to inform myself about “depth probe” (The only satisfying solution of all heat pump)
Not possible in the city based on small properties.
Also overpriced district heating is not available at my street.
PV will come (but only 2kW Peak. → 100W)
Go back into the quiet room and calculate how efficient an air heat pump really is and where does the electricity come from if not from your own roof?
I even found out about fuel stations (a technology that has been mature since the 1960s), but there are only combination devices with gas heaters in one housing on the market. (Anyone who has ever set up a discrete hi-fi system knows what to think of compact systems)
So yes, it will be a gas boiler, which unfortunately will only last another 15 years. Feel free to rethink the topic after another 10 years without political pressure and hopefully with an innovative technology beyond the heat pump!
Back to Topic:
Which companies produce devices with sensible interfaces?
I think you should spend some more time and effort on researching this better, please do for your own sake.
There’s many ressources on the net that already did these calculations for you and me, one of the best and most serious ones is this. There’s also a nice video over at YT.
It’s a long term study with real-world data telling that you can effectively expect any air heat pump to deliver a COP of >3 even in oldish buildings, and this was even with older heat pump models.
Heat pumps are today more CO2 efficient than gas is whenever the COP is >2,5 and increasingly so with an increasing percentage of renewables in the power mix.
They’re even cheaper over the course of their lifetime if you do the math right and include all known cost increases such as already decided(!) CO2 tax. And of course even more so with rising gas prices.
… and to come back to the topic, heat pumps are years ahead in terms of control capabilities.
Simply because nobody is developing for gas any more.
For example some latest models can make use of dynamic power tariffs, for my own heating this resulted in another 20% savings (compared to an average fix tariff).
Belive me I am doing so since 7 years and realy realy wanted a heat pump - no matter what price.
Sorry. Thats totaly wrong. Our government will pull down the prices for gas over and over again and never catch the green thought for real. (I wish It would be the case)
Then think twice what COP is standing for and what are the over all costs.
Take the “heat” deep from the earth with >4,5 all over the year and I am totally fine with the investment.
But again, I did not ask por politics. I am here for technikal questions based on MCs
Oh come on that’s a ridiculous claim. Even if they didn’t “catch the green thought”, they for sure will not be wasting money to lower ever-increasing prices for fossile energy. They already stopped this year.
You are ok with 4,5 but not ok with 3,5 but applicable and cheaper ?
In terms of economics, air pumps are on par with water based ones.
This isn’t politics. It’s economics.
And before asking how to technically do a wrong thing right you should ensure you’re doing the right thing.
Again: it’s economics, not even for the climate let alone politics.
Please don’t hang on to old beliefs and outdated information.
Here’s the state of play:
I do owe Vaillant ecotec boiler with no PV so far and an old calormatic 470 controller. I integrated it with openHAB using earlier version of ebus binding made by @csowada. It worked fine until I crashed SD card (it was somewhere in 2016).
I do plan to swap vaillant electronics simply because it is not available any more and in case of failure I’ll have to swap also mixer module which is told to be incompatible with new controller. My plan assumes use of Technische Alternative hardware which I got familar with during some projects (I wrote binding for it). TA uses canbus and canopen and provided me with support on how to get inputs/outputs from controllers and integrate everything together. They do service their own controllers (its slow but you can get it repaired).
Another point for TA - it has also a variant of controller which can be modbus master making it a good candidate to integrate other equipment.
As far I can tell the two function boilers can be usually controlled through basic inputs - the 0-10V signal and contacts which can influence three way valve position. I think similar can be done with most of heat pumps.
I don’t know Buderus, but Vaillant mainboard have one or two contact inputs which are configurable. I bought 0-10V module for my boiler a while ago (stock ends), which seems to be a basic adapter which turns 0-10V input to ebus telegram accepted by boiler. Another option is opentherm, but its support by Vaillant is a mystery. It was offered as some point of time, but its hard to find it these days.
I just installed the “Buderus GB172i-20” + BBQKees “Gateway E32 V2 (Ethernet + WiFi Ausgabe V2)”
Quiet happy with both and having a new GasContract for 5 Years.
Maybee the situation is another after having installed PV with the new roof and “a kind of” Isolation.
But as long as my Building standing an a too smal ground (nearly no garden) I have to wait for real innovations.
I’d recommend to Gateways32 as well, have this running for some years (inkl. it’s predecessor) and it is working more reliable, interfacing through MQTT, than the expensive KM200 gateway sold by Bosch (that is closed source and the API key needs to be figured out in a hackish way). Installation is not rocket science, even though you need to know what you are doing. Official statement for sure is that only electricians are allow to do it.
Had the Bosch-Gateway (KM200) inkl. the OH-Binding running as well, ESP32 is far more stable and offers some more possibilities.
Only problem I have is that my heating is a Junkers (now Bosch) hybrid one (Gas and Air-Heatpump integrated in one box) and the heatpump part is controlled internally based on the gas/electricity price you have to key in.
So no way to disable the heatpump part if it makes not sense when running e.g. importing from the grid instead of using solar power).
This is in line with what was mentioned before - current investments are not focused on gas or oil heatings anymore, so do not expect to have a highly accessible and configurable interface covering all bits and pieces or regular updates - at most little to no additional functionality (I’d say even less) compared to what can be done in the controller panel of the heating itself is possible.
Heat pumps usually have a SG ready interface that allows for temporarily disabling them. Result is the fossile heater takes over.
FWIW, I’m selling a commercial energy management system based on openHAB to accomplish that.
It also knows to combine dynamic electricity tariffs and hybrids, you just tell it your fuel or gas price and it automatically chooses whatever mode is cheapest.
Yes I know - but this case is different. The system is 10 years old, integrating the HP in the heating itself (as some level of support to avoid to much gas burning) . The control if the HP or the burner is used totally lies within the control unit of the heating - the only influece on the usage is the outdoor temperature and the relation between gas and electricity price.
I made my peace with it as most days I’m able to cover the electricity needed from the battery connected to the PV until the sun rises.
SG-Ready I think was not even a known term when we installed this.
I know your solution, unfortunately it does not fit here as gas burner and HP can not be accessed separately - it is a closed system. Even on EMS-Bus the HP part is invisible.
Fine for me until EOL, HP or whatever will be trending then will replace it - but for now this is not an option.
Well, SG Ready is just 2 electrical contacts. That’s all the EMS uses to control it.
If your system has whatever form of electrical input that makes it switch off the HP part or switch over to gas you can attach an actuator and control that from within openHAB.
Even a single “turn off” contact is sufficient (most systems have something like it).
Exactly - but this is what is missing. And cutting off power supply for the HP will only result in a blocking error causing the burner to go into emergency mode. As said I made my peace here.
Since october 2023 we had a new vaillant heating running in the holiday home. We have the sensoNET Unit, so the heating can be controlled by the Vaillant app. In my opinion, the vaillant app is quite limited; e. g. you cannot see the current state if the flame is burning or not, what is the state of the heating pump, …
Additional I had installed an eBus-Adapter (https://adapter.ebusd.eu/). You need to install the ebusd software on a device (Raspberry, …) and if every thing is configured well, ebusd will talk to a MQTT broker.
Configuring the ebusd is hard if you do not have any or limited knowledge about eBus (as in my case). But finally it works. I can see many heating parameters and control the temperature (which modifies the heating curve).
Integrating MQTT into openHAB is much more easier.
