Just got my All-In-One installed with Gateway.
I simply want to
1: Charge Battery during the (non-variable) cheap time slots.
2: Discharge Battery during the expensive time slots.
3: Never export.
4: Never charge my EV with the battery.
Let’s say I am on Tomato Lifestyle.
I assume I should set:
Timed Charge: 00:00 - 6:00
Timed Discharge: 6:00 - 00:00
and set my EV charger schedule to only charge between 00:00 - 6:00.
All should be good, right?
Only problem is that when I tried that (at 5pm today): Setting Timed Charge as above, immediately started charging the battery. weird. Setting Timed Discharge as above immediately started exported anything over 6.2kw that I wasn’t consuming into the grid.
I have stopped it all and will do a full charge overnight so I can observe again. Or was I too hasty in panicking about my battery emptying itself into the grid, or charging at peak rate?
But is there a way of saying: Don’t ever use battery to charge car (or is this a default). Don’t ever export, because I don’t have an export agreement.?
You can do all this if you use Home Assistant, but it is a big investment in time to learn it. I struggled to do similar things via the app, which is why I use HA.
It turns out my initial problems were more due to installation issues, the installer returned and they worked with Givenergy support and recalibrated everything.
In other words, it now works as expected.
As I have no solar (yet), my needs are quite simple…
1: Fully charge battery on cheap rate overnight.
2: Consume from battery during the day.
I am now on Tomato Lifestyle which gives me:
1: 5p /kWh from 0:00 to 6:00
2: 23p from 6:00 to 9:30
3: 13p from 9:30 to 11:30
4: 23p from 11:30 to 22:00
5: 13p from 22:00 to 24:00 (0:00)
My battery isn’t big enough to do the whole 18 hours, so I have programmed 2 Timed Charges in the Remote Control section: (you can’t do this in the app, you have to do it in the portal)
1: 0:00 - 6:00 to ensure the battery is 100% by 6:00
2: 11:00 - 11:30 to top it up so that it lasts long enough to die sometime in the 22:00 to 24:00 window.
Obviously my usage varies depending mainly on what we cook in the evening, (Induction), but the 2 hour window is a big enough target to shoot for, so I am monitoring and tweaking the second timed charge session so that there is always enough to get to 22:00 in the worst case, but not too much that I still have battery at 24:00 (as I want to maximise the amount I can charge at the 5p rate)
The other little tweak I intend to make is to split the overnight timed charge so that I don’t have the battery sitting at 100% for 3 hours (as it looks like it takes 2 hours 50 mins to fully charge from 4%). So I might do a 1hr 30min charge from 0:00 to 1:30, and then a second timed charge from 4:00 to 6:00. I “think” this will be better for the battery in the long run.
(I have full automation at home with HomeKit and Homebridge, but I have not had the need for HA yet. There is a Homebridge plugin for Givenergy, but I don’t think I need it. Trying to keep it simple. 
)