Battery discharge

Hi, how do I stop the battery discharging outside of the times I have set. I have set it to charge between 0200- 0500 on cheaper electricity and to discharge between 1600-1900. But it is discharging outside of these times.

i have exactly the same problem, Eco mode stays active and seems to override the discharge timings. I have tried manually disabling the Eco mode but it reactivates itself 🙁 (Charge timings work ok!)

DDavey yes our charging time is ok. I have been in touch with our installers who don’t have an answer and are going to get in touch with GivEnergy.

Jay2023 Depends exactly what you wish to achieve... between 1600 and 1900, do you want the battery to discharge at a fixed rate, regardless of house load (which is what a timed discharge does), or just cover the house demand, to avoid importing any peak-rate power? And after 1900, do you care whether the battery continues to discharge any remaining power, or do you definitely want it to pause and hold charge ?

On my system, enabling 'timed discharge' will turn back on 'eco mode'. In fact, the three modes 'eco', 'timed discharge' and 'timed export' are not independent modes. There are two two underlying variables 'eco' and 'timed', and those three modes correspond to different combinations of those two underlying variables. Specifically, 'timed discharge' = 'eco' + 'timed' ; 'timed export' = 'timed' on and 'eco' off.
But different inverters may behave differently.

Unfortunately, the portal doesn't immediately reflect the changes: if you turn off 'eco' and turn on 'timed discharge', 'eco' is quietly turned on, but the portal doesn't show that. You have to reload the web page in order for it to be updated.

My assumption from the various posts and blurb that I have read, is that Timed Charge could be used to hold the battery power until a timed window, when it would be made available (released/discharged) as required for home demand( not exported back to the grid). I think a lot of people are trying to use this to pair with Octopus Flux peak rate to avoid importing from the Grid at the peak time in the winter when we don't have enough solar to keep the battery topped when being used for home demand ahead of 4pm.
It would be great if we could get a more detailed explanation and user guides from Givenergy as to expected use for the settings as it seems we may be working on a misunderstanding?

I am doing it manually now at the moment based on the weather but wanted to step back a little and let the system manage most days.

DDavey That’s exactly what we want to achieve as we have just changed to Octopus Flux. How do you manage it manually?

Jay2023 We set a timed Export and enabled it (16:00-19:00) and this disabled Eco mode. This then held the charge in the battery. Then just before 16:00 we disabled the Timed Export (so that it didn't export) and re-enabled Eco mode. This then allowed the battery to be used for home demand through the rest of the night. I then re-enabled the Timed export the next day when we go up, after the timed charge. A small amount of battery had been used already but still plenty to cover the peak period later if there is no solar top up later in the day.

DDavey Hmm - having to intervene manually sounds prone to mistakes. The trick of extending the charging window ought to work: just extend charge time from 2am through 4pm, and leave discharge mode as dynamic/eco mode. During the charging period, the battery will hold its charge level once the target level is reached, which should happen by 5am anyway. Then at 4pm, the "charging" window ends, and the battery will discharge to cover home demand. This shouldn't require any further intervention.

Any solar during the day will get used for house demand or exported - even if the target charge level is less than 100%, during the charge window it's treated as a target, and any excess will be discharged.

Or another way you might be able to do it... On the web portal, in the 'remote control' section, there's a 'pause' control. You could possibly set charge time 2am to 5am, and configure 'pause discharge' from 5am to 4pm. This may have the advantage that you could set charge target to, say, 80%, and any solar would be able to top up the battery further, since it's only discharge that's been paused. (You can also pause charge, or pause both.)

I've not tested it in exactly this way, but I have tested pause mode, and I needed to set the pause window to get pause to work at all.

Thank you both for your helpful advice, I think I might try setting the charging time from 2 am until 4pm as I know I would forget to change settings if I did it manually. This is all new to me and it’s frustrating when things don’t work as expected.

Hopefully Givenergy will resolve the problem fairly quickly.

Jay2023 We are fairly new as well and while it is still a great system it is a little frustrating. Just on the timed charge window, we tried exactly that and found the battery still discharged because Eco mode was still enabled. Let me know if it works for you 🙂

DDavey Hmm, I didn't think it was supposed to do that, unless the charge level is already highter than the target. The request to charge should take precedence over the discharge mode. (There was another thread where someone had overlapping timed-charge and timed-discharge windows, and the battery held the charge level until the end of the charging window, whereupon it went into export mode.)

Which inverter model and firmware are you on ?

DD I'll try it gain tomorrow

Inverter Model
GIV-HY5.0
Software Version
D0.393-A0.393

DDavey Oh... is that particularly old firmware ? Looking at the knowledge base, G2 firmwares are numbered around 900, G3 are 305-ish. G1 is 450-ish. It doesn't go back far enough to list 393.

Or https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3057-gen-3-battery-power-cap-ignored/14 mentions 393 as potentially a beta firmware for G3 systems. (I think beta versions get descending version nunbers ?)
Also https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/2559-battery-charging-from-grid

I'm currently on 305. I think there is a newer one available, but since my system appears to be working okay, I'm hanging on for now.

DD interesting! the portal isn't offering me a firmware update, perhaps I'll try and contact Givenergy and ask them for confirmation of the version and issues....thanks

Well I set the charge time as suggested from 02:00 to 15:55 and charged the battery to 100% 👍
But when discharge to home demand kicked in at 16:00 the battery discharged more kw to the grid than to home demand. So effectively we paid for electricity to charge the battery and then gave over half of it back to them for free as we are still waiting for export to be confirmed. 👎
And here was I thinking solar and batteries would save us money!!

Jay2023 possibly depends on inverter version, but on my system, scheduled discharge always discharges at a fixed (high) rate during the window. Just leave discharge mode as dynamic (eco) - the extended charging window is taking care of delaying the start of the discharge period, so don't need to also schedule the discharge time.

hmmmmm that is very annoying! 🙁 we have had a more successful day today setting the timed charge as you did and it did hold at 98% until 15:55 and then switched us over to batter to home over the peak period and is still working.

I have read a few other groups that suggest it is good to reset the inverter first, leave a few mins, then set and submit the Eco mode, leave a few mins, then set the timed charge. basically overlaying one over the other.

I didn't reset ours but I did turn off all the settings then set the eco, then timed charge in order, waiting 5 mins between each.

Although we were at 98% it didn't top up to 100% when the sun was out earlier so partial charge on an expected semi-sunny day may not work.

hope you have better luck tomorrow!