Temporarily Turm Battery Discharge off to Charge EV

Last time I tried this I went to My Inverter/Settings/Battery Options and moved the slider from 4% all the way to the right - 100%. I charged the EV for a couple of hours and then via My Inverter/etc.... reset the slider from 100% back to 4%. It appeared to work but my battery, that was on 100% before I started, remained on 100%. The following day I contacted GivEnergy (I'm sure I got the method to do this originally from GivEnergy) about the battery remaining at 100%. I didn't really get an understandable answer but the fix was to reset everything back to default and re-calibrate my battery. I need to do this again (temp charge during peak hours) and a bit nervous of the methodology I'm using to temporarily take the battery off-line so that my house and EV are charging . Am I doing the right thing? Any advise appreciated.

Perhaps you could start by telling us what you are trying to achieve and what kit you have.

Apologies. I have a gen1 inverter and a gen 1 8.2kw battery. I have my system set so that the battery charges between 00.30 and 04.30 (I'm on Octopus Go). I have a dumb EV charger and the car also charges between these times. Everything works OK and I am more than happy. Tomorrow I have a long journey and after tonight's 00.30 - 04.30 charge there will not be enough charge in the EV battery to make my journey. Rather than pay @70p/kw at the rapid charger I might as well put the car on charge this afternoon/evening for a couple of hours at 30p/kw. (A few hours at peak rate plus the 00.30 - 04.30 cheap rate will give me enough charge for the journey). If I were to charge the EV ,as is, it would drain my battery as well as charge from the grid - so, I need to temporarily stop the battery from discharging so the only energy going into the EV is from the grid. Once I've finished charging the EV I can reset the battery to start discharging to the house again. (Any demand from the house will be fed from the grid while the battery is in not discharging mode but I'm not worried for this short period).

Hi @quarkrad when I need to do this with our Zappi charger, I just use the phone app to set the battery discharge power all the way down to 50w or something similar, so although the EV will pull from the battery it will barely take anything during the few hours you're charging it. Then when I'm done charging I put it back to full power.

Any reason not to use the battery? Preserving the battery means it can power the house later in the evening, but if you end up with anything at the end of the day, you've missed out. Worst case is that you need to import into the house all the power that you put from battery to car. But you haven't actually imported any more in total doing it this way.

I think the slider you're talking about was probably the battery-reserve one, since that defaults to 4%. Yes, that's one way to do it. Another way is to reduce the maximum discharge power down to 0 - that's probably the way I'd have done it, but that doesn't make it right. (Actually, your way might make the battery go fully idle, whereas on my system, even with minimm discharge power set to 0, it still actually discharges up to about 250W.)

Just a little confused about phrasing in your first post: "but my battery, that was on 100% before I started, remained on 100%". Isn't that exactly what you wanted? Or do you mean it no longer discharged even after you had restored the settings back to as they were ?

DD When I do this I expect my Givenergy battery to be approx 80% charge. When I effectively take it off line and charge the car, there will be very little demand from the home. So, my thinking, right or wrong, is to leave my little Givenergy battery at 80%, chage some of my big EV battery from the grid, and when finished, have the little givenergy battery to power my house.

Your last sentence about the battery remaining on 100% was the issue I had. Last time when I did this and put the givenergy back on line as such, I had 100%. But it stayed on 100% for the rest of that evening (where it normally goes down due to house demand). The following day, even with the 00.30 - 04.30 charge taking it back to 100%, the battery level falls through out day. This time it didn't - just stayed at 100%, which didn't make sense.

I think it would be simpler to just turn ECO off whilst the car charges.

Rubikcube

Yes, I’d say that would be much easier and reliable.

@quarkrad

Probably I’d get on intelligent Octopus GO as well then you’d be able to charge your car to what you need for the journey ~ possibly with the help of some extra off peak slots as well.

Rubikcube does the app actually offer a way to turn off eco? (The original interface - I haven't seen the new iOS version with the interface like the portal.)
You'd have to do something convoluted like setting up a scheduled full-export, to get eco turned off as a side effect.

DD In the app, with quick modes on, press the play button on the bottom centre, then press the pause button.

I just tried it and it sets charge rate and discharge rate to zero. Doesn't turn Eco mode off but has the same effect