Good Morning all. Can anyone help me understand why my battery/inverter are no longer supplying the house with power. I have tried to check the settings but don't fully understand them, the inverter is set on Eco setting and should be providing power to the house yet I just seem to be drawing off the grid and the battery is at 100%. any pointers will be gratefully received.
Pussers_War_Canoes Can you give more background on this? E.g. is this true across the whole day, or is it just for a few hours and then it begin supplying power again?
My understanding of Eco is that it deliberately saves some energy for when the Grid is likely to be at highest demand. Certainly that's what I've observed too.
E.g. I'd imagine that it's drawing Grid power during likely times of surplus (e.g. 2pm - 4pm) and then will be using your battery more around 5pm - 7pm.
It should still end up depleting your battery by the end of the day, so there's no disadvantage to you. It's just a win-win for everyone as a whole...
Check to see if the inverter has power. Are all the readings for solar, battery and consumption present and up to date on the portal?
I would probably start with a soft inverter restart. Go to 'Inverters' in the portal and click on the power button icon on the right. That might kick it back into life.
Eco mode will continuously balance between solar, battery and grid throughout the day and night so long as solar and battery power is available. The only exception to this is if you set a timed charge or discharge.
The system was installed in March and we first set it up to run Eco mode, the battery would discharge to the house, mainly overnight, and recharge from the PV during the day, recently the battery has not been discharging at all. When I checked the settings Eco had turned off, all by itself it would apppear, I reset the system to Eco but the battery is still not discharging. We haven't set a timed charge or discharge on the system, all the reading for the power consumption and PV are showing on both the App and dashboard.
Pussers_War_Canoes Try resetting to defaults then set Eco again.
I’ve found that if you have change mode set to solar plus grid, it often ends up setting the battery reserve to 100%, meaning that it will never discharge. If you drop the reserve to say 5% it will start supplying the house.
It’s very odd behaviour.
I've reset the inverter and we will see what happens, the battery reserve is set at 4% so it doesn't seem to be that but if nothing changes I will reset to default and start again. Thank you for all your input.
Riscy My understanding of Eco is that it deliberately saves some energy for when the Grid is likely to be at highest demand.
Assuming you have no automations set (eg Octopus), the Givenergy inverter Eco mode is designed to supply house load from PV when available and from battery when there is insufficient PV available. If there is surplus PV, Eco mode diverts the surplus to battery until that is 100% charged at which point the inverter exports up to the (G98/G99) limit set by your installer or Givenergy. If the battery depletes down to the Reserve (4% is the lowest value an end user can set), and there is no PV, the inverter cannot supply house load and so that is imported from grid. It does not do any clever scheduling for unit price unless you have automations set, or some home automations using Home Assistant or similar. A timed charge will charge from the grid during the selected period up to the Charge to % at the rate determined by the battery charge rate.
Pussers_War_Canoes recently the battery has not been discharging at all
Check whether your battery isolator has tripped. The gen 1 hybrids have an isolator located between the battery and the inverter. It's usually in a plastic DIN case and has a green switch. It should be in the up position. If it has tripped, it will be in the down position. These do trip from time to time, usually caused by overheating relating to trapped insulation under the terminals, loose terminals or poor contacts within. If this has happened, lift the lever to the up position but expect it to trip again sometime soon. Call your installer and ask them to change the isolator under warranty. The gen 2 inverters don't have this isolator.
Tim the Givenergy inverter Eco mode is designed to supply house load from PV when available and from battery when there is insufficient PV available
Now this is "interesting"...
I don't want to hijack the thread here. But my installation definitely withholds charge at consistent times of the day - I'll share some graphs later. The battery sits holding its charge and doesn't release to the house. Even when there's no PV (i.e. after dark). I say "interesting" because I have a major issue with the battery not charging from Grid when told to do so. Even to the point of depleting down to 40V and then needing a jump-start from an bench supply. Perhaps these things are linked.