Timed export+ timed charge

A am on ECO 7 and Octopus Agile Export. I've got the hang of setting a timed charge during my ECO 7 period (leave ECO running and set timed charging period and then leave well alone!), but I would like to know the best way to combine this with a small timed export during the peak period to make the most of my Agile Export. Last night I tried to export for half an hour. I left ECO running and turned off timed charge and set timed export. When the export period finished it continued to import from the grid rather than using the battery (which still had 40% charge). So I disabled the timed export and reset timed charge to run from 12.45 to 06.30 to run with ECO. But when I checked this morning it had done a massive battery charge before 12.45 and then had continued to charge periodically through to 06.30 to maintain the % charge that I had set. What did I do wrong? Should I reset to defaults after exporting, before I reset the timed charge? I had hoped that a small export would offset some of my import costs, but this just cost me more than leaving it alone. I'm sure I've read somewhere that timed charge and timed export don't play nicely, which is why I tried to cancel the export before engaging the import, but I've obviously done something wrong, but can't for the life of me figure out what. Can anyone help?

Karen I do exactly the same - fill up battery overnight and export via Agile over teatime when there are peak rates.

The only way I have found to do it is to trigger the export configuration at the time I want it and be on hand to disable it when the time is over. As you have found out, once the export is enabled it holds the battery, ie does not use it for the house.

When export is over I double check the overnight charge is set up and Eco is on.

Like you, I find this very annoying. I should not be too hard to just set it up, say "Import midnight to 7 am, export 4.30pm to 5.30pm, otherwise Eco"!

I know this can be done via Home Assistant and GivTCP - I am working on increasing my skills in this area!

Gribinslaf, Do you just disable the timed export and enable the timed charge/ECO or do you set back to default settings and then set the timed charge? Does it make any difference how you do it, or the order you do it in?

When I want to export:

Go to timed export settings
Put in times
Enable
Click submit just before start due time
(Check get green confirmation and not red error - if red click submit again)
At end of export time Disable export and Submit - check for green confirmation
Check timed charge settings are still set
Check Eco has reset itself - if not, put it on

I don't go back to default at any point

Thanks - I think I'll try again tonight

Hi GribinIsaf, I had a three o'clock in the morning lightbulb moment and realised I had set my timed charge from 12.4 to 06.30 instead of 004 to 06.30. That explains why it was recharging the battery as soon as I enabled it after the timed export. Did I feel stupid or what!. Anyway, laast night I set the times right and followed your instructions - worked a treat! Many thanks

Karen Glad all sorted. I have recently been setting charge start at 23:59 to avoid confusion - to myself!

My home configuration is: Gen 3 GivEnergy 5kW Hybrid Inverter, 2 * 9.5kWh batteries, 24 panels, facing East and West, on Octopus Flux with the Export coming on stream today. I am normally in ECO Mode and have a TIMED CHARGE from 02:00 to 05:00. That started off the day at 60% battery.

My first experiment with exporting was this afternoon. After a bright sunny day, I had 99% in the batteries. So, I thought, let's try TIMED EXPORT. It was coming up to 17:00 when I set up a period from then to 19:00, exporting to 80%. OK, that only took until about 18:00. At that point, the TIMED EXPORT was Disabled by the inverter, not me. ECO was still on, but the house started drawing from the grid with the battery Idle. That turned out to be caused by the Reserve in BATTERY OPTIONS being set to 80%. It is possible that would have cleared after the time period had expired. It took me a few goes to clear it, with Red error messages when I clicked SUBMIT. I also turned ECO off and on again. Then the Reserve was prepared to drop to 6% with a green message. Phew!

I have been playing with Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 3B, mostly following Speak to the Geek's excellent instructions. No way am I competent to do the discharge by automation, but I did get the Home Display working.

Timed Export usually turns the eco flag off. However, the portal may not update its display correctly, and so it can appear to be still be on. The activity log at the bottom of the remote-control page is the surest way to check what has actually been changed. Turning eco flag explicitly off then on again is the safest way to ensure that everyone agrees it is on.

I use Timed Discharge which is identical in every way to Timed Export, except that it leaves the eco flag on, rather than turning it off.

DD my understanding was that Timed Discharge was a period of time when you allowed the battery to discharge to meet house demand rather than using the grid. Timed Export is a period where you deliberately export to the grid whilst still meeting any base load from the home. Both very different strategies. I don’t like the new app controls for exporting, it doesn’t give the option to meet home demand whilst exporting although it seems to do that some of the time.

Jase1703 a period of time when you allowed the battery to discharge to meet house demand rather than using the grid

Is called ECO mode. Not timed anything.

You can't export without meeting the home demand because the house load, the inverter and the grid are all wired in parallel. The inverter has to supply more power than the house is taking to allow any to go to the grid.

Jase1703

Jase1703 I agree that the description in the docs make it sound like timed discard merely covers house demand. And older models, it's possible it does that. Best thing to do is to try for yourself to see how it behaves. Look at the low-level settings in the remote-control section, and see what changes when you change modes.
I think even support gets this wrong. I guess if you consider the "home demand" to mean the period outside the timed discharge period, the docs are okay.
But I should emphasise that this is how my system behaves, and I have asked for information about how other systems behave, but haven't yet read any alternative behaviours - see https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3654-timed-discharge-behaviour-survey

Jase1703

For me; 2x Gen 3 5.0 hybrids, 4x 9.5kW batteries.

Timed DISCHARGE: discharges the battery at full rate to the grid (at 4kW per inverter) and meets house demand at the same time. Then “returns to” (ie remains in) ECO mode when the timed period ends or the battery hits the reserve set.

Timed EXPORT: same but doesn’t go back into ECO mode. (Don’t know why anyone would want to do that ever but - ho hum).

So I suspect 99% of people would want to use TIMED DISCHARGE and not ‘timed export’. That way you merely adjust the times depending on how much you want to export discharge(!) to the grid (and house) at the end of the day (or during peak flux times?) finishing by 23:30 (or whatever time set for flux?) and return to normal ‘ECO’ mode. Then when you’ve got to your IOG timed charge period of 23:30 to 05:30. (Or end of flux peak prices), then it all goes back to normal (in ECO mode) but timed charge will still work afterwards and return to ECO mode again when finished.

So basically;
1) Leave ECO on all the time
2) Use timed DISCHARGE (not timed export!)
3) Set your times for ‘timed charge’ and ‘timed discharge’ and all should work as required with minimal fiddling.

The wording and descriptions are a bit misleading to say the least!

Pete UK that makes sense. I was using PredBat before last winter to control my forced exports which worked well, but ditched it for the winter as I am a heavy ASHP consumer in winter months. Probably going back to PredBat in April but manually discharging a full AIO late in the evening one warm sunny March days. I’ve got confused by the new app language but will now use Timed Discharge, as you suggest, because this returns to ECO mode. Thanks all for the help, including DD.

Jase1703 Interested to why you don't continue with Predbat in the winter?

I have an ASHP so use loads in the winter, far more than my battery can ever hold, but predbat has been very useful in keeping the battery charged on lowest rates and ensuring I save the battery for the peak periods.

geoffreycoan I’m also EV user on Intelligent Octopus with compatible Zappi 2. I find my winter strategy is very simple, charge AIO to 100%, heat water, charge EV every night after 11:30 by early evening AIO is all gone on the ASHP, 4 months of zero export opportunities wether solar or battery. If I was an Agile user I probably would have stuck with PredBat. I will reinstall PredBat for April as it worked well for me last year.

Jase1703 Thanks, interesting. With a flat all-day tariff, no peak period to worry about, and solar that gets lost in the ASHP daily consumption, agree Predbat is not going to give you a lot.

I went through most of the winter with a single 5.2kW battery (4.2kW usable!) and an ASHP on Agile so Predbat really helped.

Lots of new features and functions in Predbat since last year. Cheers

geoffreycoan so I see, I’m looking forward to getting back in. Might even consider Agile!

Pete UK I did a test with TIMED DISCHARGE last night. I created a timer running from 14:00 to 19:00, discharging to 80%. As it was 10 p.m, I didn't think to check anything for a while, but it switched off power from the batteries and the house started running entirely from the grid. I checked at about 11 p.m. using the mobile app and saw the results. That doesn't have the same controls as the portal, but I found the Battery DIscharge Settings and the Mode was set to "Scheduled". I set it back to "Dynamic", which seemed to do the trick, although by then, the normal battery discharge was not low enough for my daily TIMED CHARGE to kick in. Other than that, everything seemed to be under control. The batteries still had too much charge and with the bright sunshine this morning, are at 100%.

The annoying thing is, TIMED CHARGE does what I want when I want it, one day to the next. Why is TIMED DISCHARGE different? I think ECO mode was on all the time, but was effectively being ignored or overridden.

The Remote Control History shows me adjusting the Timed Charge limit down a bit to 60%, then the Battery Reserve % Limit up from 4% to 80% and Enable DC Discharge set to True. Both of the latter two were supposed to be in the timed period but had an immediate effect as the battery was just under 80% at that time. Enable DC Discharge was set back to False by me in the app an hour later. No change to ECO overall, and interestingly, no mention of the TIMED CHARGE period from 02:00 to 05:00 (Octopus Flux cheap rate). Maybe that was because the batteries were over 60% all the time.

I have set up a Home Assistant as a power monitor (work in progress) but really didn't want to have to use that for automating the discharge/export period (16:00 to 19:00 Flux peak rate).

DavidBriggs Sorry, I didn't mention the configuration:

GivEneregy Gen 3 5kW Hybrid Inverter
Inverter Firmware Version: D0.307-A0.307

GivEnergy 9.5kWh battery * 2
Battery Firmware Version: 3015

Jinko Tiger 435 Solar Panels 24 - 12 facing East, 12 West, currently generating some 3kW but the sun went behind a cloud. The batteries are both at 100%, ideal for a TIMED EXPORT, if you were to ask me...

This is a new setup, installed on the 29th February with the firmware updated at the same time.

DavidBriggs you don't really to change the battery reseve% - that's why it stopped covering the house demand. You can set a limit per discharge timer, but doesn't really behave as you'd want it to.

Better to choose the end time so that it stops at roughly the % you want. (Or the power level, but then you have to remember to restore it when you go back to covering dynamic demand.

DavidBriggs The batteries are both at 100%, ideal for a TIMED EXPORT, if you were to ask me...

Possibly not... if the batteries are at 100% then all the solar will go to the grid anyway. Because there's a limit on the AC generation, if you add in some battery discharge and the power reaches the 5kW limit, it will have to curtail the solar generation. Maybe better to wait until the sun has gone down a bit ?

DavidBriggs The annoying thing is, TIMED CHARGE does what I want when I want it, one day to the next. Why is TIMED DISCHARGE different?

Arguably it's exactly the same... if you do a timed charge, and it reaches the target % before the end of the configured time, the battery goes idle - it doesn't start discharging to the house (even though eco flag is on).

(It may even stop accepting charge from solar - my latest experiment suggested that it did, but others said their systems behaved differently. So I'd need to confirm. Though obviously timed charge usually happens at night when there's no solar to worry about.)

Timed discharge does the same: if it reaches the minimum % before the end of the timed period, the battery goes idle, rather than continuing to discharge beyond what you've configured.

DD Good point. I think the inverter might be hitting its 5kW limit as it is, with this bright sunshine.

DD Arguably it's exactly the same... if you do a timed charge, and it reaches the target % before the end of the configured time, the battery goes idle - it doesn't start discharging to the house (even though eco flag is on).

When I tried TIMED EXPORT, I found the timer was deactivated after it finished, so it wouldn't repeat. I disabled the TIMED DISCHARGE last night, when I discovered it wasn't doing what I expected.

The TIMED CHARGE timer does repeat, even when like today, it didn't need to charge the batteries as they were over 60% full already. Maybe there's a reason why that clock icon has a white face, where the TIMED EXPORT and DISCHARGE have black faces?

DavidBriggs Timed discharge doesn't cancel for me. (As experiments go, 5 hours is quite epic. I usually limit mine to a few minutes.)

DD I just ran another short test, as per your suggestion. I used the stored settings: 16:00 to 19:00, discharging to 80%, but Enabled it at 18:50. The battery ran at around 4kW for ten minutes, 1.5kW for the house demand while exporting at 2.4kW and stopped. Everything went back to normal ECO. No weird behaviour. Test successful.

The timer icon showed with a green background while active and has now reverted to black. I guess I will need to Disable it and maybe run it again a bit before 19:00 tomorrow.

Thanks for the suggestions.

DD Ah no, it wasn't back to normal. I just checked and the Battery Reserve level was up to 80%, so the house was running opff the grid. I Disabled the DISCHARGE timer and dropped the Reserve back down to 6%. It took a couple of goes to get the SUBMIT past Inverter timeouts. Nope, Checking the Logs, ECO mode was turned off a few seconds after I Disabled the DC Discharge. That took a couple of goes to correct as well. Phew! Too much to remember but I was checking the Speak to the Geek Home Assistant energy monitor as well as the Portal. Just had to keep on until the display made sense! What's with the Inverter timeouts?

DavidBriggs There is a catch to be wary of... Because timed-discharge is a combination of two underlying flags enable-eco-modo and enable-dc-discharge, turning off timed-discharge clears both flags. The "correct" way to do it is to switch from timed-discharge mode to eco mode (ie by turning eco mode on).

I really don't understand how anyone benefits from hiding the two real flags behind these three artificial modes. What's worse is that old app interface made it much harder to go wrong, but iOS app has apparently been switched to use the portal interface.

DavidBriggs

I presume you are wanting similar behaviour to how my system is set up (although me being on Intelligent Octopus go and you on Octopus Flux). So settings will be the same but your times different. I presume you are also wanting to charge as much as possible when it’s cheap and export as much as possible to the grid when you get paid more than import to maximise savings.

In the app I have;

ECO = “ON”
Timed charge 23:30–>05:30 (max 100%)
Timed discharge 19:00–>23:29 (reserve 0%)

Note the target percentages used. I don’t ever change these.

You shouldn’t need anything else than above. Which will repeat every day.

So my batteries will charge up to full in the 6 hours I have (and hold at 100% till 05:30) and discharge to ‘empty’ by 23:30, depending on where they start from at 19:00 (100%, 95% etc) and then revert to ECO until 23:29 (maybe only for 10-20 mins), draining the last few percent to house load only. At 23:30 they start charging from almost “empty” to full again at 05:30.

With your 5.0 hybrid inverter (same as mine and with 2x 9.5 batteries on it (although I have 2 inverters and 4 batteries)) it will charge at 3.4-3.5kW per hour, discharge at 4.0kW per hour.
This discharge equates to approx -21% of battery per hour. So if you start the timed discharge at 100% it’ll get to 80% in just less than an hour. (So you only need to set a discharge period of an hour if you want it to send 20% to the grid (minus house load of course).

You don’t need to fiddle in the portal every time. You can use the app to set this all. These settings will run and repeat every day unless you change something.

What I do keep an eye on and tweak is the start time of the timed discharge. In the summer, it’ll be 19:00–>23:30. As we get into winter I’ll adjust this to start later (depending on what’s in the battery). For example; if the battery is going to be at 70% early evening, I’ve only got 70/21% = 3.3 hours of discharging available (plus I aim to have about 10% left - BUT I still have reserve set =0%). So I’d adjust the start of the timed export to say 20:30–>23:30. Aiming to have the battery down to almost zero, just before the cheap period starts. In the winter I’m setting much shorter times of 22:30–>23:30, but in December I had a few days when I have nothing left to discharge to the grid!

I don’t think there is any point in setting (for example) a four hour discharge period but specifying a reserve limit of 80%, as effectively you’re only setting a 1 hour discharge period. Unless you are exporting Solar in that 4 hours period??? Even so, I not sure if it’ll perform as expected. Better to maybe set a 1 or 2 hour period with no reserve limit. Others on flux may suggest a better idea though…?

I’m not sure if the strategy for FLUX is exactly the same as for IOG, as I have a Tesla and get the longer off peak charge period with IOG (which helps a lot). Probably it is a very similar strategy.

Also, I don’t know if you have a heat pump or an EV. Which shakes up what’s most beneficial cost wise.

If you have an EV, you’d likely be far better off on IOG.

Hope that helps.

Pete UK So my batteries will ... discharge to ‘empty’ by 23:30, depending on where they start from at 19:00 (100%, 95% etc) and then revert to ECO until 23:29 (maybe only for 10-20 mins)

I don't understand that last bit: if the discharge stops before 23:29, it must be because the batteries have run out and hit the bottom reserve. At that point, I'd expect them to go idle, and the house would run from grid ? The batteries may well bounce back a little after half an hour or so, but I'd have thought they'd go back to full discharge until they ran out again.

But I agree that a discharge % limit is not the way to manage things.

Pete UK I’m not sure if the strategy for FLUX is exactly the same as for IOG. Probably it is a very similar strategy.

I've not checked Flux rates recently, but last time I looked, daytime export rate was similar to overnight import rate, so there's very little benefit in discharging just before the cheap-rate slot.

A forced discharge is only useful during the peak slot (4pm to 7pm), but then of course you've got the problem that you need to keep enough to run the house in the evening. Peak-rate export is similar to daytime import.

Actually, if that is the case, then I suppose there is a case for fully discharging during the peak rate - if you were to hold back say 2kWh to run the house in the evening, then the cost is roughly the same as just exporting those 2kWh during peak rate, then importing what you need from the grid at daytime rate. But have to take into account round-trip losses, etc. But if you only actually needed 1kWh, then it's a very slight win.

But as I said, it's been a while since I actually looked at the Flux rates, and the details will matter. (IOG is working well for me at the moment.)

DD

Good point. Yes, you’d expect that and I’m not 100% sure why they do that. But they do.
I’d be interested to see what happens on other identical systems…? (Maybe @DavidBriggs or someone else can confirm the same behaviour on their hybrid systems or not?)

Maybe this is the normal behaviour. Or maybe not. I don’t know for sure because I’m on this beta trial. I assumed (maybe incorrectly?) it was.

It may be because I’m on the s/w inverter balancer beta trial and something in that is turning ECO back on? Or maybe it’s the normal behaviour? - not enough to discharge at max rate but enough for house load to trickle down on eco? Possible? Not sure.
It may be because there is an imbalance between all 4 of my batteries “indicated” SOC percentages. So when “empty” and they revert to ECO for the last 10-20 mins I’ll see my 4 battery percentages at; 0%, 34%, 9%, 18% !
But with voltages of 50.0v 50.9v, 50.3v, 50.9v ! 🤷🏼‍♂️ - This is with reserve set to 0%.
Usually one inverter will stop discharging at 4kW before the other by about 10-20mins ! (Possibly a battery capacity issue)

On an additional tangent; My system seems to be ‘working’ ‘normally’ (after replacing 2 out of the 4 batteries (both the secondaries)). I’ve been moaning since install because there has always been a very large indicated SOC difference between the primary and secondary, (preventing full capacity use of the secondary battery when the primary got to 0% or 100% - effectively rendering trapped usable capacity in one battery pair) with the primaries seeming to be doing the majority of the work (getting much hotter). The balancer beta software significantly reduces one inverter pair discharging into the other by “pausing and playing” the individual inverters but there is still always a split on the indicated percentages on an inverters battery pair. One pair it can be 35-45% different and the other pair is less with 10-15% split in indicated SOC. Similar voltages though but much different temps under load (charging/discharging). When the primary is empty (or full) the secondary overtakes and gets hotter than the primary and discharges faster. Getting hotter than the primary at extreme ends (which normally it never does - it’s normally much cooler and seems to be doing less work).

GE say there is an issue and they are coming on Thursday but they didn’t say what the issue is or what they are coming to do/replace ! I’ll grill the engineer when he’s here 😁

I’m still patiently waiting for the CEMS but for now the beta is doing a reasonably ok job of preventing the cross charging between inverters (like 98% better!).

Back to the original issue; someone please report back on the behaviour after timed discharge depletes the battery. What happens on your system? Does it:
A) pause the battery and draw from grid?
B) revert to ECO?
C) something else?

DD

Yes, what you said is what I seem to remember regarding flux.

IOG is also working very well for us. I did calculate all the numbers and charge/ discharge rates to fit in the best with this tariff when designing my system. It’s actually worked out a bit better than I expected, with effectively zero import at peak time all year - bar a couple of days over Christmas/ new year. So really happy overall (except for the faulty batteries and no CEMS yet!). I’m anticipating being cost neutral for electricity this year.

There are a lot of variables and moving parts though.
Heat pumps, usage, size of array and EV’s all change the dynamics of what’s best for each individual.

It’s definitely the battery usage and tariff that makes the most difference though (at the moment). With the EV being the enabler to get the best rates.

Pete UK Or maybe it’s the normal behaviour? - not enough to discharge at max rate but enough for house load to trickle down on eco? Possible? Not sure.

That is possible: the higher the power drawn, the lower the voltage goes. So perhaps it depends on whether it stops the discharge because the voltage got too low, or because the (estimated) SoC gets to the lower limit. In the former case, as soon as you reduce power, the voltage will float up. But in the latter case, on my system at least, it takes it a while (at least 30 mins) for estimated SoC to increase a bit.

Another possibility is that in the beta firmware they changed the behaviour of timed discharge with a lower limit: if you define that the discharge period ends when either the end-time is reached, or the min-percent is reached, then it can return to eco mode as soon as it gets to the lower threshold. Which I think most would argue is better behaviour (even though it diverges from timed-charge, when most people probably want the battery to idle, rather than go back to eco mode, if it reaches target-percent before the end-time).

Pete UK someone please report back on the behaviour after timed discharge depletes the battery. What happens on your system? Does it:
A) pause the battery and draw from grid?
B) revert to ECO?
C) something else?

On my hybrid gen-3 with 305/3012 (holding off the latest firmware upgrade): I try to avoid discharging at full power down to the stops - rarely force a discharge at full power anyway, prefering a more gentle discharge, and stop at around 10% (will probably revise that to 8%).

I (ab)use timed discharge slots to idle the battery: I defer charging until 0030, and idle the battery from 2330 by setting a timed-discharge slot with a minimum-percent of 100%. In this case, it definitely doesn't return to eco, but sits quietly until the end of the timed window, so that I am importing from the grid. (Though I actually have to use two discharge slots, since there seems to be a bug if the timer crosses midnight.)

Pete UK IOG is also working very well for us. I did calculate all the numbers and charge/ discharge rates to fit in the best with this tariff when designing my system.

I just got lucky - when I ordered the system, IOG was still only paying the 4p SEG for export. But then by the time it had actually got installed, it had gone up to 15p. That then inspired me to get a Zappi, so that I could move from Go to IOG.

DD

That seems sensible. I’d probably do the same.

As I’ve got two batteries on each inverter; discharging at max only equates to 2kW discharge rate from each battery, which is quite gentle. (although I’m not 100% convinced it does that on my system - I don’t think they are balanced. 😂)

On this beta trial, there is only one discharge slot available (10 show up but only one is read by the software currently). It reads the first slots discharge times and sends the commands remotely. (So even when the toggle is set to off, it still goes ahead with the discharge). It’s a quirk with the beta but if I had more slots available, I’d use them all, so that I didn’t have to adjust the discharge start time. Ie I’d have multiple slots discharging down by 10% limit, that way it would be automated all year round!
ie 1800: discharge down to 90% then eco.
1830 discharge down to 80% then eco.
1900 discharge down to 70% then eco.
…etc all the way to 23:30.

Would be a neat solution instead of manually assessing what I’ve got left to discharge every day and would ensure the maximum export benefit without the extra effort!

Roll on the EMS and getting my 10 slots back 💪🏼

DD

Yep. Same here. Installed end of June 2023.
Incentives changed. Strategy got far simpler and more lucrative.
It might not always be this way though. But for now happy days.

Pete UK
I have the Hybrid 3.6 invertor with 8.2Kw battery - I was wondering why the battery was no longer supplying the house demand and now realise that because I have timed export set that this has turned ECO off and that turning ECO on will turn timed export off! The timed discharge seems to make sense BUT I don't see this as an option in my settings. Do I need a software upgrade or is this peculiar to my invertor? I also have a Zappi wired in and perhaps this could manage a timed discharge too? I'll check the manual.

philipdawsonladds Givenergy have mucked about with the app recently so it behaves as you said, turning timed export off turns off eco and vice versa. If you use the portal to set a timed export or a timed discharge you can avoid this behaviour (timed discharge is still an option in the portal)

philipdawsonladds It's peculiar to your inverter, I'm afraid. Assuming it's a gen-1. While other inverters can export to the grid while eco is on, the gen-1 cannot (except perhaps the very latest firmware), and so the UI makes them mutually exclusive.

Timed-discharge is now implemented using a pause timer which, again, gen-1 does not support.

You could probably use an external agent like wonderwatt.com to provide you with a timed-export which automatically turns eco mode back on afterwards.