Rapid drain concern

Hi. Complete newbie, so please go easy on me! My new 9.5 battery was installed & commissioned two days ago so today has been the first full day of operation. This afternoon, it's lost 60% in just 6 hours with not a huge amount of appliances running in the home. The Kitchen hob has been on for one hour, the kettle has boiled 3 times, a few lights have been on during the time period and my work computer has also been running for the full duration of the day. I was expecting it to last longer than this. The home is heated with oil and the immersion has only been on for about 30 mins. Does this rate of depletion sound about right? It's probably just newbie anxiety - I'm the same when I get a new mobile phone and stress unnecessarily about the phone running out of juice too quickly!

One other issue I'm facing is that I'm only able to view cloud data on the app, not home data. The blue light on the dongle is lit and steady. When I try to connect to wifi, it's asking for a password, which I don't have!

Your thoughts and expertise would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Forgot to say that solar generated 8.3 kwh today, we've imported 17.1 kwh from grid and exported 2.3 kwh. Battery is set to eco mode with timed charging set for 00.30-04.30 to take advantage of Octopus go tarrif.

Thanks again.

Ben50 Look at the numbers provided in the app/portal and see if they make sense. 60% of 9.5 is only 5.7kwh. 30 minutes of a normal emersion is 1.5kwh. A hob for an hour is anything up to 2.5Kwh per ring.

Ultimately, use the portal and look at the Energy Graph panel and select Battery Out - this will tel you where the inverter thinks it sent your 5.7kwh. There is also a 'loss' involved with any battery operation, either Charging or Discharging. It varies but can be as high as 10%.

Like many people, you could suffering from the dreaded State of Charge (SOC) issue. This means that your system thinks it is 100% full, but in reality it is only partially full. There is a software update which is supposed to come out soon, but has been a long time coming.

Some simple maths regarding your usual daily energy usage (in kW.h), compared to the battery capacity (plus whatever you add from solar) should tell you if a 60% depletion sounds right.

I would suggest that you leave the settings as they are for a few days (so Eco, plus your timed charge), until you start to get a feel for the system's operation. There will be lots for you to learn and understand....

Ben50 give it a couple of days. You’ve a battery calibration to get through and the solar is all over the place. Turn your back on it until next week and see where you are then. It’s difficult at the start to become comfortable with wierd numbers. Eventually the trend will settle down and you’ll see where you’re going.

Thanks so much for the reassurance guys...I'll let it do it's thing for a week or so and the take another look. Thanks again.

Ben50

Or go into the https://givenergy.cloud/dashboard dashboard and check the Energy Graph section (click the 4 arrows top right).

Then make sure date it set to today, and the type is set to home, you should then see your home consumption with half hour bar charts and how much of that is from the battery.

Flip mode to Battery Out for battery to home figures only.

Check your baseline usage as well, my house with not much going on uses 200W. Easier to visualise this on the Power Graph section from the same place, hover over the Load Power bit at the bottom of the chart or unclick the rest to see it in isolation.

Right click and open in new tab for larger size.

My background load is 400W permanently with about 200W of that being stuff I know I could turn off.

I'm seeing what I think is high-drain too.

Are we confident we can separate the SOC issue from high-drain?

E.g. my system will typically take 4.5kWh of overnight charge Grid-To-Battery, according to the Portal. It then gives back 3.5kWh.

Some might say "ah, that's the SOC calc, it potentially had more than 3.5kWh to give back but it thought it was empty"

I'd say "no" - because it repeats that process every day, consistently. If it was an SOC miscalc then the next evening's charge would be less, because the battery would be closer to full already? So, I think it's possibly burning 1kWh of charge each day on losses somewhere.

What do you guys see on your Battery In and Battery Out graphs on the Portal?

Riscy don't forget there will be some energy lost converting from dc to ac, but 1kWh does seem high, I normally see around 0.5kWh lost per day

Cdent Yeah it's 1kWh on 3.5kWh out... I.e. ₃₀%. This is especially odd given I'm only charging at 1.3kW, so the I2R losses should be 0.25x what you'd expect. Not 4x...

Riscy I2R losses are one thing, but should be small anyway. Inverter efficiency is possibly a more important aspect and it may be less efficient at lower charge rates. This is a well recognised effect on EV charging, albeit the current (or power) range can be a lot greater.