Ideal settings to preserve battery capacity for power cuts

Anyone care to share advice on which settings they may have altered to hopefully see them through a time of on going power cuts? I feel that I don't have much control over when the battery is being discharged, I totally understand that it's better for the lifespan of a battery and the cost of the electric bill to do this but if you end up with an almost depleted battery by late afternoon and the grid goes down that evening, you'll be totally in the dark.

During the Winter months at least, would it be a good idea to alter the settings so that the grid charges the battery to 100% from say midnight to 4AM or so? A time when there's less demand on the grid in general and less inconvenience to most of us if a power cut did occure.

Any other advice or suggestions would be most welcome, this system is all new to me. 😄

These systems are grid-tied, so unless you have had the EPS system wired in (not usually done as default) then your system will power down during a power cut.

SteveandLinda During the Winter months at least, would it be a good idea to alter the settings so that the grid charges the battery to 100% from say midnight to 4AM or so?

That can be down using Timed Charge. There's a boatload of other threads asking the same question.

If you have EPS setup and some circuits on it, then set a reserve battery %. The normal discharge will stop at this lvel. Should you have a power cut, the EPS will remain powered up from this reserve capacity.

Zakalwe Yes, I went for the EPS option, all this talk of daily 2 hour power cuts, typically from 5PM when you most likely need to use power, I figured why not utilise the battery for this situation too?

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Thanks, any suggestions on what that figure should be?

My view is don't set the reserve for unexpected power cuts. (A brave move, but I don't want to use the grid every evening when I could use the battery).

Then if we get rolling power cuts announced, I'll then set a reserve (perhaps something like 30% as I don't want to power much).

Plus might even top up from the grid before the planned power cut happens if need be.

TX200 Yes, those are all my thoughts too,....settings that would provide a good balance basically, like you say, using the battery every evening but would also tide you over in the event of a power cut.

SteveandLinda I have been successfully using a 20% limit because I certainly didn't want to be sitting on £000s of pounds worth of batteries and be unable to use them in a power cut.
But my system may be different to yours. I have an AC3.0 plus two 8.5Kwh batteries installed in July 2021 (just before the rush...) But I have limited solar in E and S directions which require SolarEdge controllers because of significant shading from trees. Which means I mostly depend on GO to charge up from 20% to 80%. I very rarely have enough solar to make 100% but last summer was fairly exceptional.
Be careful with your EPS though. Mine is manually switched to some limited circuits and when first tested (with minimal loading) the inverter failed which I think was down to a blown power MOSFET. Presumably it was substandard, but it is worth testing before you really need it.
Incidentally, my master battery cycles between 4 and 1 green lights, whereas the slave battery usually stays between 4 and 3 lights. I'd be interested in any views on how beneficial, or otherwise, this might be for long term duration.
I have also managed to avoid the ongoing SOC (State of Charge) issues so I don't intend to switch from D0.599 -A0.599 and 3005...

wrefordj I only have the one 5.4 battery and 4Kwh of solar panels on the roof, automatic transfer switch, the limited circuits are the kitchen sockets, lights in there + the bathroom and the oil fed boiler/pump for the rads.
I know that it's not a huge system but it's better than nothing,.....I wish that I had the space and budget to be able to go off grid 24/7 to be honest, sadly I don't.

I'd be interested to hear from others on the battery green light aspect too, mine did cycle from 4 to 1 when first installed, which I expected but to get the most life out of these batteries, is it better to not drop lower than say 2 green lights from now on??