Grid used instead of battery power

8 comments started 2023-04-29 last 2023-04-29
Cloud Portal
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#1 solarfan2014

On occasional but repeated occasions over the last 2 months, my system shows demand peaks of up to 2.5kWh taken from the grid when there was ample battery power available.
99% of the time this does not happen but I wonder why it does and if there's a developing fault with my system.
I've been asking GivEnergy about this since March and have received no reply. Does anyone else see this happening ?

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#2 TX200

That’s an export to the grid, not an import.

The battery is full, so any generation will be used by the house and any surplus sent to the grid.

#3 positor1

TX200
it says grid import 2714 w ?

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#4 TX200

positor1 oh, I saw 2.5 in the text and 2.5 export at the top.

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#5 ToothyChris

I suspect those brief imports are where the system is settling (when a kettle or similar was switched on) - and they happened to coincide with the 5 minute 'snapshot' sample, taken for the portal. These usually only last 10-30 seconds and are quite normal.

If they last much longer than that, then there may be an issue, but on the above evidence I doubt it.

What was the total amount of energy imported during that day?

(Conversely, I boiled the kettle this morning, and it did not register on this graph at all, as it all happened between two samples - it's just down to chance. Once you understand that the graph is made up of 5 minute samples - ignoring what happens between them - then it becomes more understandable. You would think that plotting a graph like this would be simple, but actually it is much more complicated than it might seem. You could get it to use some averaging, but that would show values lower than reality. Or you could show a peak value, but that would over-report reality).

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#7 ToothyChris

alan_johnston I get that occassionally, when the battery gets to 100% it can sometimes fall asleep while in the 'Waiting' status, and it needs a bit of a kick to wake it up.

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#8 solarfan2014

Thank you everyone. I think the 5 minute snapshot window seems the most likely explanation.
I've also seen (or rather not seen) occasions when a kettle boil hasn't registered. Now I know about the 5 min gap that's covered too.
My first question solved - thank you !