suggestion: eco mode with net export

AIUI, eco mode aims to balance import and export, to give net zero grid activity. My suggestion is to add a parameter to allow the balance point to be configured to something other than zero. It seems like it ought to be a fairly trivial change: just compare the measured power flow against a register value, rather than constant 0.

Justification: With flux, it may be desirable to configure the system to discharge the battery to the grid during the peak period. But I think that can currently only be done by changing mode, so that the battery is discharging at a fixed rate. Suppose I wanted to export 1kW from the battery during this period. But if I turn the kettle on, this fixed rate might not be enough to power the kettle, and so I might end up importing the balance from the grid, which is the last thing I want to do. So what I really want is to still have eco mode running, turning the discharge rate to take total demand into account, where total demand now includes preferred discharge rate.

The thing that needs some additional refinement is how PV should be taken into account. I think it's really a targeted discharge I'm after, rather than a targeted export. ie if PV is generating 2kW, I'd still like to aim for 1kW of battery discharge, giving a total of 3kW export. Or perhaps rather than calling it a targeted discharge rate, I should call it a minimum discharge rate, but eco mode can still request more if, say. I turn the kettle on. Is this making any sense ?

Long term, it would be nice to have this as a timed feature (ie between 16:00 and 19:00 I want min discharge to be 1kW), but I think for initial testing, it would be sufficient that this can be set externally by an agent such as HA.

Thoughts ?

Sounds like a good idea - might also help people with an iBoost that wants to kick in if there is too much export (if setup as a small targeted import).

DD You've obviously given a lot of thought to how you can optimise your asset to recoup your investment as best you can. I think you should be able to achieve what you are looking for with a home automation system doing some dynamic battery discharge rate control. There's nothing wrong in suggesting that Givenergy support his approach but they would have to consider whether in doing that, they then have to maintain their firmware to cater for all the changes to tariffs that will come in the future from any energy supplier and also their customer base use cases.

IMO, Givenergy should concentrate on getting their firmware so that it is reliable and predictable for all of their badged kit and look to third parties (eg @Britkat for GivTCP or the energy supplier) to offer solutions or tools to help end users to control the asset as desired.

Just a thought...

Wouldn't everything be a little easier/simpler and less work for GE if they just built a standard HA front end that pulls in the data from each set point. Then they could generate a cloud login for each client using something like HA Cloud.

Then when customers create useful and interesting addons/dashboard settings etc etc GE can simply integrate those into the standard HA Front End.

For those more adventurous users who are capable/competent with HA and want the bells and whistles they can produce standard documentation that details what information can be read, written or saved.

Currently seems like GE put a lot of work duplicating, or trying, to duplicate work/things that could be achieved more easily simply with HA...........?

Resulting in nothing much happening at any kind of pace.

Understood, but wouldn't it require polling data at quite a high rate in order to implement eco mode using an external agent ? That's surely one of the things that really wants be happening inside the inverter itself. Ditto other real-time things like throttling charge/discharge rate as the battery approaches extremes of SOC.

Unless there was a way to enable some sort of streaming of a set of readings, with the inverter pushing them out at a fixed rate (like mqtt, I suppose), rather than requiring the agent to poll for the values. But perhaps using udp rather than tcp.

But yes, doing things like timed mode switches is something that could be done externally rather than requiring features built into the inverter - indeed I anticipate doing so at some point.

On the other hand, not everyone wants to be relying on an internet connection to allow a cloud-based agent to control the thing; nor does everyone want to set up a local rpi or similar to perform local control - they'd expect the inverter to have a certain feature set out of the box. (But one of the things that drew me to GE was the option of local control, for those who wish to use it.)

DD polling data at quite a high rate in order to implement eco mode using an external agent

Yes. I would suggest that leaving the inverter to do its thing would be the way to go. However, if you wanted to export during a peak period, you could automate the timed change to timed discharge (I'm a bit hazy on how this would actually work because I've never used the mode in this way, but here goes). Eg If your nominal house load was 500W and you want to export 1kW, you could set the Inverter Max Output Active Power Percent to a value that reflected your inverter's capability to discharge at 1.5kW during the timed discharge period. During the period, you'd monitor export and adjust the Inverter Max Output Active Power Percent to maintain the 1kW export. Obviously, you'd have to accept that you can't get instantaneous changes since there are time delays in the process, but you should be able to adjust inverter output within say 30 seconds.

Givtcp can poll at 5 second intervals, sending data back over MQTT to HA, but I've found that 20 seconds is more reliable. As you say, the reliance on cloud control can leave you wanting from time to time but I'd also accept that local rpi (or cheaper Dell Wyse terminal/thin client) isn't necessarily something that everyone would want to invest time in.

dragon2905 Decent integration with both Alexa AND Google Home would be a great starting point for me.

I have noticed that if Eco is set to enabled then if a Timed Charge is then set it still retains the Eco mode. However, when the Timed Export is set then the Eco mode is disabled when the start time kicks in - very frustratingly if you're on the Octopus Flux tariff. I've been caught out with this expensive trap.
I've asked GE to have a look at this but no response yet!
I now set reminders on my watch and Alexa to switch back to Eco at 1900hrs, as an interim measure, and it seems to be working for me at present.
It is being added to the 'to do' list for my son when he gets around to sorting out a programming solution for me via the API etc.

MF check out Octopus R&D, they have a scheduler on there that should do this. albeit have suffered with some outages which means that instructions haven't always been sent. Home Assistant would be a good alternative that doesn't rely on the internet

MF

MF building on @Cdent’s suggestion, there’s also a promise of a better scheduler provided by Givenergy in the pipeline.