Hi from Mike

Hi, I just stumbled across BMS Link while looking to see what was available for home heating control. I am not certain if this is what I need, as I have not yet gleaned much from this site. Maybe I have missed some important overview somewhere.

I have 4 storage heaters, and my initial plan was to automate the charging of the heaters (biggest is 3.6 KW) using contactors controlled by a Raspeberry Pi which is on my home network. The heaters each have a manual charging rate (input) control to heat up to a preset internal temperature. The higher the input, the more heat output is available over a period of a day or so. However, these need constant tweaking as the weather changes, and ideally need to anticipate the weather (by about 2-3 days). Hence the need for computer control. Even the latest storage heaters do not anticipate weather as far as I know. I plan to control the charging by setting the input controls to max, and then using an algorithm based on weather sites (met office?) to control the charging time using the contactors. This is also connected to a cheap rate supply, so the system will only be active for certain times during a 24 hour cycle.

Looking at the Lightwave stuff, they don't seem to have anything that can switch 3.6 KW hence my idea to use contactors. However, I have not found anything to automate contactors, so will need to do this myself. However, if there is a chance of using reasonably priced off-the-shelf hardware and software like BMS Link I am all for making my life easier. Any ideas would be welcome.