Is it possible to set the inverter such that the house runs from the battery and thus all solar is exported? Eg at night I charge on cheap rate then run the house from that? At present its filling up on cheap rate at night but once the sun is up then thats used intially to charge the battery back up to 100% before it starts exporting.
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I’m interested in this too, for the same reason but with an AIO. Tried a variety of combinations of ECO on/off, pause charge ON, export power priority to grid first, DC discharge timings but none appeared to do the above - meet the load requirements, allowing 100% of solar to export.
Yes I tried last night, put timed export on but that switched off eco and also the battery temp rose alarmingly, when it got to 65C i turned discharge off.(discharge was at max 3.6)
I think its something i may either have to live with or maybe set some automation up to set discharge over a longer period with lower power output to prevent too high temps.
This would work if you could have timed eco as well.
Wow 65c … thats hot ( are they in your loft ? - if so get some fans )
Well for my 10p worth… once again something like “Home Assistant” can help with this.
You would turn off the ECO mode then do something like this with home assistant :
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At 8am ( or when the solar panels start to generate power ) turn the “Charge Power” to 0% and Discharge Power to Maximum
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At 2am turn the Charge power to Maximum and Discharge to Minimum
You can then also set the “Discharge” of the batteries to be done when you earn the most from Octopus
There is loads of help / guides / plugins for Home Assistant for Givenergy and Octopus.
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Thanks, yes i need to investigate HA.
And to answer your Q, No not in loft, in a cool garage. hence my alarm.
My bad I just realised i was looking at inverter temp not battery.
Even so thats well above its normal range.
Your not the only one who thinks they run hot…
Get a few fans around it ( I have now added “filter Foam” to stop the dust as well - but it has fixed the potential overheating.
Find the hotspots on your inverter and add then fans there.
I would try putting timed export at low rate which will turn eco off for whatever time you want as I don’t have home assist.
However I am on intelligent Octopus flux and what the programme does is simply turn eco off. Then solar first meets load and then grid ( and then if any would be clipping does battery last.)
As an experiment i set max discharge power from the battery to 2k thought i could discharge same amount over 3 years as 2 and limit the rise.
It seems to have ignored that setting, it still exported @4k and went from 40DegC to 65DegC in 37 minutes at which point i stopped it.
I have recently moved to Octopus intelligent Go for import (7.5p) and Octopus outgoing fixed for export (15p). After years of trying to minimise export I now want to maximise it! I charge batteries (15kwh) overnight, and this easily satisfies load until the next charging period, so I want all PV net of load exported. Need to be able to set the battery to not charge in a defined time period but to meet any required load. Any suggestions on how to set this up? Have tried manually pausing the battery which stops it charging, but risks importing at standard rate if the sun goes in.
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I’ve not found a way to do this without a level of automation via Home Assistant (which I dont have and seems like overkill just for this)
I have my battery set to import between 1130pm->530am (so it wont discharge at all then) and Eco setting on as well. This means it doesnt try to discharge from the battery when my car is on charge between those hours which obviously is pointless.
If I get a charging session outside those hours, lets say from 1030pm-11pm, I just manually pause the battery. In theory the charge session might overrun in the morning but so far my car is always full well before 530am.
The downside is i cannot get ALL my solar exported, some is used to top up the battery in the daytime. So far, one month in, I’m finding 85% of my PV is exported.
I could do a force discharge via timed discharge but Ive found the inverter temp jumps up and I’m not sure if thats a good thing. I also found that a timed discharge seems to do stuff like set eco off so i then need to manually enable it again.
What Id like is i think what you want, a setting that says "dont top up the battery from solar between these times " and I’m dissapointed and surprised there isnt such a setting.
Hi Joe and thanks for the reply. You have indeed identified the requirement- a new option in battery management to stop charging the battery from solar. A mode of “Grid charge only” or similar. Like you I have been looking at ways of achieving this without incurring additional battery cycles, or needing to manage it on a day to day basis.
I have some sympathy with GivEnergy as I guess it is only recently that we have been able to sell to the grid at a higher price than buying from it. Until now it has all been about minimising export.
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Thats a good point, until recently it made no sense to export instead of charging from solar. Well, hopefully they will come up with such an option. As it happens Ive just looked at my output since May and its always above the house background, so pausing when I’m out makes sense but the minute i put the kettle on its going to be drawing from the grid which would outdo all that good work let alone if I put the oven on!
OK. Now successfully set up the inverter with Home Assistant, following the incredible “Speak to the Geek” Youtube videos. Having done this made two simple automations, the first to set “GivTCP SD******** Control GivTCP Battery Charge Rate” to 100% at 23:30, then another to set “GivTCP SD******** Control GivTCP Battery Charge Rate” to 0% at 05:30. So now the system automatically charges the battery in the (as of July 24) 7p rate period, and during the rest of the day will export everything net of house load to the grid, at 15p. I have similarly programmed my EDDI, thus converting it to a very expensive time switch. This is using the Octopus Intelligent Go for import, and Outgoing Octopus for export
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For those googling this challenge that don’t have the time and or the skill for Home Assistant @SteveDooley and @JoeInReading challenge is now solved with the simple free https://app.wonderwatt.com At the time of writing IOG is still in beta but if you request they will add you and it seems to be working well
What a thread! Been battling with my 2 batteries and solar for a year and eventually moved them from the loft to a cool outhouse. Much better but there are so many bugs in the controlling software. Now moving to Home Assistant and this thread and others have been inspirational.
Thanks All.