First time here. I am the happy owner of a Victron / Fronius / Pytes PV system. Now, I am looking for a heat pump to replace our gas based heating. For me, it is important to get a system by a manufacturer based in the EU.
As far as I have learned, the best efficiency in a combined system would be reached by using Modbus TCP. It seems that just a few heat pumps support this. So far, I had “no, sorry” by Bosch, Buderus and Elco. Stiebel-Eltron supposedly supports Modbus TCP via its ISG Connect for a number of registers. I am waiting for someone from NIBE to give me a heads-up.
Wolf seems to support Modbus TCP with some writable registers, Ochsner only readables.
Brötje supports Modbus RTU with write-privileges. Would that be a good choice, too, compared to Modbus TCP?
With VenusOS 3.80 we will get eebus support. So, any heat pump with eebus should in theory work. Maybe it is a good idea to wait for feedback when 3.80 is out of beta.
From what I gather, SG ready does not support two way communication for the more subtle settings that could be used to be more efficient in using the PV system like changing registers in the heat pump.
I have Daikin 3M heat pump and i measure power usage with a Shelly EM50. To control the heatpump in Home Assistent I use the Daikin Home Hub which provides SG Ready and Modbus/tcp.
At least for me I don‘t need a full integration in Victron. Although a panel in VRM for the power usage would be great.
I have a bosch 5800iaw with an ems esp (mqtt) and i use homeassistant with pv excess optimizer integration and it also controls the smart grid contact on the bosch, works really great
Lambda, which is from Austria, has the modbus registers documented on their website. No practical experience yet, as mine will be installed in a week’s time.
If there’s one thing you shouldn’t do is buying products with a 10-15 year lifecycle that are exclusively controlled by some vendor controlled (and restricted) “cloud” API, like WeHeat. HomeAssistant support doesn’t change that, it’s still using those API’s.
I don’t have an opinion about the quality of this heatpump, but I do have one about their API. You might remember the VanMoof bike story (also designed in the Netherlands) After the company got bankrupted people got stuck with useless expensive bikes. In this specific case a solution for at least the very basic functionalities of the bike were provided, but YMMV in the future…
Cloud API’s can bring a lot of added value (with Victron’s VRM as a perfect example), but always ensure yourself that the main functionalities of the product, if it’s a heatpump, bike or inverter, are locally available. Companies come and go, it’s shareholders value (in most cases), not yours…
One of the reasons Victron’s eco-system rocks: even if something would happen to Victron in the future, you’re able to completely run (although with some effort) your monitoring & (D)ESS system locally, if it’s with Grafana & NodeRed or some other solution.
In my house all electrically powered devices including2 heatpumps are connected to the Victron AC Output, the battery has a capacity of 32 kwh (I could use more)
They all operate stand alone, meaning they are not controlled by Victron; usually this not possible and is not necessary either.
Do not make it unnecessary complicated so that only the inverter can operate it.
Thanks for all the good advice! I still would like to come back to may initial question regarding heat pump brands / manufacturers that support Modbus and writable registers.
I had Nibe on my list, too, and I will look into Lambda, although they only reveal their partners via an email form…
@Hans_Meiser If you’re interested in our upcoming EEBUS integration, let me give you some context:
For heat pumps, the EEBUS communication protocol supports many different features, so called use cases, like energy and power measurement, limiting of consumption as well as control possibility for energy optimization. The first two use cases are already broadly supported. For the last one with the easy to remember title “Optimization of Self Consumption by Heat Pump Compressor Flexibility (OHPCF)”, not all manufacturers support it (yet). So far, we have successfully tested with NIBE and Vaillant – and we continue to test with more manufacturers.
We decided for EEBUS over Modbus because it provides one standardized and high-level interface. For Modbus, each manufacturer has its own register table which we therefore cannot individually support. However, custom integrations, e.g. via Node-RED, remain possible.
Dear @ptrenz, thank you so much, this is really helpful! So Nibe seems very suitable for me. I will check out, Vaillant, too.
Regarding EEBus: @M_Lange wrote above that VenusOS 3.80 will support EEBus. The release notes suggest that initially, only MPC is supported. Am I right @ptrenz that more functions will follow?
Cheers and thank you for the really helpful guidance!
Wow, that’s very exciting news! Although I need to wait another 3 months before my new Vaillant Heatpump will be installed, I’m really looking forward to the possibilities this direct integration could offer…
I did have different (external) control scenario’s in mind, now I’m even more happy with my choice for Victron & Vaillant .
For those who are exploring options and looking for a new heatpump, Vaillant offers a supported and well documented EEBUS integration:
Matthias is almost right with the timeline, just not with the release number:
Venus OS v3.80 is planned for July/August and will offer energy measurements for heat pumps via EEBUS
Controlling heat pumps via OHPCF will follow later. Maybe it will be ready for the heating season in Europe, but could also become 2028.
Regarding VRM support: We already have added support for heat pumps. For example, in the overview chart, the amount of energy consumed by the heat pump is already highlighted separately to the overall consumption.
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