Blueprint for Winter Credits

Home-Assistant Blueprint

A Home-Assistant Blueprint with the options to carry out the automations described in this section is available here and can be installed directly with this button:

Blueprint Architecture

The Winter Credits blueprint uses a hybrid approach combining time-based triggers and calendar triggers:

Time-Based Triggers

Daily winter schedule (December 1 - March 31):

• 01:00 : Morning anchor start
• 04:00 : Morning anchor end
• 06:00 : Morning peak start
• 10:00 : Morning peak end
• 12:00 : Evening anchor start
• 14:00 : Evening anchor end
• 16:00 : Evening peak start
• 20:00 : Evening peak end

These time-based triggers ensure your automations fire at each anchor and peak period, whether critical or regular.

Calendar Triggers

The blueprint requires a local calendar entity created in Home Assistant. The HydroQC integration automatically syncs critical peak events announced by Hydro-Québec to this calendar.

Important: You must create your own local calendar in Home Assistant (Settings → Devices & Services → Local Calendars → Add Calendar). The integration does not create a calendar automatically; it adds events to an existing calendar that you specify in the configuration.

Recommendation: Use a dedicated calendar only for peak events to avoid conflicts with other events.

The blueprint also uses calendar triggers with offsets for pre-heating before critical peaks.

Automatic Criticality Detection

At every execution, the blueprint calls the calendar.get_events service to fetch today’s events and automatically determine if peaks are critical or regular:

- action: calendar.get_events
  data:
    start_date_time: "{{ now().replace(hour=0, minute=0, second=0).isoformat() }}"
    end_date_time: "{{ now().replace(hour=23, minute=59, second=59).isoformat() }}"
  response_variable: calendar_events

This approach ensures the blueprint:

• ✅ Reliably detects critical vs regular peaks
• ✅ Works with both time-based AND calendar triggers
• ✅ Doesn’t require additional input_boolean helpers
• ✅ Fetches calendar data at execution time

Prerequisites

1. Create a Local Calendar

Steps to create a local calendar:

1. Go to Settings → Devices & Services → Integrations
2. Click Add Integration
3. Search for “Local Calendar”
4. Create a new calendar with a name like “HydroQC Peaks” or “Winter Credits”
5. Note the calendar’s entity_id (e.g., calendar.hydroqc_peaks)

Recommendation: Use a dedicated calendar only for HydroQC peak events to avoid conflicts with other personal events.

2. Configure the HydroQC Integration

When configuring the HydroQC integration (v0.4.0-beta.1+), you will need to specify the calendar entity you just created. The integration will automatically sync critical peak events to this calendar.

Configurable Actions

The blueprint provides separate actions for:

Critical Peaks

• Pre-heat (enabled by default)
• Anchor start (disabled by default)
• Anchor end (disabled by default)
• Peak start (enabled by default)
• Peak end (enabled by default)

Regular (Non-Critical) Peaks

• Anchor start (disabled by default)
• Anchor end (disabled by default)
• Peak start (disabled by default)
• Peak end (disabled by default)

All actions include persistent notifications disabled by default that you can enable as needed.