Optimisation

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  • G4RHL
    Automated Home Legend
    • Jan 2015
    • 1580

    Optimisation

    I thought it may be tidier to put this in a new thread.

    January 2015, after a complete rebind of everything as per instructions I tried optimisation, letting it run for three weeks to learn. I was unimpressed. I set it for no more than one hour. It always came on just under an hour before the set time, little regard for how long it took a room to warm up. One room is comfortable to be in after about 15 minutes and would be up to temperature in 30 minutes or so. Never needing an hour. Another took longer. Optimisation off had the rooms too cool too quickly. I abandoned it.

    Recently I upgraded my control panel to the new WiFi one and the firmware therein is the latest. I decided to try optimisation again.

    It has run now for three weeks. It comes on about 58 minutes before the set point no matter what room is being heated. Some rooms take longer or shorter times to reach set point but in the three weeks optimisation has not learned that, it just comes on 58 minutes ahead. If I watch the control panel it tells me optimisation has clicked in 60 minutes before but there is always an approximate two minute delay before the boiler starts.

    I still found that the same room was up to temperature in no more than 40 minutes and certainly comfortable in 15 minutes. This morning for example my living room is set to 20C to come on at 06:30 on a Saturday and Sunday. Optimisation switched it on at 05:30. The start temperature was 16.5C. Within 15 minutes I am at 19.1c as per a room stat whilst the TRV says its 18c (it actually reads 17c but I have allowed for the fact the TRVs in my living room have a -1c compensation dialed in). The room is 20.5C after precisely 26 minutes. Not the 60 optimisation thinks it needs. Optimisation in the three weeks it has been running has not seemed to have learned.

    Another room though barely got there.

    However, optimisation off seems better. It does not have rooms cooling down so quickly as it did a year ago.

    For me optimisation still does seem a waste of energy but I am going to leave it on and simply change the set points in the rooms to be heated by advancing the start time, i.e. a room set to come on at 07:00 I will change to 08:00 knowing that optimisation will actually start heating it at 07:00. I may as well do this for perhaps the longer it is running it just may be the more it will learn.

    What it has shown is that I have two rooms where the radiators are undersized. Plus a third radiator could do with being replaced. It had also highlighted the fact, often debated in the forum, that the TRV will think the set temperature for the room has been reached when it hasn't, it is affected by its proximity to the radiator, and even though I understand it is designed to sense the rising air current beneath it, it is influenced by the radiator heat such that it tells the boiler to cut out but the room has not reached the set temperature. Usually the room is about 2c lower. After time it does get there. As a consequence in one room I have done a -1c compensation on the TRVs and that has helped. What I find now is a separate stat at waist height toward the middle of the room shows a higher temperature than the TRV.

    I know I could buy the freestanding portable thermostat and that would cure the problem of the TRV not getting the temperature right during warm up time, but it is a lot of thermostats to buy for each room! Plus I would get quite a bit of earache about all the thermostats fastened to the walls around the house!

    It would be nice if the app showed optimisation was running as it does on the control panel plus be able to edit the quick action menus from the app and select quick actions to run for a few hours as opposed to 24. I know, all said before elsewhere in the forum.
  • De1b0y
    Automated Home Jr Member
    • Aug 2015
    • 22

    #2
    I have tried Optimisation but found it pretty useless. Like you rooms heated up far too quickly and rooms cooled too early. Adjusting room settings to compensate does not seem logical to me either. It's a good concept but algorithm is defective.

    Comment

    • G4RHL
      Automated Home Legend
      • Jan 2015
      • 1580

      #3
      Originally posted by De1b0y View Post
      I have tried Optimisation but found it pretty useless. Like you rooms heated up far too quickly and rooms cooled too early. Adjusting room settings to compensate does not seem logical to me either. It's a good concept but algorithm is defective.
      This morning I removed the -1C compensation as I think the lounge was getting too hot. Also this morning optimisation did not start for relevant rooms until about 45 minutes before set point and that I assume is because the room temperature was higher to start with (we have had a warmer night weather wise) and I assume it is allowing for that. So yes that does show it works but so far not as efficiently as one would expect. As said above I am leaving it on and have pushed the relevant set points in each room forward by an hour so that optimisation in most cases will come on at the original time. When it stops doing that I will know it has learned some more and make the adjustment a little finer.

      Comment

      • G4RHL
        Automated Home Legend
        • Jan 2015
        • 1580

        #4
        An update on my original post.

        I have left optimisation running but as said simply reset the start times for the heating so that optimisation comes on at what was the original set time. Generally it seemed it always wanted to switch on an hour early. I can more easily monitor the system at weekends as one room is set to come on at 06:30 (it used to 05:30 as I am up then). Optimisation usually fired up at 05:30, an hour ahead as expected.

        Overnight the temperature has been dropping to around 15.5C in the room. Last two nights the temperature dropped to 17.5C and the heating came on about 45 minutes ahead of the set point instead of the usual 60 minutes.

        So yes, it clearly does take account of current temperature and change its start time. It does not though learn how long it takes to get the room to the set temperature of 20C. It takes 30 minutes or thereabouts for that, a few minutes over if the start temperature is around 15.5C and slightly less if it is 17.5C. I would expect optimisation to know it takes about 30 minutes to achieve the target and therefore come on 30 minutes early. It has not learned that.

        Also I find it can sometimes cut off early so that rooms go cold to soon which then means I have to manually adjust the temperature.

        So yes it works, to an extent, I'll leave it on, but for me the set point time is the time I want the heating to come on, it does not need to be the time at which the requisite temperature is attained. That I think is a waste.
        Last edited by G4RHL; 13 March 2016, 10:59 AM.

        Comment

        • top brake
          Automated Home Legend
          • Feb 2015
          • 837

          #5
          Can you tell us a bit about your house and heating system?
          I work for Resideo, posts are personal and my own views.

          Comment

          • G4RHL
            Automated Home Legend
            • Jan 2015
            • 1580

            #6
            Originally posted by top brake View Post
            Can you tell us a bit about your house and heating system?
            House built 1997. Detached, 4 bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, conservatory, hall, utility room, bathroom, en suite and downstairs WC. All rooms have radiators, the lounge has two. All radiators have Evohome TRVs with the exception of the downstairs WC which remains open and the utility room which is always off. Boiler is a GlowWorm Ultimate with standard hot water tank and expansion tank in the loft.

            All windows are UPC double glazed, loft insulted, cavity walls filled.

            The lounge, which is the room I was monitoring in my posting, has two outside walls, one is the full length, the other the width and the latter has two large windows. One of the other walls is inner with the hall the other side. The remaining wall (width) has french doors into a conservatory. Conservatory has one radiator fed off the same system. Usually set to 5C unless we have guests. Heating not needed in the conservatory most of the time.

            The radiator in the downstairs WC is my bypass function. It needs to be bled every week. No other radiators ever need bleeding although are checked. Pump is a basic Grundfos set to its middle (2nd) Position. It used to be on the highest (3rd) but it was noisy.

            If anything needs changing (apart form the boiler which is now on borrowed time but still works) I need to put a better radiator in the lounge to replace one of them, replace the kitchen and main bedroom radiators with more efficient double convector radiators.
            Last edited by G4RHL; 13 March 2016, 01:26 PM.

            Comment

            • DBMandrake
              Automated Home Legend
              • Sep 2014
              • 2361

              #7
              There is still something fishy with the optimisation process even with the latest software update.

              Like you I've noticed that it does correctly adjust for changes in the starting temperature - eg the colder the room starts relative to the set point the earlier it comes on. However it does not properly "learn" the warm up rate of the zone, or if it does, it does not continue to adapt to changes in the warmup rate of the room over time if it changes, for example due to a change in conditions such as the door always being left open when it was previously always left closed, or a manual change in boiler flow temperature.

              From my experimentation it seems almost as if it does learn the warm up rate of the room for a period of time after a zone is first created, but then "locks in" that learnt room warm up rate and does not continue to adapt to changes in the warm up rate over time, such as replacing a radiator with a more efficient one, or changes in outdoor conditions.

              When the firmware was updated on my unit it went from very poorly predicting warmup rate of the two zones I had at the time (the slow warming hall way always came on too late, and the fast warming living room always came on too early) to being almost bang on for both zones in just a day or two. Almost as if the firmware update process "cleared" any previously learn warmup rates and forced it to do a new adaption process for each zone.

              However some time later I started playing around with changing the temperature sensor for each zone - basically each zone that had only had an HR92 had a "turn" at using the evohome as the temperature sensor for the zone for a few days, and once I did that the warm up prediction for each zone went all to hell and never properly recovered despite attempts to clear and rebind the zones etc...

              So I am back to my living room warming up far too soon. It's scheduled to reach 21 degrees for 6pm, and I have had to reduce the maximum optimisation time to 2 hours otherwise it would happily bring it on at 3:25 in the afternoon and be fully up to temperature at 5pm, day after day!

              So like you I have to conclude that the optimisation process is still partly broken and that it seems to "lock in" a room warmup rate and no amount of resetting, rebinding zones, rebooting and so on will force it to relearn the warm up rate of the room.

              IMHO the room warmup rate is something it should be constantly adapting to - albeit averaged over a period of a week or so. So that if there is a major swing in the weather conditions, or you replace a radiator, or you make a big change to the flow temperature, or you start closing the blinds instead of leaving them open - anything that would have an impact on the warm up rate of the room, it should be able to detect that it is arriving at the target too late or too early and make gradual day by day adjustments to its prediction of warm up rate until it starts hitting its targets again. This is not happening as it will (for me) hit its targets consistently too early or too late day after day with no apparent attempt to adjust for this.
              Last edited by DBMandrake; 13 March 2016, 04:41 PM.

              Comment

              • paulockenden
                Automated Home Legend
                • Apr 2015
                • 1719

                #8
                I suspect optimisation considers (sensibly, IMHO) that the basic fabric of your home won't change, so neither will the warm up and heat loss rates for a particular zone.

                I'm not at all surprised that with a radical change such as replacing a radiator, you need to re-instigate the learning process.

                P.

                Comment

                • DBMandrake
                  Automated Home Legend
                  • Sep 2014
                  • 2361

                  #9
                  Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
                  I suspect optimisation considers (sensibly, IMHO) that the basic fabric of your home won't change, so neither will the warm up and heat loss rates for a particular zone.
                  I can't agree with that though. Heat loss is directly proportional to outside temperature so warm up rate will reduce as outside temperature drops. How much depends on how well insulated your house is.

                  Warm up rate will also be affected by the size and position of your radiator (ok this usually stays the same) flow temperature - which people tend to adjust with the seasons, whether radiators are partially obscured by drapes, clothes, towels, furnature etc, by changes in habits like always leaving a door open instead of always leaving it closed, in changes and occupancy of a room, and so on. There are a lot of reasons why the heat up rate of a room can change and good reason why the system should adapt to this.
                  I'm not at all surprised that with a radical change such as replacing a radiator, you need to re-instigate the learning process.
                  Maybe if there was a way to re-instigate the learning process. I have tried and tried and cannot find anything that will trigger it, other than the firmware update I received. I have even tried deleting and re-adding zones from scratch - no difference. Somehow it seems to remember previous zone data.

                  Ever since I temporarily changed the temperature sensor of my zones (to the controller and back to the HR92) the optimisation start times have been way out of whack and nothing I do will get it to re-learn warm up times again...meanwhile a couple of months have gone by with no improvement to the ridiculously early startup time of some zones. If I hadn't reduced the optimisation time to 2 hours maximum it would still be trying to turn my living room on 3 hours before the set time even though the room is up to temperature in 1 hour 40 minutes.

                  As far as I'm concerned there is a pretty serious bug in the algorithm.
                  Last edited by DBMandrake; 13 March 2016, 10:24 PM.

                  Comment

                  • top brake
                    Automated Home Legend
                    • Feb 2015
                    • 837

                    #10
                    I have optimisation at home on my evohome wifi with OpenTherm and HR92 and it works fine. It also worked fine on the standard BDR91. It's on the home screen initially then in the user settings so that it's easy to switch off if you don't like it. The max preheats time allows you to limit the start time if you're not wanting it to come on before a certain time. If there was a bug in the code there would be many complaints and I would know about it. If you guys have real concerns please contact Honeywell support who will be able to offer advise on your specific case.
                    I work for Resideo, posts are personal and my own views.

                    Comment

                    • G4RHL
                      Automated Home Legend
                      • Jan 2015
                      • 1580

                      #11
                      There has to be something that is not functioning properly with optimisation. DBMandrake has messed around with his system and changed things so I would expect optimisation to cough a bit and need to settle down again. In my case I switched optimisation on, on the 3rd January and left it on. I set it at the lowest time setting - one hour - knowing that it may well come sooner otherwise. Nothing has changed in my set up around the house but it consistently comes on between 60 minutes and 45 minutes ahead of the set point and the room is up to temperature in 30 minutes. Surely it should have learned that for that room coming on 30 minutes ahead of set point would be adequate? It does the same elsewhere in the house and switches off early. It brings heat on in the bedroom in the evening sooner than it is needed and switches it off sooner, at times we have to put the heating back on. I know, I can cure this if I adjust the set point times or simply switch optimisation off!

                      Comment

                      • DanD
                        Automated Home Ninja
                        • Feb 2016
                        • 250

                        #12
                        Hi,

                        I thought it would be helpful if I share my experiences with optimisation. I've had my evohome set-up for about 6 weeks now and my home is a mix of a 1930s build with single-glazed windows and a new extension with double glazing & far better insulation. I've messed a bit with the optimisation settings, switching from 3h, 2h and 1h optimum start settings and I've settled on the 2h setting for now. It seems to work well in my home, bringing forward the set-points by the full 2h in some of the older rooms which are slow to warm and less in others and overall I find it simplifies the setting of the target temperatures for each room. It isn't perfect and it obviously struggles with rooms that change their properties due to doors being left open etc and it appears to adjust in 15min steps based upon my monitoring of the set-points. I've also concluded that it does re-learn the optimisation settings if I alter the maximum optimisation start time, but would be interested to hear if others have found this to be true?

                        PS I've been using Domoticz to monitor the zone temperatures and set-points which I've found really useful to see exactly what's happening around the house each day.

                        Dan

                        Comment

                        • peterf
                          Automated Home Guru
                          • Jan 2015
                          • 116

                          #13
                          My experience with optimisation is very similar to DanD's.

                          My setup is a Grant Vortex oil boiler. It doesn't have Opentherm and I tend to turn up the temperature on the boiler if there's a really cold snap. Unsurprisingly this tends to make the optimisation throw a wobbly for a couple of days but then it appears to me to re-adapt.

                          Can Top Brake confirm that the optimisation process is a continual one, and, if it's not what the best way to trigger a "re-learn" would be should part of an installation change?

                          Comment

                          • top brake
                            Automated Home Legend
                            • Feb 2015
                            • 837

                            #14
                            Originally posted by peterf View Post
                            My experience with optimisation is very similar to DanD's.

                            My setup is a Grant Vortex oil boiler. It doesn't have Opentherm and I tend to turn up the temperature on the boiler if there's a really cold snap. Unsurprisingly this tends to make the optimisation throw a wobbly for a couple of days but then it appears to me to re-adapt.

                            Can Top Brake confirm that the optimisation process is a continual one, and, if it's not what the best way to trigger a "re-learn" would be should part of an installation change?
                            I have optimisation at home on my evohome wifi with OpenTherm and HR92 and it works fine. It also worked fine on the standard BDR91. It's on the home screen initially then in the user settings so that it's easy to switch off if you don't like it. The max preheats time allows you to limit the start time if you're not wanting it to come on before a certain time. If there was a bug in the code there would be many complaints and I would know about it. If you guys have real concerns please contact Honeywell support who will be able to offer advise on your specific case.

                            A new evohome goes through a coarse learning for a week then continually fine tunes.

                            Hope this helps
                            I work for Resideo, posts are personal and my own views.

                            Comment

                            • peterf
                              Automated Home Guru
                              • Jan 2015
                              • 116

                              #15
                              And the "old" version ? As I say it seems to keep adjusting but it would be nice to have confirmation.

                              Comment

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