Is it possible to stop exporting to the grid?
The reason is that some of my battery charge is exported so once the battery runs flat, I am importing it again at a higher rate. If it didn't export to the grid, then that charge would have been available for use in the home.
Hope this makes sense.
JeraXO You beat me to that question. I have no intention or requirement to send power to the grid from the battery so I'd like to stop mine 'leaking' out as well.
The battery should only be exporting a tiny bit of power to the grid while it ramps up or down. But it should be a tiny amount. What battery modes are you using? I use dynamic and timed charge to charge from the grid as I am on Octotpus Go.
THALL I'm on Dynamic as well, but it's a new installation and I'm still trying to sign up with Octopus.
Unfortunately, Octopus is advising not to switch to them at this time due to current high prices. So still trying to just sign onto the Octopus outgoing tariff, so I'm not getting anything for exporting at the moment, hence, asking if I can stop exporting until it is set up.
JeraXO Ah I see. Exporting from the battery yes, it shouldn't unless you set it to. Exporting from your generation you can not stop. However it took 7 weeks to setup SEG / Outgoing Agile and once setup they backdated the payments so I did not loose anything.
I am now switching from Octopus Outgoing to just the SEG as their outgoing tariff is not compatible with Octopus Go :-( Though I do understand, would be odd sucking loads of power down at 4.5 or 5p per kwh and then sending it back at 5.5p ;-) But with luck I will go back to Agile once the prices calm down, if they calm down. I would still like some kind of dial on the dashboard to set charge and discharge prices rather than just times. Example, charge from grid if unit cost is sub 0p per kwh and discharge to grid if over 100p that kind of thing. Rather than either setting it manually or letting the algorithm do it for me.
Lol. Yes, it is a bit annoying to be sending our free electricity into the grid, then having to buy that electricity back. 😛
Just don't go on Octopus Agile. At the moment, it's 35p/kWh almost non-stop!
Investigate, but you're likely better on Octopus Go!
And keep us posted. 🙂
Yeah, even more annoying when technical an energy company is charging someone for the free electricity people like us generate!
pinpointzero1973 Yeah, but the Outgoing Agile has paid over 200p/kwh at times too. but sadly I do not have a enough battery storage to do it :-(
mjkelly5a Don't forget that the battery status is just a snapshot of what it was doing at that moment. So if it shows an export of say 50W it doesn't mean it's doing that for the whole five minutes until the next snapshot, it's just the system trying to balance the voltage with the grid (or something like that I think!).
If you have a smart meter IHD display, that will refresh more frequently ( maybe 5 or 10s).
pinpointzero1973
I think I got lucky and renewed fixed rate just before the prices 'really' went up. Currently at 17.9p/kwh so don't want to switch unless I have to. With EDF now and their export rate is dismal, so trying to get on the Octopus SEG.
THALL Yes, it does, but very, very rarely, and only for 30 minutes during which you're going to be limited to the size of your inverter suite as to how much you can push to the grid.
For the amount of time that the outgoing > incoming, it really isn't worthwhile for me, and probably most people.
It was the same for the "plunge" pricing. Since my installation in November 2020 my friend, we've had pricing < 0p twice, and only for 30 minutes.
So yes, whilst on Octopus Go, I know that it's going to cost me circa 80p to charge during the cheap hours at night, but as long as I get a little light during the day to keep the batteries topped, that's pretty much my only cost.
I also found myself suffering from "Agile anxiety"!!!
Constantly looking and checking to see if Octopus had dynamically made changes during the "happy hours", and making constant amendments if not!
But yes, Agile at the moment is simply awful for me! 😆
JeraXO My Octopus Go cost is 4p, and then 16.67p for the norm. The outgoing is 3p/kW. 🤣 It's terrible!!
THALL I've had run-in after run-in with Octopus over their Agile algorithm and API handling. Bear in mind, I write software for a living, have a first-class degree in it, and can't quite get my head around why their mechanism to talk to the GE API "missed" almost every single night. It's good to see GE doing their own implementation of it which is more swish, and more so, it's reliable. 😁
pinpointzero1973 I would still like a simple dial to charge my max charge price and discharge price. To automatically get the battery to charge when below 5p and discharge when over say 50p. The zappi charger can be set to charge when agile prices are sub 5p. Dont get me wrong I realise that energy prices might never recover or at least not drop to sub 25p for a long long time now but I would like a dial option if possible.
Also interested how you got a 4p Go tariff? I thought the cheapest was 4.5? I have emailed octopus asking to switch to Go Faster 5 hour from 2130 but had no reply this week.
I'm waiting on the installation of my PV system (32x390W panels, 8.2kWh Givenergy battery and two 5kW Givenergy inverters) and am also interested to know if I can prevent export. The answers here seem to indicate that it's about setting the configuration of the inverter. My installer has specified a power meter installed between the PV system and my distribution board. Does the GivTCP API provide the same export/import data that you would read from the power meter? I'm not sure if I should ask for a meter that I can capture data locally from, or if the GivTCP from the two inverters would sum to the same value.
Tim You can ask your installer to set export to 0 on the inverter and make the dno aware. That does take away the option of getting any payments for your excess generation however. But yes after speaking to a friend who is more into this stuff than I am the installer can restrict the export, I know of no way you can limit this yourself.
What are daily export totals like? As mentioned above the top data cards are just a 5 minute snapshot.
You will also see some small levels of export over a day, I exported 300w yesterday which is about normal.