I am trying to force charge one of my two batteries (individual inverters), but when I use the 'AC Charge Enable' toggle, nothing seems to happen.
If I use the force charge ('Charge Now') option in the App, it kicks off charging for both of my inverter/batteries, and I can then turn one of them off again. No other setting are changed from default, and none of them change when I use the App command.
So to summarise, in the Portal I can stop a charge, but not start a charge....
ToothyChris Did you also set the start and stop times in the portal? When the API issues a "charge now" instruction it sets the start time to 00:00 and end time to 23:59.
Thanks stevelewis
Yes, the default stop and start times are fine.
I think that the problem may be that because I'm only trying to charge one battery, and because the other battery has charge, it is actually cross-charging rather than pulling from the grid. I'll try again later to see if that theory is correct.
ToothyChris target SoC less than actual charge in one of the systems? Set max discharge to zero to prevent cross-charging?
ToothyChris You haven't actually said, but I assume that you've got two AC-coupled inverters, each with its own battery. If this is the case, then you could set the inverter with the healthy battery to prevent discharging while you set the other inverter to charge (from grid). It'd be better to do this from the portal as you'd have control of individual inverters, rather than the app.
To prevent the battery discharging, either set the battery discharge power to zero or set a timed discharge which will hold the battery until the start of the discharge period. Don't forget to press Submit when you change the settings.
If you have a Time of Use tariff, then setting both inverters to charge for the whole off-peak period will enable both to charge to the charge to % at the battery charge power (%) which you set on the inverter Settings tab on the portal.
Are both batteries connected to a single inverter?
Yes Tim , twin AC3.0 with a battery on each. And yes I got round the issue by setting the discharge power to zero. on the other system, to prevent cross-charging.
Thanks all for your input. I learn something new every day.
We should have Economy 7 from Octopus soon, so I can start to use the batteries in anger on a daily basis. When I spoke to Octopus, the girl I spoke to was able to confirm that they were indeed in discussion with GE, and that a dedicated GivEnergy Tariff should be announced soon. No details though.