I had Octopus fit my smart meter yesterday - and moved onto the Intelligent Go tariff... but since then, any excess solar wattage is being automatically re-directed to the grid instead of to charging my GivEnergy batteries.... it's never done this before and I have no idea what can have caused it? I have two CT clamps on the L cable - the other is for the EV charger.
TheOmnisis What sort of GE system do you have? Specifically, is it a hybrid inverter, or separate AC inverters ?
If it's the only thing that's changed, then the CT clamp is the obvious thing to investigate. Perhaps it has become detached at the inverter end ? Is it fitted the right way round ?
I checked the CT clamps - both attached fine - and yes, a hybrid inverter. Now - being fitted the right way round or not is another thing..... I'm new to all this so didn't know there was a right or wrong way! If it was wrong, would the GivEnergy portal not be getting any readings at all? As it is getting data/ info from the house and from the grid - it's just not showing any flow from the solar into the batteries.
TheOmnisis The direction of current through the CT matters - that's how it's able to distinguish import from export. So if it was on backwards, the inverter would interpret import as export, and vice versa.
But it's probably not that.
I assume you had to power down the inverter (and everything else) when getting the smartmeter installed. Is it possible that the battery didn't come back online correctly ?
Might help to show some screenshots of things, but I'm not quite sure what to actually suggest you show. It's difficult to describe what I'd be looking for - one of those things you just see it when you see it.
If you use the Android app, when you click on the battery icon, what does it show as the status ?
I think I'm going to hope for a relatively sunny day tomorrow - look at the inverters - see what they are showing they are producing and compare to the app / then see if they are actually charging up the battery or not.... I'm also getting confused if I need more than one CT clamp if I have two solar inverters.... I have this new GivEnergy one that has 4 panels and the batteries and then an older install that has 18 panels - will the one clamp deal with all solar and is it ok that both clamps are right next to each other ? I have checked and both arrows on the clamps are pointing away from the meter.
It's so confusing!
TheOmnisis Ah, if you have multiple inverters, that makes it somewhat more complicated.
If your older one is just a solar array and an AC-coupled inverter, it doesn't really need a CT clamp: it just converts all solar to AC and sends it out along the wires. It doesn't have to worry about what's going on in the house. The GE Hybrid inverter, on the other hand, does need to keep track of import/export, since (in the default eco mode) it's trying to match battery charge/discharge rate to match what's happening in the house (which, AFAIK, relies on trying to keep grid import/export as close to 0 as it can). But I'm not sure how it works when there's extra generation happening - does it charge its battery when it detects unexpected export ?
Do you charge the GE battery from grid overnight? If so, is that working ?
If the two clamps are very close together, they can possibly interfere, but not to such an extent that they'd stop working. They'd just get a little inaccurate.
I do charge the GE batteries form the grid overnight - everything has been working fine on the old dumb meter - I was wondering if the installer had put the clamps on wrong or if something had happened with the GE system when is was switched off and maybe they need to reboot it / recalibrate.
Not sure if charges the batteries when it detects unexpected export - it's all fairly new so I was waiting for the smart meter to really try and get to grips with it all!
Yes, the older one is just a solar array with an AC inverter - thanks for your time on this BTW - very much appreciated!
TheOmnisis If the battery charged from grid overnight last night, then that confirms it all came back successfully after the power-down.
There shouldn't really have been any configuration changes if all you did was power off then on the inverter. But just in case, I guess you could try the reset-to-defaults. Though first, I'd try turning off then on just the eco flag. Of course the Sun's gone down for the day now, so as you say, I guess wait for tomorrow now.
You could just try calling support - they'll have remote access to view your portal, and may immediately spot a problem.
I think the CT clamps should have an arrow on them somewhere - if they're on the live (brown) then the arrow should be pointing towards the house, if they're on the neutral (blue) then the arrow should be pointing towards the grid. That's off the top of my head though, others can hopefully confirm or correct.
TheOmnisis Its almost certainly the case that the meter engineer put the CT clamp on the wrong way round. I had exactly this happen when I had a new smart meter fitted; the engineer took photos of it beforehand but he didn’t note which way the arrow went on the clamp.
I found that after he’d gone the battery discharged and all solar went to grid all of the time, nothing went to the battery.
As others have said the CT clamp measures current flow so if you are generating excess AC and the clamp is the wrong way round the inverter thinks it is import and discharges the battery/won’t charge the battery to meet that phantom import.
There is a clip on the CT clamp, you simply push it to unlatch the clamp and then turn the clamp the other way round and clip it back up again. Quite safe, no electrical risk to you whatsoever.
The GivEnergy installation manuals are inconsistent as to which way round they say the clamp goes, one bit says one way, one bit says another.
Good luck!
geoffreycoan Looking at the weather over the next few days, there doesn't appear to be any chance to test - rain almost constantly in the Peak District - Sunday might give an opportunity to try it and then swap the CT clamp round if it's not charging when there is excess.
DD I did get through to support - but by then, the solar generation had dropped to well below what the house needs were - so they couldn't tell if there was a problem right then. The only option was to call back if / when the solar generation exceeds what is required and it doesn't go to the batteries for at least 10 minutes so they can check it in real time! Not the easiest thing to do when you're trying to work at the same time :-)
TheOmnisis any excess solar wattage is being automatically re-directed to the grid instead of to charging my GivEnergy batteries
Is it only solar that's going to the grid, or does it also discharge battery to grid ?
I may be overthinking it, but if the CT clamp's the wrong way round, I think I'd expect it to also discharge battery to grid. Suppose there's a tiny bit of export - CT clamp causes inverter to think it's import, so it discharges a bit. That results in more export, which gets interpreted as more import, so needs more battery discarge etc, and so on until it's discharging the battery at max rate trying to supply the phantom load.
That's consistent with geoffreycoan where the battery got discharged. But you hadn't mentioned that symptom.
DD It is actually discharging battery to the grid right now.... it's not raining and we have no cloud cover (miracle) so have an excess of solar - and not only was it showing that going to the grid but also there was a small amount of battery wattage being sent to the grid too.... and whilst I'm typing and watching the app, it's now just dropped all household load figures and showing 0w? Something odd is going on... I'll get onto the support I think!... oh, the household load has come back online now....
TheOmnisis A key thing you have to be aware of in the givenergy app (and portal) is that its only showing you a snapshot. In away mode it only updates every 5 minutes and in home mode its every 10 seconds, so its a bit weird that its showing ‘last updated 1 minute 42 ago’.
So at that moment in time the inverter was exporting to the grid. There could be a fault, or it could quite simply be that the inverter hadn’t caught up with the house load, you’d turned a kettle on/off, etc. There’s a finite time that the inverter takes to react to changing house load and when that happens you get small bits of import and export. Combined with the 5 minute refresh time it can make you think the inverter is exporting loads. Given that your battery is 62% full it doesn’t look like the CT clamp is the wrong way round.
Can you post the power graph that shows import, export, battery charge/discharge over time
TheOmnisis whilst I'm typing and watching the app, it's now just dropped all household load figures and showing 0w
I don't for sure, but the only way i can figure it working is... the inverter isn't measuring house consumption, so it has to infer it. I can measure how much AC it's generating, and it can measure via the CT clamp the import/export. So it has to assume that the difference is consumption. With an extra solar array in the mix that it doesn't know about, I'm not sure what it does.
Oh... hang on... you said your givenergy has 4 panels. if those are around 400W each, it doesn't seem feasible that those would be generating 3kW ? Is it possible that it's measuring 1.71kW export, and somehow inferring that there's additional generation coming from somewhere ?
Can you access the actual PV string data for the GE inverter, to confirm that it is seeing 3kW of generation from the panels directly attached. There's other experiments you could do, like turning off the other inverter, if you felt so inclined.
Hi
I have solar and batteries and storage heaters. I had to move supplier to get cheap rate for that since these rates were only available for an EV. So changed last Oct.
I use the Giv app etc. inverter is hybrid , dc out ac in
I have since acquired an ev but charger is not recognised by Giv so there is no solar setting.
I noticed that my battery always appeared to be fully charged , and when I tried to charge my car during the day from solar, I could not see an increase from solar or battery.
I checked all my settings , eco mode being important , battery discharge.
I found a solution
In the inverter setting
Eco has to be set. Timed discharge has to be set for during the day. (Doing this can turn eco setting off and you have reset t o eco). This was not sufficient
In the options on the top menu is a setting symbol, round wheel, click on that and a new set of registers appear. You need to enable. Eco mode and time discharge there too. Sumit, save
Now solar and battery charge the car, and export stored energy to the grid. If you are on a variable tariff you can get 20 to 30 p per kw
Battery is recharge partly on overnight at moment
I found i had to check eco mode did not reset
Hope this helps