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.
How is that different to just setting the battery charge slot on the GE portal from 11:30pm to 5:30am only?
Does the HA approach actually stop the solar during the day from topping up the battery and then what about ignoring house load?
The utopia is that the battery covers all of the house load and so solar is made redundant froma local consumption perspective and exported out.
Im dubious from what you said that itll export everything.
You need to set the charging schedule in the GivEnergy app to 23:30 to 05:30 as well. Setting the battery charge rate to 0 from 05:30 to 23:30 ensures that it cannot charge from solar, thus all of solar, net of the house load is exported. I am planning an automation to export any surplus energy in the battery each evening which will achieve something like what you want. An algorithm which looks at the current state of charge and force discharges down to a set limit depending on the time of day. Not worth doing at the moment as no surplus solar to speak of.
Yes i guess i could try that that would seem like it would work on a sunny day. And just be more careful about running multiple high usage items at the same time which TBF is rare.
I think I’ll give that a go once we get to a time of year when theres more solar.
As Ive said in other comments i could instead just export any spare in the battery once the sun has gone down however when i do that my inverter temp climbs up alarmingly well into the 60’s
Steve
That doesnt work, tried it before (and just again last night), setting the battery to 0% charge from 5:30am to 11:30pm just stops the battery from being used at all.
As soon as I set that up (so the second charge period, the other being 11:30 - 5:30 @100% charge capacity) the battery stops exporting to cover house load even though eco mode is still on.
If you do have “Home Assistant” - then I would recommend installing “Predbat”
https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred/what-does-predbat-do/
I use this and it basically looks at lots of inputs ( weather / iBoost / EV Charger / Tarriffs ( get’s info from Octopus energy ) and then calculates the best way to optimize your system.
There are loads of things you can tweak as well to make it for just for you - and it is being developed all the time… I have requested a “Storm” feature so that if a storm is coming that it charges to 100% and doesn’t discharge until the storm has past in case of a power cut.
I even created simple automation so that when it detects the “Free Sessions” from Octopus that it turns my iBOOST+ on ( as well as charge the batteries ).
Loads of videos on how to set it up - but here is a sample of how is automatically scheduled my system for today.
today it is “Holding Charge” as there is NO SUN !!!