Knowledge base
The heavy side of smart home needs a better vocabulary.
GridPassport combines plain-English guides with evidence from real homes. Start with the category, follow the device or tariff decision you have, then check the field notes for what has actually been measured.
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Start here
Definitions, established terminology and the proposed capability model behind GridPassport.
Proposed definition
Home Power Automation: definition and examples.
The canonical definition, status, practical example, relationship to HEMS, capability threshold and limits.
Savings evidence
Why home energy savings are not guaranteed.
A trust guide to what changes the result: devices, tariffs, weather, behavior, export rules, battery economics and automation quality.
Smart home energy
Smart home energy automation: capabilities and limits.
How convenience routines differ from multi-device energy coordination, and where the proposed HPA profile begins.
HEMS
What is a home energy management system?
The pillar guide to HEMS: what it controls, when it matters and how it differs from ordinary smart home automation.
Terminology
How Home Power Automation relates to HEMS.
Why HEMS remains the established residential system category and HPA is a proposed capability profile, not its successor.
HEMS vs smart home
HEMS, smart home and Home Power Automation do different jobs.
A plain-English comparison for homeowners who already understand smart home but not energy coordination.
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Home Power Automation working documents
GridPassport concept documents covering the proposed functions, standards context and an evidence framework. They are not standards or certification.
Concept draft 0.2
Proposed HPA functional model.
System boundary, actors, information quality, authority, planning, dispatch, verification and failure handling.
System context
How HPA relates to HEMS and energy standards.
A technical map that distinguishes system categories, device interfaces, charging backends and external signals.
Framework draft 0.2
How to evaluate Home Power Automation.
Separate replay and field methods, explicit baselines, metric formulas, data quality and uncertainty.
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Evidence and field notes
Measured results, diagnostic charts and explicit limits from real GridPassport homes. These pages separate what the data proves from what still needs testing.
Measured case study
First GridPassport deployment: 129 days of home power data.
The first V1 home shows how tariff access, solar, battery control and safe automation change the whole household outcome.
Forecast accuracy
How to get good PV forecasts.
Why home automation needs a forecast calibrated to the real 21 kWp installation and refreshed as conditions change.
Diagnostic field note
Four Sundays with a necessary heat-pump cycle at the wrong time.
Real charts show a repeated timing conflict while preserving the distinction between observation, safety and unproven savings.
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Tariffs, forecasts and volatility
Guides for understanding prices and forecasts, including why a signal becomes useful only when the home can act on it safely.
Dynamic tariffs
When dynamic electricity tariffs benefit from automation.
Hourly or market-linked prices can create savings, risk and complexity. Home Power Automation makes them manageable.
Price data
How to read electricity price forecasts and rankings.
What actual points, forecast points, daily country rankings and monthly archives mean in the GridPassport public tools.
Tariffs
Time-of-use vs dynamic electricity tariffs.
How predictable price schedules differ from market-linked signals, and when automation becomes necessary.
Negative prices
Negative electricity prices do not automatically mean free energy.
What flexible homes can do when market prices fall below zero, and why tariff rules still matter.
Battery arbitrage
Can a home battery earn money on price spreads?
A practical guide to charging, discharging, reserves and the limits of household energy arbitrage.
Forecast-based charging
The right morning battery target is not always 100%.
Use expected solar, household demand, prices and reserve to replace one fixed charging rule with a changing plan.
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Devices and priorities
Content for homes where PV, batteries, EV charging, inverters and climate devices need one shared set of priorities.
Solar + battery + EV
Why flexible energy devices fight without priorities.
How EV chargers, batteries, PV and climate devices can accidentally work against each other.
EV + battery
EV chargers and home batteries need shared priorities.
How to stop car charging from draining the wrong energy at the wrong moment.
Solar + battery + heat pump
Coordinate electrical and thermal storage.
Why safety, comfort, efficiency and reserve come before a permanent battery-first or heat-pump-first rule.
Solar export
Store, use, export or curtail solar surplus?
How export limits, tariffs, batteries and flexible household loads change the decision.
Inverter energy
Inverter energy management is useful. It is not the whole home.
Where solar inverter scope ends and whole-home power coordination begins.
Heat pumps
Heat pumps need energy-aware control.
Comfort, weather, tariffs and thermal inertia need one decision loop, not another isolated thermostat.
Cooling
Air conditioning is flexible energy in the home.
How cooling can work with comfort, solar, batteries and tariffs instead of acting alone.
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Architecture and compatibility
How to judge where control runs, what a supported device can actually do and how the system behaves when a network, service or integration fails.
S2 interoperability
What is the S2 standard for home energy management?
How energy devices describe flexibility to a Customer Energy Manager, and what S2 support means inside GridPassport.
Local vs cloud
What still works when the internet fails?
Why responsive control belongs near the devices while forecasts, remote access and fleet analysis often benefit from cloud services.
Compatibility checklist
A brand is not compatible. A tested model and capability are.
Record firmware, connection, monitoring, control, feedback, fallback, override and integration ownership.
GridPassport support
Current GridPassport compatibility.
See the device categories and manufacturers in the current integration and certification approach.
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Comfort and resilience
Pages about backup reserve, demand response, comfort protection and the difference between automation and daily babysitting.
Battery reserve
Home battery reserve is a whole-home decision.
How much energy to protect for outages, expensive hours, comfort and EV charging.
Resilience
What should a home resilience score measure?
Backup readiness depends on battery percentage, time, priorities, weather, loads and confidence.
Demand response
Demand response should not turn homeowners into grid operators.
How flexible homes can help the grid while protecting comfort, battery reserve and daily needs.
Peak load
Peak load management at home.
How Home Power Automation can spread large loads instead of letting EV charging, HVAC and batteries stack at the wrong time.
No babysitting
Home energy automation without babysitting.
Why modern energy homes should not require daily management across five apps and changing signals.
VPP
What is a virtual power plant for homes?
How many small energy assets can behave like one distributed energy system.
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Comparisons
Neutral comparison pages for people evaluating HEMS, Home Assistant, device apps, smart home hubs, tariffs and whole-home power coordination.
Comparison
HEMS vs GridPassport.
How an early GridPassport product direction sits inside the established HEMS category.
Comparison
Dynamic tariff app vs GridPassport.
A tariff app shows the price. Home Power Automation asks whether the home should act on that signal.
Comparison
Energy monitoring app vs GridPassport.
Monitoring tells you what happened. Home Power Automation is the next question: what should happen now?
Comparison
Home battery app vs GridPassport.
Battery apps control the battery. GridPassport is positioned around the wider home plan.
Comparison
Inverter app vs Home Power Automation.
A neutral comparison of device-level inverter apps and whole-home power coordination.
Comparison
DIY Home Assistant vs GridPassport.
A respectful comparison of custom smart-home automation and productized Home Power Automation.
Comparison
SMA Sunny Home Manager vs GridPassport.
A fair comparison with a mature HEMS benchmark for SMA-centered and mixed-hardware homes.
Comparison
Smart home hub vs GridPassport.
Smart home hubs automate devices. GridPassport focuses on the heavier power decisions.
Comparison
Smart thermostat vs Home Power Automation.
Where HVAC comfort control ends and whole-home power coordination begins.
Comparison
Smart EV charger vs Home Power Automation.
The charger serves the car. Home Power Automation asks how charging should fit the rest of the home.
Comparison
Smart panel vs Home Power Automation.
How circuit-level control differs from whole-home decisions across devices, tariffs and priorities.
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Professionals
Pages for installers, manufacturers and technical partners who need to explain or support Home Power Automation.