2.5.0

Exiting new Release 2.5.0 with experimental Solarbank 2 AC support and important fixes and improvements

Enhancements:

• Add support for new Solarbank 2 AC model #175 #198

  • Support modifications of Manual Backup settings
    • Note: NO SUPPORT yet for modifying the use time plan
      
  • Support for switching to Manual Backup mode and Usage Time mode (if a Use Time plan was defined in the Anker App)
    • When backup mode is enabled via Mode setting or backup option switch, a default of 3 hour backup charge will be applied by the Api library starting from now.
    • This is a convenience setting to apply meaningful datetime values when the mode is 'enabled' by a toggle entity
    • 3 hours with 1000-1200 W AC charge should be sufficient to load an empty Solarbank with 1 battery pack from 10 to 100 % SOC
    • You can always customize the backup end time and apply the change by re-enabling the backup option switch
    • Please give some feedback how your typical backup duration would be, and whether the default should be changed
    • The backup mode will be deactivated automatically at 100% SOC
    • Note that each datetime change will deactivate also the backup option switch, but those changes occur only in Api cache to avoid too many Api calls. Only when the backup option switch is re-enabled, the Api call will be made to apply the datetime settings from the cache.
  • Support for switching the system price between fixed price and Use Time price (if Use Time plan was defined in the Anker App)
    • Note: Use Time price will be enabled automatically when Use Time mode is being enabled like it is done by the Anker App. Toggling back to fixed price setting must be done manually.
      
  • Additional sensors, most are specific to AC model
    • Note the separate heating power, which seems to be reported and does not longer reduce the reported solar power
    • The Solar power is the combination of all inputs, the 2 PV channels as well as the external inverter power input (if used)
      
  • Notes:
    • These new controls will only become available when the owner account is used
    • It is not determined yet, if all new fields are fully used, and what exactly the values will represent. Usage may also depend on the firmware,
    • The inverter power seems to be accumulated with PV1 and PV2 into Solar power. Therefore it is assumed this it NOT the internal inverter power, but the external inverter that optionally can be plugged into the AC model as additional PV source.
    • The grid to battery power should reflect AC charge
    • The grid to battery daily energy was also added to the system energy entities #199
  • Updated Solarbank 2 markdown card to support displaying the new AC plan types.
    
  • See INFO documentation for more details on using the new Solarbank 2 AC controls in HA

• IMPORTANT:

  • The controls will represent the active settings according to HA system time and schedule plan defined times. Therefore any time offset between your Solarbank and HA server will cause incorrect active setting extracts from the schedule
  • While you make any change to the usage mode or presets, it may take up to 5-6 minutes in worst case until you see this reflected in other Integration values, because the SB2 sends updated data only every 5 minutes. It is just a reporting delay, but the change is typically applied immediately. See #194 for how this delay can impact the monitoring of an output preset change.

• Added new system sensors for Off Grid Alert, Inverter Limit Exceeded, Heating #187 and Active Usage Mode as reported by the Solarbank 2

  • Those sensors are also visible as system member, but only if used by the specific system type
    

• Important changes and fixes to support combined Solarbank 2 and Solarbank 1 systems #181

  • While Anker supports now 1-2 SB1 in a Solarbank 2 Pro/Plus system, they do not correctly adopt the statistics and system totals.
  • See the README documentation for incorrect system values from the cloud and how the Api library corrects them for correct reporting in the HA integration via the System SB total values

• Important changes and fixes for Power Panel support #183

  • It was found that upon cloud problems/errors, there may be statistical records showing 0% SOC in intraday stats.
    • These are also visible in the Anker App SOC diagram
  • All Power Panel 5 minute average values are extracted from the intraday stats, using the last valid, non 0 SOC entry as indication for the minimum offset into the stats to extract all other values.
  • So far, this last valid timestamp lookup happened from past into future to find first 'invalid' 0 SOC entry, not considering that there might be any 0 entry gaps. This led to wrong offset calculations and extraction of incorrect timestamps.
  • The lookup algorithm was changed to search from the future back to the first timestamp showing anything different from 0 SOC as last valid entry.
  • The algorithm was also improved to re-adjust if a newer valid timestamp is found at regular queries that shows less offset to actual time.
    • This automatically reduces the reporting delay as much as possible, but especially in case the integration queries were started while there are no cloud stat recordings being made (during a recording gap).

• Added documentation for combined system usage and new SB2 AC controls

• Added table of contents to the documentation and further video and blog resources to the README

Breaking changes:

• Renamed translations for system price sensor to distinguish the existing fixed price entity from another entity that will be introduced to reflect the active dynamic price as defined in the Solarbank 2 AC Use Time plan.
  • The translation change will also rename your price entity_id when the integration is reconfigured or devices must be re-registered. The previous entity history will NOT be maintained
• Due to security alerts, the minimum aiohttp version was bumped to 3.10.11
  • Home Assistant bumped this version with 2024.11.2, which has been set as new minimum release for this integration
• For combined SB2 systems containing also SB1, the system battery power entity cannot longer be used to extract the total charge or discharge power. The reason and recommended method to generate total charge/discharge entities for energy dashboard integration is described in the README.

Fixes and other changes:

• Prevent that Api export action can be triggered again while still active
  • An Api export can take 5-30 seconds, depending on how the configuration entry Api options have been defined
  • Especially via UI it happened that users clicked the Run Action button more than once without waiting that previous export has been finished (The button will become green only once the started action finished)
  • Multiple parallel exports cause corrupted data sets that does not really match together due to various serial randomization
  • It will also kick off a mass of unnecessary duplicate Api queries
  • An error will now be raised when the action is triggered by automation or UI while an export is still active via the Api switch entity
  • This prevents that multiple clicks on the Run Action button kick off more than one single export.
• Prevent that control entities, when changed via UI or automation, may trigger value updates or Api queries while they are unavailable
  • Note: The UI may present unavailable control entities in a weird display format. Especially number sliders may show the middle value of an allowed range while unavailable, They also appear to allow value changes, although no value is actually present for the number entity.
• Fixed unexpected value clearance for SOC reserve setting entity
• Fixed and improved handling of index numbers in schedule plans
  • Gaps in schedule index numbers caused index out of bound errors and therefore plan updates failed, e.g. when changing output preset
  • Index numbers will now be curated automatically when schedule plans are modified #195
• Fixed some translation errors
• Bumped anker-solix-api library to v2.5.1
• Bump actions/setup-python from 5.3.0 to 5.4.0 by @dependabot in #196
• Update pip requirement from <24.4,>=21.0 to >=21.0,<25.1 by @dependabot in #192
• Bump softprops/action-gh-release from 2.2.0 to 2.2.1 by @dependabot in #186
• Bump ruff from 0.9.4 to 0.9.5 by @dependabot in #201
• Bump ruff from 0.9.3 to 0.9.4 by @dependabot in #197
• Bump ruff from 0.9.2 to 0.9.3 by @dependabot in #191
• Bump ruff from 0.9.1 to 0.9.2 by @dependabot in #188
• Bump ruff from 0.8.6 to 0.9.1 by @dependabot in #185
• Bump ruff from 0.8.5 to 0.8.6 by @dependabot in #180

Full Changelog: 2.4.0...2.5.0

Link to previous release notes 2.4.1 and 2.4.0

Notes:

• The device sensor for battery energy is just a theoretical value and calculated by the Api library from nominal battery capacity and SOC. Changes of this entity should NOT be considered for energy dashboard helper sensors, since this sensor can never reflect the battery efficiency or capacity loss over time.
• The daily battery discharge statistic value for Solarbank 1 is no longer correct since mid June 2024. The cloud statistics changed this value when introducing support for Solarbank 2. The daily battery discharge value for Solarbank 1 now includes also bypassed PV energy, so it is not longer dedicated to battery discharge only. You can see this wrong value also in your Anker App statistics for the battery.
• For such and other reasons, I do NOT recommend to use the Anker Solix integration daily energy statistic sensors directly in your energy dashboard, even if that is possible since they are classified as total_increasing sensors. The reasons for that are described in the discussion how to integrate the Solarbank into you energy dashboard. There you can also find the recommended approach for creating the required entities for easiest and most flexible energy dashboard integration.

Contribution:

• Many thanks to @thealkly for his blog post (DE) and new video (DE) about the Anker Solarbank usage and HA integration. The links have been added to the README.
• YOUR HELP is required if you have new Anker Solix systems or if new features are introduced by Anker and you want them being integrated into HA
• I have no chance to test any Anker devices or explore the cloud Api requests and responses for new devices or features. Since the Api is not official, no documentation exists and the Api library can only be enhanced with your support and willingness to explore and test the Api queries via the Api library.

Appreciation:

If you like this integration and you want to show your appreciation for the countless hours spent to enhance and maintain it, I would be happy for a coffee.