Given the recent change to Intelligent Octopus, I now want to set my system up to only charge from the grid. I'll charge overnight and then export any generation over the house load to the grid.
Any way to do this?
Gen 1 Hy5 and 2 x 8.2 batteries.
Zakalwe If you do a force charge overnight and then once you have the battery charged to the level you want, set the battery charge rate to zero and it won’t charge the battery any more.
If house load exceeds solar the batteries will discharge to meet it, but any any solar generation will go to export when the charge rate is zero. Obviously keep an eye on your battery SoC to ensure that you retain enough charge to see you through to the next cheap charging period.
You could automate this with Home Assistant (maybe Octopus R&D as well), or just set alarms on your phone to do it manually in the app.
Zakalwe Do you use that much electricity between the cutoff for cheap price and when sun comes up to make it worth it?
Base house load for this home WAS 300 before I got solar equipment now there is a +80-150w overhead thanks to the inverter/gateway consumption and its usually done in minutes by the time the sun comes up, what kind of array do you have? I would have assumed it wasn't too small with 2x 8.2 batteries.
I am also doing this but perhaps to a further degree.
a.) I will charge my batteries ONLY from the grid during the Intelligent Octopus hours i.e. 23:30 - 05:30
b.) During the day i.e. 05:30 - 23:30 I want ALL of my Solar generation to go to the grid
c.) Meet any House load from my Batteries
The only piece I can make work is a.) but not b.) & c.). Can you advise which settings we need to make this happen and ideally I didn't want to have to make changes every day.
TRhanks for the replies so far. I'm still thinking on this one, especially as Octopus have seemed to put me on Outgoing Agile!
DarrenA b.) During the day i.e. 05:30 - 23:30 I want ALL of my Solar generation to go to the grid
c.) Meet any House load from my Batteries
The batteries might not (certainly not in my case) be able to meet all house load. Ideally what we want is to export to grid over and above house load.
Ideally what I am after is something that will dump all solar gen above house load to export, PLUS the ability to read Octopus's Agile Outgoing rates for the day and then dump the batteries to grid to maximise earning.
I'm sure that this is automatable to someone with decent Home Assistant knowledge. I am, unfortunatley, not that person....
Zakalwe - I am confident that the 19 kWh is enough to meet all my House load so I just want to divert 100% of the Solar generation to the grid and use the batteries for 100% of the House load. But I still can't find the right settings to do this.
DarrenA i am not on Intelligent so dont know the export rates but with my tariff, Flux, these settings will not give me optimum ROI.
i would want my battery to be 100% at 4PM (when export tariff is peak) so that i can export and drain my battery to 40% or 7PM, whichever comes first. Then i use the batteries up to 2AM when i charge them back to 70% (in summers, 100% in winters).
in your config you are missing out the export in the peak hour as you are already exporting throughout the day which is sub-optimal.
So the setup I have from Octopus is:
[Intelligent Octopus] Import rates 7.5p/kWh - 23:30 - 05:30
[Octopus Outgoing Fixed] Export rates 15p/kWh (No specific time periods)
I plan to fully charge my batteries during the Intelligent Octopus periods and use that to power my house. I would then want ALL Solar to be exported.
So my two questions are:
DarrenA You can only export above the house load value. The inverter cannot push solar out and also discharge the battery above the house load value unless you run forced export (not a set and forget configuration)
Your inverter tops out at 3.6kW so it also cannot output over that amount.
In terms of achieving your requirements I think you can get close.
1) Set a timed battery charge pause of 05:30 to 23:30, this will prevent the solar charging the battery and it will all go out as AC.
2) This is where you can't quite do what you are asking. The solar from point 1 which is being sent out by the inverter will be used to power the house load first, any excess will go as export. Should the solar not meet the house demand then the batteries will be discharged to meet the demand only.
Phil_H Ok, so I have the following setup:
00:00 - 05:30 : Timed Charge (utilising the last 5.5 out of 6 hours of Intelligent Octopus Import @ 7.5p/kWh)
05:30 - 23:59 : Pause Charge (stopping any solar being used to charge the battery
20:00 - 23:59 : Timed Discharge (allowing up to 4 hours to export as much as possible before being re-charged)
ECO = On (which means that 05:30 - 20:00 the battery will still meet any home load when needed)
I am hoping this will help me make the most money from buying at 7.5p / generating at 0p and selling at 15p ... hopefully.
What do you think?
DarrenA if you are exporting after 8PM then it doesn't matter if you export solar before that or charge battery.
for eg: if you don't export but charge your battery then your SOC at 8PM will be more by that many units, so you will be able to export that much more
i don't think it matters what you are doing after 05:30 as long as you make sure you kick off export at 8PM and drain your battery
deepanshus Now I think about maybe you're right and I'm over complicating it. as it adds up the same however I do it. Maybe I should just get rid of the "Pause Charge" and end up with a simpler setup:
00:00 - 05:30 : Timed Charge (utilising the last 5.5 out of 6 hours of Intelligent Octopus Import @ 7.5p/kWh)
20:00 - 23:59 : Timed Discharge (allowing up to 4 hours to export as much as possible before being re-charged)
ECO = On (which means that 05:30 - 20:00 the battery will still meet any home load when needed)
Thanks !
DarrenA Be careful with timed discharge, it doesn't necessarily work like you think it does (I've never used it but it seems to be a common theme on here that it trips people up), I believe the issue is around it not resetting to Eco mode afterwards. Maybe having it run straight into a charge window will avoid that issue and the end of the charge will put i tback in eco, I don't know!
Just a point worth mentioning. There is an approx 20% loss on conversion from ac to dc, then dc back to ac. Doubt it will make much difference to your timings, but is something to be aware of in your cost calculations.
I'm going to try the Octopus R&D Labs. It allows you to set a time period and export at full rate if the export price is above a certain limit. Assuming it works, then it should, along with a Timed Charge achieve most of what I am trying to achieve.
Well, that didnt work. If I have set this correctly, if should export between 3PM and 9PM is the Outgoing rate >£0.12. I exported for about 40 minutes and then stopped.
The rates are currently well over £0.12:
Any idea if I have done something incorrect?
Zakalwe do you not select "half hour" instead of "standard" if your on Agile (admittedly it's nearly 3 years since I've used Agile with R&D thing)
Zakalwe It might be worth you going to Octopus Outgoing Fixed as its offering 15p/kWh export all day!
Look in the R&D history and see if the time signals were sent to GivEnergy
Look in GivEnergy portal page, my inverter -remote control - remote control history (at the bottom) and see if your inverter got the time signals from GivEnergy.
TBH I had so many times when the chain broke somewhere that I went to Home Assistant which is a server on my network, so not subject to vagaries of Octo servers, GE servers and the internet