Hi,
New solar panel and battery user here - were commissioned at the end of last week so very early days. There is one thing that I do not understand. Looking at the Givenergy Dashboard (see image below) the demand in the house is 516W and the battery is meeting that. However, it also seems to be sending 2.13KW to the grid which seems unnecessary.
Am I reading this correctly and if so what in the settings do I need to change to stop this behaviour?
Thanks
williamsdb Hi, welcome to the forum.
As part of installation, there should be a battery calibration step, which involves first fully discharging, then fully charging the battery. Could it be that, or had the calibration already completed?
Calibration start and end should be announced in the notification section.
Calibration also happens after a firmware upgrade, and new systems typically come with an older firmware, and expect an upgrade - perhaps your installer triggered an upgrade on your behalf remotely?
If it's not that, get back - there's plenty of other things we can suggest. (It would be useful to know what sort of system you have installed.)
DD Thanks for coming back to me so quickly, really appreciate it.
Looking at the notification centre it would appear that both a firmware upgrade and calibration was done and completed successfully (see below).
As for the system it is as follows:
10 x JAM54S31 panels
1 x Giv-HY3.6 V3 inverter
1 x Giv-Bat5.2 battery
Is that what you meant?
I had a similar symptom after the engineers left my system last week. The battery was discharging until it was down to the reserve level and would not charge when the solar panels were producing. This turned out to be two things, both settings under My Inverter.
Firstly, although ECO mode was highlighted, it was not Enabled. I switched it on. This was why the panels were not charging the battery.
Secondly, TIMED DISCHARGE was enabled with no times set. This was why the batter was discharging. Switch it off.
I have been using TIMED CHARGE to boost the battery (since it was flat). Initially, I set a 4-hour window from 00:00 to 04:00 to charge up to 80%. It didn't charge fast enough to reach 80% in the time, so I left it set. This morning, the battery reached 80% on the forced charge and then the sun came out and my batteries hit 100% before lunchtime. I ran the washing machine and tumble drier to use up some of the free energy but that was only scratching the surface. I don't have the complete paperwork so no export tariff yet. I will adjust the timed charging to experiment.
The system here is 24 Jinko 435W panels, 12 facing East, 12 West. GE 5kW Gen 3 Inverter and two 9.5kWh Gen 2 batteries.
williamsdb yes, that what I meant.
Simplest next step is to "reset to defaults". On the app, this is an equals sign icon at bottom right. Or on the portal, on the settings page. Or could investigate individual settings, as above.
DavidBriggs on my system, 'timed export' is equivalent to 'timed discharge' but turns eco flag off. It's possible that this leaves the portal with an inconsistent view of the eco setting. (Not quite sure.)
FYI the portal uses its own model of the settings on your inverter, rather than actually reading the inverter. Which can be an extra hazard when trying to investigate problems.
DavidBriggs
Hi
Thanks for the suggestions. For me:
Eco mode is on and enabled.
Timed Discharge is enabled and set for 18:00 to 19:00 (when we have the most usage)
Timed Charge is enabled and set for 02:00 to 04:00 (when the price is lowest)
Like you I don't have the paperwork yet but just trying to get a better understanding before it all kicks in and it will affect how much money I make/lose!
I'm tempted to ask Octopus as they installed the system and see what they say. For now I have reset to defaults to see what happens.
Thanks
williamsdb best not to try to second-guess when you have most usage - just leave it in eco mode and let it match discharge to usage. Timed discharge is really for exporting excess to grid, or eg during a savings session.
Unless, for example, you're on a tariff like agile with very expensive import during late afternoon/early evening.
Was the screenshot during the timed discharge period?
williamsdb
Hi,
Last night, I changed the TIMED CHARGE setting to reach 60% instead of 80% to give the batteries more headroom for charging in the (expected) bright sunshine. Come the start of the charge period, the batteries were at 70%. Now to me, this would mean no need to charge, but to the Inverter, it means, "Hey there's too much in the batteries, let's dump it to the grid". At the end of the timed period, the batteries had dropped to 60%.
We are expecting to get the handover paperwork this week and can then start sorting out trariffs. I might have learned a bit more about the Inverter behaviour by then...
Hope that helps.
DavidBriggs Come the start of the charge period, the batteries were at 70%. Now to me, this would mean no need to charge, but to the Inverter, it means, "Hey there's too much in the batteries, let's dump it to the grid". At the end of the timed period, the batteries had dropped to 60%.
Yes, I remember this getting discussed during one of the beta cycles (while they were still on this forum). Can be argued either way: as you say, you wanted to create headroom for solar, so if you asked for 60%, then that's what it should be aiming for. It shouldn't "dump" the energy to the grid, though - just run in dynamic mode covering house load as usual. But obviously anything like immersion heater running overnight will drain it.
What I do is set the max discharge power low overnight - 250W or so. Which limits how far it drains. (But usually I have dumped power to the grid in the evening, since export tariff pays more than cost to refill overnight.)
DD
Thanks. I have in fact given up on the TIMED stuff for now. Even with 60%, there was so much sun today that my batteries maxed out at 100%. Even with the East/West orientation, I was generating 6kW for a time and exporting 4kW.
I will leave it on basic ECO for now and see how well it copes without human interference!
I've read this thread with interest. Just got an EV and soon changing to an E-On Drive tariff. I plan to charge the car overnight and also the GivEnergy 5.2 battery, perhaps run dishwasher, washing machine and tumble too. I found the setting for timed charging off the grid but am a little uncertain, will the battery charge during the day from solar panels?
Wife uses 3kw before going to work and a cheap overnight charge will cover that. Solar generation picks up mid to late morning and through to the evening.
Martinh Yes, the battery will charge during the day from any excess solar, whether or not you enable overnight AC charging. (Does require that eco flag is on, but there's no reason to ever turn that off.)
Some people express concerns about running tumble driers unattended / overnight. (I don't have a tumble drier, so no opinion of my own.)
Thanks for the response. I found a setting on the phone app and changed it to Solar-Grid then the time settings appeared. Worked well! I'll have a bit of playing about to do with % charge overnight, I want enough in the battery to cover the early morning when wife gets up then through to mid-morning when the panels kick in. Got my car charging (slowly!) on panels and battery as I type. Very happy!
Martinh I'll have a bit of playing about to do with % charge overnight, I want enough in the battery to cover the early morning when wife gets up then through to mid-morning when the panels kick in.
Once you get your export sorted out, you might decide not to bother: overnight import is around 8p, whereas export is 16.5p (?). So may as well fill the battery overnight, and just export all the solar.
(Unless you have a hybrid inverter, and your max PV generation exceeds inverter AC limit, that is... in that case, you might want to leave some room in the battery to avoid solar clipping.)