For some reason my battery is now not charging with excess solar, it's going straight back to the grid.
I've just tried to 're-enable' Eco mode by pressing submit on the screen with the toggle already enabled, but it gives me an error to say it couldn't save settings, same with Battery Charge and Discharge settings.
@Danlambert (GivEnergy) are there any other issues introduced with Monday's update that are causing this?
I've managed to 'fix' it by turning the toggle off, then back on and re-submitting.
I'm still not 100% convinced that something else hasn't changed though as it definitely seems to be behaving differently today than it has done over the last weeks and months.
It looks like something to do with the 'modes' has changed.
Prior to Monday I would have Timed Charge and Discharge enabled and setup for the Economy 7 tariff I'm on, charging the battery as needed overnight, then switching over to battery just before the 'day rate' kicked in. That's how I'd reset it after the bug that caused the battery not to charge was resolved, but then it wasn't charging the battery with excess solar.
It now does charge the battery with excess solar, but only in Eco mode, if I set something in the Timed Discharge tab, it then just exports any excess.
How do I set this up so that it uses grid power for the whole of the 'night rate' and battery power the rest of the time (as available), charging the battery with excess solar as Eco also seemed to switch over to battery as soon as it was charged to 100% last night, rather than at the end of the 'charging period'?
Damien eco just tries to minimise grid export and use excess solar to charge the batteries.
To prevent discharge use Timed Charge settings - during the period of timed charge the batteries will not support house consumption, but just charge up to and then maintain at what ever target SoC you've set until the charge period ends.
GrahamRead That's how it's set right now so I'll have to see what it does overnight, but certainly this morning it was discharging the battery during the charging window and before the start of the Timed Discharge settings.
Damien out of interest, why do you have Timed Discharge set? If you use Eco, and Timed Charge, then I'm not sure I see the need for Timed Discharge? (other than if you have a variable unit rate during the day, and only want battery support in an expensive evening period - but not sure anyone has those rates other than Agile)
GrahamRead I tried Timed Discharge when I moved to Economy 7, along with Timed Charge, which seemed to work exactly as I wanted: using grid during the 'night rate' and the battery the rest of the time, plus charging the battery with excess solar if there was any.
That's why I say, I think something has changed, because it's behaving differently now than it was, with those same settings...
Another advantage of using Timed Charge and Eco is that if you enter the timed charge period with a SOC higher than your target SOC the Eco mode will continue to operate and allow the battery to discharge down to your target SOC.
This is a useful winter tool if you set your target SOC to guarantee having enough stored energy to cover usage from the end of the cheap rate period to the start of the next day's cheap rate period. This then means that at the worst (no solar generation) you are only ever using cheap rate electricity and on good days solar may put enough back into the battery to avoid grid charging altogether. Where a day's solar falls somewhere between the two you are minimising the amount of grid import and it is all at cheap rate.
The catch is that you have to have a battery capacity that is greater than your electricity usage from the end of the cheap rate period to the start of the next cheap rate period and an AC inverter with enough capacity to charge to the target SOC within the cheap rate period. If your system meets these criteria you can set and forget in the knowledge that you are importing the minimum amount of electricity and any that you do is at the cheapest rate. 😀
Likewise, I am on economy7 and only utilise the Eco (mode1) and the Timed Charge setting. As described previously, timed charge set for the 7hr period, this charges to the target SOC and holds it there. Discharge only starts at the end of the timed charge period, so no need for the Timed Discharge in most circumstances. The Eco mode then controls the system for the rest of the day, all generation going to the home or when extra available to the battery. It is only as a last resort that it exports to the grid and in my experience, at this time of year, this has been very rare.
Mine was the same, on the 3rd i made an adjustment and looking at my fault log its linked to AC charge limit.
The error it reported says Enable AC Charge Upper % Limit Write error. Contact support true false true.
The AC charge upper% limit was toggled off when i checked today.
It still did not update once it toggled it back on so moved it from mode 1 to 2 then back and now its behaving.
Really not great
Hi Guys, please excuse me I am very very new to this. Where you set Eco mode I figured you only had to have it enabled when off-setting the timer settings. Does this then mean the enabled is required even though timer is not being used?
There appear to be different answers to the issue of the battery discharging during the "Timed Charge" period if the % level set is less than 100%.
Would be good to get a definitive answer from GivEnergy. Should the battery discharge during the "Timed Charged" period?
I have just tested the Timed Charge as part of another thread. My battery had 60% in and i set the % timed charge to 20% and the system is still discharging the battery. i thought setting a timed charge disabled discharge, sadly I was wrong. It appears to be SOC level not timings.