Knowledge base

The heavy side of smart home needs a better vocabulary.

GridPassport is building public explanations for Home Power Automation, HEMS, dynamic tariffs, battery arbitrage, EV charging and home resilience. The goal is not traffic for its own sake. The goal is to make the category understandable before it becomes unavoidable.

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The core pages for understanding what GridPassport is building and why Home Power Automation is a useful category.

Category

What is Home Power Automation?

The open category definition for homes where solar, batteries, EV charging, heating, cooling and tariffs need to act as one power system.

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.

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 automation is growing into Home Power Automation.

Why lights, scenes and convenience routines are not the same job as coordinating serious energy devices.

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.

Category comparison

Home Power Automation vs HEMS.

Why HEMS is useful technical language, but Home Power Automation is stronger category language for normal homeowners.

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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Tariffs and volatility

Guides for understanding fixed, time-of-use and dynamic prices, including why volatility becomes useful only when the home can act on it.

Dynamic tariffs

Dynamic electricity tariffs need 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.

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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.

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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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 power is not just battery percentage. It is 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.

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 inverter apps, DIY automation, smart thermostats and smart panels.

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

Smart thermostat vs Home Power Automation.

Where HVAC comfort control ends and whole-home power coordination begins.

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.

Installers

Home Power Automation for installers.

How installers can explain, support and expand advanced homes as coordinated power systems.

Glossary

Home Power Automation glossary.

Plain-English definitions for HEMS, dynamic tariffs, battery reserve, VPPs and other category terms.