Confused about export

5kw gen 1 , 9.5 battery and 6.4 panels on east west all fitted last April. I’ve been running this mostly very happily for a year now and recently realised that we now have surplus juice now that it is sunnier. Usually at least 60% left at 23.30 when Octopus Intelligent kicks back in and charges to 100% again so I thought I would try and export some between 1800-2000 last night. Set a timed discharge and changed nothing else, so Eco still on, timed charge on. Did this in the portal. Nothing happened. Tried again using the app. Nothing. Thought I’d reset the defaults and then couldn’t get any connection to the inverter causing me to panic that I had broken something. After a while I realised it was just not connecting to the WiFi but was working ok!
So I have tried searching on here but can’t find a definitive instruction on how to do this. Probably being a bit thick but I didn’t want to try again without some advice. Thanks in advance. I have now fixed the ip address.

If you want to push out to the grid, you want Timed Export, or using the Minus Button in the Quick Actions menu in the app.

Timed Discharge is for the house load. I know, a little confusing.

SimonClarke There seems to be two different problems in here: how to export from battery, and how to get the inverter back online after a reset ? Which is the immediate issue?

Your descripton for the timed discharge sounds correct. When you say "nothing happened": can you clarify - did the battery continue to cover usage (or were you still getting enough solar at 6pm to not need battery) ? One possibility is that the discharge slot has a lower SoC limit, and that will prevent the timed discharge if the battery is below that level.

Just FYI, I have (almost) the same setup (except my panels are in a single direction). I inhibit daytime battery charging, so that I just export the solar directly, which avoids some round-trip losses from charging and discharging the battery. I use the timedp-pause to pause charging during the day (available from the remote control page).

With gen 1 and 450/451 firmware you need to turn eco off to export.

Thanks for the replies. Kind of highlights the problem I had searching for a solution!
When I say nothing happened I meant that it didn’t export anything just carried on as normal. It’s set to Eco and a timed charge nothing else. I did set the battery limit when setting the timed discharge to 15% instead of the normal 4% just in case. The battery was at over 90% charge with very little solar coming in. Everything is now back on line and working fine. I thought the issue with timed export was that it didn’t turn Eco back on when it finished and that timed discharge did? I just wanted to export a few kw then expected it to return to its normal state.

SimonClarke Sometimes the inverter may have got confused, if this is the first time you have tried an export/forced discharge then maybe its just showing up now?

Try a reset to defaults in the portal then set your timed charged back up again. Do double check the slot times and limits as newer inverters can support multiple charges/discharges but the app only shows the first one

The quick play buttons in the app are the easiest way of manually initiating a discharge and putting it back to Eco afterwards

Atkinstagram Timed Discharge is for the house load. I know, a little confusing.

Not on my system (gen-3 hybrid). While the docs describe it as house load, the only difference on my system is that timed export turns off the eco flag, timed discharge leaves it on.

I get the impression gen-1 might be different, but I've never seen a detailed description of the behaviour.

geoffreycoan I have done forced discharge from the quick play app buttons before successfully for saving sessions, but this is the first time I tried to set it up on the portal as I intended to use it every evening but if it won’t return to Eco automatically that’s no good. I did reset to default last night which is what caused the panic as it seems to have changed the ip address. All back to normal now with a fixed address. It’s not a huge problem as it would only be for a bit of bonus cash just surprised it didn’t work!

SimonClarke I think the problem is that there are now 3 versions of the hybrid inverter, plus the AC3.0 and they all seem to behave slightly differently. Sometimes it seems as though it also depends what version of software you have too. Probably best to clarify your inverter generation and the inverter and battery software you are using. Then someone with exactly the same set up will be able to advise without getting conflicting information. Your installation engineer should have been able to explain how to do this, but to be honest I think they are just as confused as we are!!

Karen Then someone with exactly the same set up will be able to advise without getting conflicting information.

I had hoped to collect the relevant information here:
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3654-timed-discharge-behaviour-survey
but didn't get any responses :-(

Rubikcube Interesting... so what does 'timed discharge' do on a gen 1 ? Given that eco mode already covers house load, the only meaningful thing I can think of is that it inhibits battery discharge outside of the time window, and covers house load only during the timed window. So is effectively a time switch for eco mode.

Karen I must admit to be more than a little surprised at the lack of any instructions whatsoever! After talking to my installer and a Givenergy technician I think you are right that they are partly guessing too!
It’s a gen 1 5kw hybrid on 450-AO.451, 9.5 battery on 3012.

SimonClarke 5kw gen 1

DD I use the timed-pause to pause charging during the day

Sorry, I had missed that you're gen-1m which doesn't have timed pause. In that case, you could inhibit daytime charging by setting charging power to 0. Unfortunately, this wouldn't be set-and-forget, since you'd have to put it back at night to allow overnight AC charging.

DD I’m much too lazy for that!

I have Gen1 Hy 5.0 and went through similar export issues.
After export I could never get Eco to reset so I tried Octo R&D scheduler that worked OK until I had some internet issues.
Might be worth trying Wonderwatt, but I have no experience.
In the end I went to HomeAssistant, my server on my network - dont have to worry about command signals not getting sent and/or received etc.
I have also built in Eco reset commands after any scheduled event - just to make sure

Morning Simon. I have a similar setup as you. Gen 1 inverter, 9.5kw battery and a 5.46 kw array (6 panels east, 7 panels south).
Last year I was on Flux in the summer, which paid well for export between 4-7pm. I tried every which way to get the inverter to export every day automatically without success using both app and portal and never succeeded. In the end I just used the quick set discharge and play buttons on the app with timed alarms set on my phone to remind me. It worked pretty well but meant switching it on and off manually every day. For some reason only the quick set buttons switch back on eco mode when you stop discharging on a Gen 1 inverter.
Others have used Home Assistant which is way too complicated for me.
A few months ago , I downloaded Rubicubes Inverter app which is really good for Gen1 inverters (free for monitoring, but a one off £10 for being able to change loads of settings on the inverter). Found that really useful and now will be able to automate Flux exports through the summer on my Gen1.
Best of luck with it all anyway.

https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/4281-timed-chargedischarge

TimHutchings so it seems to be impossible without using third party software?
I’ve got the free version of the inverter app. I’ll have a closer look but I’m with you on not wanting to get involved with home assistant etc. At a rough guess we’re talking about £90 at the most so anything requiring hardware purchases doesn’t really seem worth it, especially for someone with little technical knowledge or interest!

SteveCook DD seems to be saying timed discharge should work? So I am confused again!

SimonClarke DD seems to be saying timed discharge should work? So I am confused again!

Depends on the hardware/firmware. Timed discharge is (almost always) the preferred one on gen-3 hardware, since the eco flag behaves sensibly. Seems to be different on gen-1, but I don't yet know the exact details.

TimHutchings the information on the premium app says it doesn’t work with Octopus intelligent versions and I’m on Intelligent Go

SimonClarke The advantage of the inverter app I've found is the multiple scheduling to get the inverter to do what you want. It can even talk to the inverter directly without Internet if you want. The help pages make it easy to understand too, so I thought I'd give it a go, and for 10 quid, it seems to work fine. Solved my problems anyway! Gave up waiting for GE to solve the issues with new firmware.

SimonClarke Ah, no, that's unfortunate wording. (I think I did point it out.)

https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials/tariffs

Octopus Intelligent tariffs are not covered here because they are intended to be controlled by Octopus, and using this app to control the Inverter will conflict with the automated control.

That should specificy that it's Intelligent Flux. Intelligent Go is entrirely different (and can probably treated as Go.)

SimonClarke so it seems to be impossible without using third party software?

wonderwatt.com is another option - currently free. That runs on the cloud, so you don't need any always-on device at home.

The Octopus R&D labs also offer a cloud-based scheduler. I do have an account on it, but haven't really tried it in anger. (I just run simple python scripts on a raspberry pi that's on anyway.)

Ok I’ll probably give it a go then. Just to clarify-timed export doesn’t work? Ie switch eco back on?

SimonClarke Give Rubikcube a shout. I'm sure he'll advise on anything you want to know.

SimonClarke I'm sure I tried everything last year to get discharge to work automatically but was unableto do so. It's a known fault with a Gen1.

@SimonClarke I have a gen 1 hybrid inverter with attached 5.2kW battery.

Just now I did a test, battery was in Eco mode, and on the portal I set a timed discharge, start time and end time ONLY, not a % value (see below for why).

At the time there was loads of house load so the battery was already discharging in Eco mode. During the time period the battery carried on discharging. Afterwards, house load has dropped off a bit and the battery is now charging off solar. According to the iOS BBC Inverter app the inverter is in ‘Eco (Home Demand)’ mode.

Not a perfect test due to the house load surrounding it, but I think this concludes that the gen 1 does go back into Eco mode after Timed Discharge.

I’d suggest you do not set a lower battery percentage level because what will then happen is that once the battery reaches that level the inverter will stop discharging and will hold that SoC level for the remainder of the discharge time period. Any house load will be delivered from grid import not the battery which is probably not what you want.

geoffreycoan Just now I did a test, battery was in Eco mode, and on the portal I set a timed discharge, start time and end time ONLY, not a % value (see below for why).

During the time period the battery carried on discharging.

But did it discharge only just enough to cover the house demand (as per the GE documentation) ? That seems to be the crux: on gen-3 it will discharge at max power (or the configured discharge rate), not just enough to cover house demand. Which leaves me still wondering what it does outside of the timed period. Unfortunately your test doesn't anwser that, because there's now enough solar to cover house demand. (Perhaps check again when you next put the kettle on ?)

Despite the app reporting that the eco flag is on, the inverter may not actually do the eco thing if there's also a timer set. (Otherwise, the question has to be: what would be the point of timed discharge, since eco on its own does that. So timed discharge has to do something different.)

geoffreycoan Morning Geoffrey. Unless you switched off eco mode in the portal, I think you'll find that the battery was just discharging to the house load. I think eco has to be off to fully export the battery. Maybe try it again when the sun goes down.

geoffreycoan thanks for taking the time- I see you have your own issues!
I only set a bottom discharge limit as this was the first time I’ve tried this and I didn’t want to accidentally run out. Shouldn’t have happened anyway as the battery was over 90% and it was only set to discharge for 2 hours with a house load of under 300w. The problem was that it didn’t do anything, just started to run the house off the grid with the battery idling - think I got that wrong earlier. That’s when I tried again from the app with the same result. So I reset it and eventually put everything back where it was.

Timed discharge doesn't work for export on G1 inverters (release f/w, not the beta). Timed export does work but doesn't reset Eco. Forced export doesn't appear to work either as for some reason it sets discharge slot 2 instead of 1.

Only reliable way I've found to export is to set it manually via the portal or HA and even then there seems to be a risk of register corruption (I assume) disabling battery charge after the export has completed. I'd guesstimate that roughly 40% of the time a "reset to defaults" on the portal is required to re-enable battery charge after timed export.

tl;dr the G1 and timed export is about as reliable as the weather

These automations work for me on Flux with an Eco reset just in case

SteveCook Eco isn't the issue, battery will discharge fine after a timed export, simply won't charge from AC or PV some of the time following a timed export. There's nothing I can change via HA, the app or the portal which will restart AC charge.

Last time I had to power the entire system down and do a "reset to defaults" to get the battery to charge again. Been like that since day 1, no error LEDs, no error notifications, that's just what happens around 40% of the time. Subjectively I'd say it happens more when someone uses the app during a timed export, but that's very tenuous.

I have "sanity check automations" running several times a day to ensure Eco/charge rate/discharge rate/AC charge are all set correctly 🙂

DD ........why in blazes would they have the same name do different things on different versions of the same thing??!

Vestas
Thanks
All I know is what I have put in HA now works for me on a Gen1 Hy5.0.
I could never get the system to work correctly after any export/discharge even at 02:00 and would wake in the morning with a flat battery and have to do a reset as you describe.
I think the Eco reset just gets thinks ready for the off peak charge

Vestas I found with mine last year exports using the app quick set buttons worked well through the summer months, but towards the end of the season, it occasionally didn't reset properly using the play symbol, and the battery would just sort of idle, discharging maybe 10-20 watts. It then took a reset to defaults to fire the battery back up to start discharging to the house again.
That's why I finally succumbed to Rubikcubes inverter app. That seems to work well.

TimHutchings That's pretty much what happens on the next charge (idles at 4W) except I don't use the quick set buttons. My suspicion is that there's some register corruption going on - and the corrupt register isn't one which is visible to end-users.

Rubikcube said his app has designed delays between commands sent to the inverter so perhaps that's why its more reliable for you.

Edit - I have noticed that commands from the portal are a LOT more likely to timeout these days. There's nothing at this end which has changed, so I assume the API endpoint is overloaded.

Atkinstagram Probably a bug:
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3633-octopus-agile-ge-smart-tariff-unscheduled-export/10

However, I like the way my gen-3 system behaves, so I hope they don't fix the behaviour of timed-discharge.

Vestas Eco isn't the issue, battery will discharge fine after a timed export, simply won't charge from AC or PV some of the time following a timed export. There's nothing I can change via HA, the app or the portal which will restart AC charge.

That’s very strange.

There are as you know a number of different controls in GivTCP. Here’s the script I use to reset a Gen 1 hybrid inverter to Eco mode. Its probably a bit overkill in what it does but it seems to work fine for me.
(givtcp prefix is h_ not givtcp_)

alias: G395 Inv2 Eco Mode
description: Return the inverter to Eco mode, cancel any forced charge or discharge
sequence:
  - service: select.select_option
    data:
      option: Normal
    target:
      entity_id: select.h_xxxxx_force_charge
 - delay:
      seconds: 20
  - service: select.select_option
    data:
      option: Eco
    target:
      entity_id: select.h_xxxx_mode
  - service: switch.turn_on
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: switch.h_xxxx_enable_discharge
  - service: number.set_value
    data:
      value: "2600"
    target:
      entity_id:
        - number.h_xxxx_battery_discharge_rate
        - number.h_xxxx_battery_charge_rate
  - service: number.set_value
    data:
      value: "4"
    target:
      entity_id: number.h_xxxx_battery_power_reserve
  - service: switch.turn_off
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id:
        - switch.h_xxxx_enable_charge_schedule
        - switch.h_xxxx_enable_discharge_schedule
  - service: select.select_option
    data:
      option: "00:00:00"
    target:
      entity_id:
        - select.h_xxxx_charge_start_time_slot_1
        - select.h_xxxx_charge_end_time_slot_1
        - select.h_xxxx_discharge_start_time_slot_1
        - select.h_xxxx_discharge_end_time_slot_1
mode: single
icon: mdi:battery-lock-open

geoffreycoan must admit that is exactly what I want to avoid! Giv have been playing with it this pm but seem a bit confused on what the problem is. Said it works perfectly with Eco off and it stays off. Tried to explain this was the opposite to the problem but I think they’ve gone home…..
What happens if you leave Eco off?

Falsely maligned them! Just got back and said it should be ok. So I’ll try it again tonight and see. No idea if they did anything or not.

SimonClarke What happens if you leave Eco off?

You lose what most people consider the main benefit of having a battery: that is being able to charge the battery from solar so that you can use it to power the house when there is no solar.

SJB fairly basic then!

geoffreycoan None of the GivTCP controls have any effect on the problem. Like I said last time it required a complete power-down, restart and then a reset to defaults. A simple "reset to defaults" on the portal didn't work.

It'll be a register getting corrupted somewhere and it only gets reset on power-up (not reboot) or via access which users don't have.

Just set it to do a timed discharge at 18.30-20.30 with Eco on - total failure. Did nothing until I switched discharge off at which point it turned Eco off. Just sent a bunch of screenshots and emails to Giv….

SimonClarke Did nothing until I switched discharge off at which point it turned Eco off.

Yes, that's been mentioned before. I'd call it an interface design flaw - because timed-discharge "mode" enables two underlying inverter registers, turning it off disables those two registers. One of them is the eco flag.
It's harder to get it wrong using the android app interface since it doesn't present the modes in quite the same way. (You can only get out of "scheduled+home-demand" mode by going back to dynamic mode.)

Again: does 'did nothing' mean the battery stopped discharging completely (until the start of the window at 18:30), or did it continue to cover the house demand? 'doing nothing' and 'covering house demand' are not the same. (Though I understand that neither was the effect you wanted.)

DD sorry I should have said nothing changed rather than did nothing. It just carried on. I watched it for 10 minutes. The only thing that happened was that disabling timed discharge once I got bored enough disabled Eco. I just re-enabled it. Now behaving normally.
I only tried it again because Giv told me it would work!

SimonClarke That's the way the G1 is designed to work AFAIK. Timed discharge is a G2/G3 thing.

Have to admit in my automations I only use Timed Export, and then explicitly set Eco back when I'm finished.

I did it this way because that's the way that the battery minus quick-play button in the app changed the inverter and I initially wrote my automations to follow what the app does.

Predbat also only ever uses Timed Export as well.

Would all be ok if the Giv guy hadn’t specifically told me it would work this afternoon after testing it on my system. He just did it with Eco off!

DD Interesting... so what does 'timed discharge' do on a gen 1 ?

On my 3.6 Gen1 hybrid running 450/451 firmware, discharge prevents the battery from charging.

Let me explain. I'm on flux tariff so I have discharge on and the time period 16:00 to 19:00. It's still light now at 16:00 so suppose the panels are generating 2kW and the house is consuming 500W. Eco is ON, and the battery is not full. At 15:59 there would be 1.5kW charging the battery and no export. At 16:01 the battery would have become idle and the 1.5kW going to export. Now if at 16:02 I turn eco OFF, the battery will start discharging at maximum rate. Because there is already 2kW from the panels going through the inverter and it is only a 3.6kW inverter the battery discharges at 1.6kW, thereby sending 3.1kW to the grid.

SimonClarke Just set it to do a timed discharge at 18.30-20.30 with Eco on - total failure.

It had gone dark! Try 09:00 to 11:00 when the sun is shining and see the difference.

Rubikcube That's how it works on your app (which by the way I find extremely useful), but the question is really about the GE app and portal and the differences between timed discharge and timed export on a Gen1, their function, and whether the GE app or portal switches back on Eco mode after either Timed Export or Timed Discharge. On a Gen1 basically it doesn't, except by doing it manually using the Quickset buttons in the GE App.
Gens2 and 3 seem to work differently.

I think a bit of history is relevant. I believe the Givenergy inverter was first available in 2018. If I recall correctly, 2018 was the year SMETS2 meters became available. At the time very few people had smart meters, and smart tariffs (not counting Economy 7) simply didn't exist. The GivEnergy design engineers thought it might be useful to be able to discharge the battery, so built in the feature, but didn't really know how or why it might be used.

Fast forward to February 2023, and Octopus announced the Flux Tariff with an export price that varies with time of day. Givenergy realised that their inverters weren't really compatible with this new tariff, and so updated the firmware mid 2023 to work better with it. Unfortunately there have been many improvements to the givenergy design and the latest firmware won't run on many of the older inverters.

The result is that if you have and older inverter and want to make the most of the Octopus Flux Tariff, you will need something extra. There are currently 3 main options:
1) Home assistant. Free software, requires hardware, requires some technical skills.
2) My android app. Small charge, needs android tablet, only minimal technical ability required.
3) Wonderwatt. Free, online solution, minimal technical ability required.

For my app, I say an android tablet, because if you want to use the scheduler it must be a device that stays at home, not your phone that you carry around. However the tablet doesn't need to be dedicated to the app, I watch iplayer and play games on mine, at the same time as managing my inverter.

TimHutchings the GE app and portal and the differences between timed discharge and timed export

In the portal there are 2 ways to control the inverter. One is the remote control cog, top right, and if you use this you will notice that timed discharge and timed export don't really exist. Timed discharge and timed export are an invention of the settings tab, which has convenience functions. My understanding is that with these you can adjust the toggle and the times and it has no effect until you press submit. When submit is pressed a sequence of commands is sent to the inverter.

For timed discharge:
If the toggle is on, commands are sent to turn discharge on, turn eco on, and set the times.
If the toggle is off, commands are sent to turn discharge off, and turn eco off.
For timed export:
If the toggle is on, commands are sent to turn discharge on, turn eco off, and set the times.
If the toggle is off, commands are sent to turn discharge off, and turn eco on.

Note that the change to eco mode is made when you press submit, nothing to do with the time period.

My opinion is that this is so illogical and so confusing, nobody should ever use timed discharge or timed export. I may be wrong, I never use them!

Also the portal knows what type of inverter you have so may behave differently for different inverters. This is certainly true for the remote control page which shows different controls for different systems.

TimHutchings That's how it works on your app (which by the way I find extremely useful)

I am really pleased that it is helping you, and thank you for your support. Just a FYI, it turns out that from the £10 that you pay, google deduct taxes and commission, and I receive £7.08 from each sale. Not sure what happens to the taxes, I guess Google pass them onto HMRC?

DD Ah, no, that's unfortunate wording. (I think I did point it out.)

Thank you for pointing it out again. I didn't think it was causing confusion, but clearly it has, so I have changed the wording to hopefully make it clearer.

https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials/tariffs

Rubikcube it’s not dark at 18.30!

Rubikcube I have Intelligent Go not Flux

I’ll leave it for now and wait and see what Giv say Monday. I suspect I will need one of the third party apps probably Rubikcubes but I may just give up. Overall last year I made a small profit including running my EV so I was probably just being greedy!

Rubikcube My opinion is that this is so illogical and so confusing, nobody should ever use timed discharge or timed export.

My take is that it's the (portal) interface that is so confusing it shouldn't be used. The features themselves are fine (on newer models at least), and the android app interface makes it much harder to shoot yourself in the foot . Or even just use the raw flags via the remote control page.

(But because those are the portal's names for the features, maybe you were saying the same thing.)

Rubikcube suppose the panels are generating 2kW and the house is consuming 500W. Eco is ON, and the battery is not full. At 15:59 there would be 1.5kW charging the battery and no export. At 16:01 the battery would have become idle and the 1.5kW going to export.

I have just one gap remaining. (Not that I need to know - just curious...)

In the case that house consumption had been higher than solar production at 15:59, what happens (with timed discharge scheduled to star at 16:00)?

at 15:59, is the battery discharging to cover the demand or idle ?
at 16:01, is the battery discharging to cover the demand, or idle ?

I have a somewhat manual solution to this for my AIO with very old 2.7kw array and equally old fronius inverter.
The GE App, on Android, has different options to those on the portal. I have Timed Export set for 17.00 - 19.00 but disabled and then, after 5.00pm I alter discharge from Dynamic to Scheduled and switch Home Demand to Full Export then Save.

The battery then discharges 6kw first to satisfy home demand with balance to the grid. I then set a timer on my phone for 60 mins, 90 mins, whatever works for my SOC at the time and then manually switch back to Dynamic. No lag with change overs. Not perfect but does the job for someone who isn't looking for 100% efficiency perfection.

Using Eon Next Drive and starting every day with a full charge @ 0.08p per kWh and then being paid 0.165p kWh for export. If I miss a day it's not a biggy, it's only pence after all.

Helping the grid at the time in needs it most and, now the sun is out, covering my costs including charging my phev.

What's not to like?

DD In the case that house consumption had been higher than solar production

If the house consumption is higher than solar generation, then with eco ON, the battery will discharge to make up the difference. This is true regardless if discharge is on or off and regardless of inside or outside the timed period.

So on my gen1 with eco on; all discharge does is stop the battery from charging! This isn't very useful. I think the new behaviour is better, but unfortunately not available on my inverter.

Coys68 set a timer on my phone

That's fine, but you are manually doing a job that a machine could do.

Rubikcube is there a machine that could do it reliably though?
Automation is all very well but I don't trust it yet. Reading on these boards shows me how they just don't work properly. I don't want solar predictions, I want to fully charged every night at 0.08p, not have an algorithm decide that it'll be sunny tomorrow so not to bother. Especially if it relies on the BBC weather forecast 😉

Coys68 out of interest, have you tried timed discharge on AIO. If it does work same as gen-3, then you can just leave timed-discharge enabled, and the only intervention you need is to adjust end time, and you can do any time, even after the discharge had started.

I do more or less same, but I adjust discharge power rather than end-time, based on SoC (through an automation).

It's only the discharge that might potentially go wrong - you'd still be fully charged every morning since that would be a static config.

DD I think I have but I'll give it another go tomorrow.
If Timed Export worked as it should it would be brilliant. Set times and export to %age - happy days. Unfortunately when you alter the export to %age, it alters the battery reserve figure. Maybe still a work in progress back in GE land??!!?

Coys68 Is that just an interface problem ? Which interface are you using to set the lower bound? The android interface doesn't give access to the per-discharge-timer minimum slot.

Oh, I see what you mean... when you use the portal settings to do it, it does indeed modify the global reserve register. I tried changing mine just now from 4% to 5%, and as the log confirms, it was the global one it changed. Going into the remote control page (which is really my preferred way of configuring things, since you get to see the actual control registers, rather than a "friendly" presentation), I see that the per-slot one is untouched, and still 4%.

(All that said, the discharge-to-target-% doesn't really offer behaviour I want - when it reaches the target, battery goes idle until the end of the time window - so I don't use it.)

Coys68 is there a machine that could do it reliably though?

These settings in this android app should do what you currently do. Adjust the percentages as you see fit. Note that you would need an android device that stays at home with your inverter, not your phone that you carry around. A tablet or old android phone is good.

Right… The last few days Givenergy have been playing around with my system. I was told I should be able to do a timed discharge with no effect on Eco mode. I have had battery software 3012 to start with, then 3015, then 3068 and then back to 3012, all with no calibration. I was also told the inverter software would be changed but noticed nothing. Told again today it would work. It didn’t! Set a timed discharge with no other changes on the portal, left it for 15 minutes but nothing changed it just carried on as normal. So I turned timed discharge off and the only thing that changed was the battery stopped supplying power, despite eco saying it was on. So I turned eco off and then on again and all is back to normal.
As said by several people here I think this is not possible.

SimonClarke So I turned timed discharge off and the only thing that changed was the battery stopped supplying power, despite eco saying it was on.

Yes, there's an interface bug which means turning timed discharge off loses eco mode, but the interface doesn't realise it. Turning eco off then on again, as you say, forces the portal back into sync with what's actually on the inverter.
See my earlier post - DD

DD it’s not that I didn’t believe people it’s just that Giv said it should work! You would think they might know…..

Worked out what's happening on my G1 with GivTCP/HA controlling export simply because I happened to have it open at the time.

The automation sets "Control GivTCP Mode Option" to "Timed Export". When it fails and requires a reset/reboot/whatever that's not what is set. What was actually set this morning was "Timed Demand" so whichever register controls those settings is getting corrupted.

I actually caught the error just before "Discharge start time slot 1" began and manually set it to "Timed Export".

The battery behaved properly after the export period (discharged/charged OK) so I suspect that when the automation sets "Control GivTCP Mode Option" back to "Eco" after a failed export due to register corruption (because its a G1/timed demand) then that's when it requires reset/reboot etc.

Should be easy enough to work around if that is the case.

NB - there is ZERO packet loss at the TCP layer between the dongle and the WLAN measured over several days, so this is most certainly a dongle issue. Rubikcube 's suggestion of inserting additional delays between commands seems eminently sensible.

Vestas whichever register controls those settings is getting corrupted

Can't say for sure it's the same on all systems (but I suspect so). On my G3, there are two registers: one for eco mode, and one for timed dc discharge. Timed Discharge has both on. Timed Export has eco off, timed dc discharge on. So the difference between the two modes s the eco flag.

I guess going from timed export to eco requires two register changes, and so it is plausible that there could be corruption. Going between timed discharge and eco requires only one register change.

Easy enough (for me) to work around it now I've seen it happen.

I'll just do a sanity check on "Control GivTCP Mode Option" prior to "Discharge start time slot 1" and ensure it is actually set to "Timed Export".

In fact I'm going to have to put sanity checks like this in all the automations as the inverter is telling GivTCP that the original write was completed correctly. Edit - or there might be a setting in GivTCP which forces multiple writes but I suspect that'll make matters worse

Makes me think I'm going to have to upgrade inverter f/w (if it ever appears in the portal which I doubt) to work out whether CRC checks ameliorate the crappyness of the dongle. In theory they should.....

Both Givenergy and my installer are insisting it should work on my gen 1. Waiting to hear how!

SimonClarke What should? Timed demand for export? Its never worked.

Vestas In fact I'm going to have to put sanity checks like this in all the automations as the inverter is telling GivTCP that the original write was completed correctly

A bit off-topc, but I've been playing around with the modbus interface recently, for local monitoring, though I don't use home assistant. There are competing forks of the modbus library, but so far, the one that givergy-local uses seems rather more resliant than the one givtcp uses. (But it might just be me using it wrong.)

DD Indeed, however GivTCP is the only local third-party control GE acknowledge/support. Anything else which writes directly to registers (ie not using the API endpoint) runs the risk of GE denying warranty claims.....

Vestas Timed discharge. Both are saying it should work as in eco on full power discharge for the set time then eco back on. So far Giv have failed miserably.
They said the inverter needs an update. It’s on D0.450.A0.451 and isn’t asking me to update so I don’t know

Vestas In fact I'm going to have to put sanity checks like this in all the automations as the inverter is telling GivTCP that the original write was completed correctly. Edit - or there might be a setting in GivTCP which forces multiple writes but I suspect that'll make matters worse

One of the things I did (before I abandoned automations for Predbat) was to put all my GivTCP interactions into HA Scripts, and then call the scripts from automations. Made things much easier to change if eg I wanted to check some inverter interaction had worked and retry if necessary.

PianSom I'm not sure that's required for battery interactions (see below) but its a good idea.

Frankly one of the things which has always bothered me about predbat is the chances of going full charge rate/discharge rate rinse/repeat every 30 minutes.

I've looked at a fair few cell manufacturers' datasheets now and they all do the same for their lifespan tests - full charge/full discharge at varying rates of C with 30 minutes rest time between charge/discharge. That's what the lifespan is based on, not repeated short duration full-rate charge/discharge cycles with no pause between them.

We'll find out in a couple/few years but I don't think its a coincidence that the phrase "grid trading" has recently appeared in GE warranty docs.

Anyway we digress - I probably wouldn't need to use them as I usually have a 10 minute delay either side of repeated battery charge discharge automations for above reasons.

Vestas
Oh, no - certainly NOT required. But very helpful to have all interactions in one place - just good practice. Easy to put in checks, delays, etc. These were the sort of scripts I had -

IIRC I also had a "Put into my default mode" script, which would go through and reset EVERYTHING back to a known, defined state.

I do worry about the Predbat battery flipping cycles. But with some tuning I have (largely) managed to eliminate it. And a few days/weeks of abuse shouldn't affect long term. I hope!!

PianSom And a few days/weeks of abuse shouldn't affect long term. I hope!!

I don't think that'll have any effect on what is supposedly a 10/12 year lifespan.

If I was GE/cell manufacturer I'd be running a test with predbat/similar, supplying it with worst-case input data to generate repeated charge/discharge cycles so I could accurately model the effect on the growth of resistivity within the battery.

I'm not them though 🙂

DD A bit off-topc, but I've been playing around with the modbus interface recently, for local monitoring, though I don't use home assistant. There are competing forks of the modbus library, but so far, the one that givergy-local uses seems rather more resliant than the one givtcp uses. (But it might just be me using it wrong.)

My understanding is that givenergy-local doesn’t have the “newer firmware” CRC checks in it so it will only work with older firmware versions. There’s a thread on here somewhere of people finding that givenergy-local stopped working once they upgraded.

SimonClarke They said the inverter needs an update. It’s on D0.450.A0.451 and isn’t asking me to update so I don’t know

That’s the latest publically available gen 1 firmware but there are other versions that are not mainstream. GE upgraded me to D0.191-A0.193 to fix specific issues I had with my gen 1 hybrid

geoffreycoan apparently it is being patched this afternoon so I am trying again tonight. Fingers crossed…

geoffreycoan My understanding is that givenergy-local doesn’t have the “newer firmware” CRC checks in it so it will only work with older firmware versions. There’s a thread on here somewhere of people finding that givenergy-local stopped working once they upgraded.

They ended up incorporating a copy of (a development branch of) the original dewet tree, and then added in some code to implement crcs.

Vestas Indeed, however GivTCP is the only local third-party control GE acknowledge/support. Anything else which writes directly to registers (ie not using the API endpoint) runs the risk of GE denying warranty claims.....

Had a quick look at the warranty. (As expected) don't see any mention of any of these things. There is a reppository owned by "givenergy" - one might have hoped that that, if any, might have been officially sanctioned.

Warranty does say

the GivEnergy Product shall only be used in accordance with the Supplier’s
operating instructions and manual

but their documentation is woefully inadequate - if you were to stick with that, would struggle to do anything much at all !

DD There's something about third-party controls, can't remember where & I could be wrong.

There has however been warnings about using apps/controls not seen/approved by GE on this forum. IIRC they came from Paul Landregan?

DD I'd say you're spot on the money here, well done 🙂

DD I guess going from timed export to eco requires two register change

Edit - just watched it happen and leave the system unable to use the battery.

Edit2 - more sanity checks than are sane 🙂 Thanks @PianSom

Vestas Yes, in this thread for example:
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/1839-android-inverter-monitor

But is there anything that says that GivTCP is officially sanctioned ?

Paul does get involved in threads like https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/771-givtcp-new-release-114 but as I read it, Paul didn't see it until after it had been released. Might have thought that if GE were actively involved, they might have seen it first ? (But that's 18 months old - maybe the arrangement has changed.)

I do recall seeing mentions about britkat working with GE, but again, if GivTCP was officially sanctioned, I'd hope to see something on the GE site itself.

DD I just stay on the GivTCP side of things as its impossible for them to deny warranty given previous posts.

@hoggy knows the history of this better than me.....

Vestas I don’t know the history for sure but I thought GivTCP incorporated and took forward the original modbus libraries that were developed by GivEnergy, but after the particular developer left GivEnergy it pretty much fell to Brikkat to maintain them himself, for which there was some collaboration with GivEnergy. So not an official GE product but its heritage traces back to something they developed.

Probably got half of this wrong !

I’d guess that GivEnergy would say that the only official documented method of integrating with their systems is via the cloud API’s https://givenergy.cloud/docs/api/v1

I believe this will be the way that API access to CEMS will be provided. The latest release of predbat has the cloud API as an integration option

To go back to my original issue….this afternoon my inverter was updated to D0.191.A0.193 and guess what! I have done a timed discharge and it has returned to running the house with Eco on! Oh ye of little faith! Only got to get a timed charge now….will report in the morning.

Ah well thought that was too easy. Timed charge failed to start. As I was awake I resubmitted timed charge which started to charge but at full power rather than the set lower rate so I resubmitted the battery charge level and all was well. Will try again tonight

geoffreycoan it was all done via community efforts (Dewett the library guy never worked for GE) - basically GE handed over the register list and said have at it. The GE repo is/was just a mirror of the community one and has had little, if any, love from GE since.
Hence why its a bit of a jumble as there is no "one" official library anymore as its been forked left & right to suit use cases.
Weirdly, you'd have thought given how much enthusiasm they have to GivTCP they would give Britkat all the latest kit to keep going, but he's still on Gen1!

SimonClarke I'd be interested to know if your new firmware upgrade also speeds up the load changes from solar to battery to grid etc. Sometimes 450/451 seems to take up to 20secs to adjust from one to another. Perhaps you could keep a eye on and let us know. Many thanks.

TimHutchings I will if it stays and works. So far I don’t have much hope but will try again tonight

SimonClarke Is it possible that the configuration had been reset to defaults during the upgrade? Maybe it's just a config change rather than a bug (fingers crossed).

191/193 doesn't seem to be listed in the KB - is it a beta firmware you're testing ?

DD everything was still showing as the same - eco on, timed charge on, battery charge limited to 1995w and timed discharge off. All I did was turn discharge on. Which worked! I have noticed several times that although things in the portal say they are on they don’t actually work so as I said I will try again tonight. I did notice that the inverter gets pretty warm and wondered if there is an easy way (not anything third party) to lower the discharge rate and run it for longer? Irrelevant of course if it won’t return to eco and charging

SimonClarke after every recent software update, my charge rate looks right but isn’t, I have to slightly change it and save it, to get it to charge at anything but full speed.

So I can believe that values looked right but weren’t followed.

And yes you can change the charge and discharge rates to suit in the web portal or app.

SimonClarke trouble is that portal maintains a cache of the settings it last sent. If the changes are applied locally, the portal gets out of sync.
Try setting the value to something else, then back to what you really want. Or on the portal remote control, you can also force a reload of a register.

DD but does it stay put? Or do you keep having to do it?

SimonClarke if you change the discharge rate presumably that effects how much goes to the house. Having only 2.6kw I really don’t want to lower that

SimonClarke It's just a one-time thing to get the two back in sync. After that, it will behave has it always has. (So if you use Home Assistant, for example, which writes to the registers directly, then they'll get out of sync again.)

DD 191/193 doesn't seem to be listed in the KB - is it a beta firmware you're testing ?

Its the "fast response" firmware which is only suitable for G1 inverters after week 10 2022.

One thing I have noticed now that it is doing a timed discharge is that it is sending 2.88kw from the battery. Thought these things were limited to 2.6?

Success! Gen 1 5kw and 9.5 battery have run on Eco, then done a timed discharge, reverted back to Eco, and then done a timed charge at the requested rate, and now is happily running the house. I never had any doubts……

SimonClarke Think I might contact GE support to see if they can update my Gen1 inverter to the latest beta software.
On the other hand I might hang on for a couple of weeks and see if you have any other issues. Please keep us updated. 👍

TimHutchings will do but I would hang on as it’s only one night so far! As for speed of response I just turned the grill on which is 3.2kw and the battery and grid started to supply almost immediately so maybe it is quicker. I will try and keep an eye on it and post accordingly.

SimonClarke I will try and keep an eye on it and post accordingly

(perhaps a new thread, like the AIO beta 8/9 ones ?)

I’ll stay here for now as nobody official has told me it’s beta software. But I do think that I can say that it is working. Now done 2 nights on D0.191-A0.193 with no problems. So I think we can say that it is possible to run a Gen 1 5kw with a 9.5kw battery on 3012 on Eco, with timed charge and timed discharge, without resorting to third party software. I asked about the apparent increase in supply from the battery (2.88 rather than 2.6kw) which was confirmed. It does get warmer when discharging so I’m going to increase the ventilation to my cupboard install but I’ve been told it isn’t too hot. I think that it seems to react to changes quicker but that is a bit subjective as I am just watching the app, but I will keep an eye on it and post what I see.

SimonClarke I’v been on this D0.191-A0.193 firmware on my two Gen 1 5kW hybrids for about 5 weeks now.
It was installed for me because I had issues with not being able to force export both inverters & batteries at the same time. Particularly noticeable during the DFS events, the discharge would start, both would ramp up, then one would ramp down to idle or half discharge. Sometimes one inverter did it, sometimes the other.

The firmware upgrade seems to have cured this and I could get both to discharge consistently at the same rate.

I’m on BMS 3015 with a 9.5kW battery on one inverter and a 5.2kW battery on the other. Other than during the initial calibration process I never saw any BMS over voltage errors.

Yes I also noticed that the battery would discharge at a higher rate. My 5.2 is discharging at the moment at 2.67kW.

Unfortunately after about 3 weeks the inverter with the 9.5 battery on it stopped working. The battery turned itself off and when you turn it on there’s a series of clicks from it. Its happened to other people and is aparently an inverter fault. Waiting for GE to come to replace it.

geoffreycoan my fingers are crossed that it’s not connected! I really will not be happy if something fails because of Givenergy changing things. I will also not be happy having to wait for a replacement

Thanks to you both Simon and Geoffrey for your take on the new beta software 191/193 for the Gen1.
Very interested in any comments you make on the new firmware and will probably call GE support next week to try to get the upgrade when I have more time to monitor it.
Thanks again for your comments!

SimonClarke I’ll stay here for now as nobody official has told me it’s beta software

It doesn't have to be a beta firmware to warrant having a dedicated thread to talk about it,

The question is - if someone wants to find out / talk about firmware D0.191-A0.193, are they likely to look in a thread called 'confused about export' ? And if someone is confused about export, do they want to know about firmware D0.191-A0.193

Sorry - I guess I'm a bit grumpy this morning. Normal cheerful service will resume shortly...

DD I just meant that I don’t know what it is but I will be happy to start a new post or join one but I wanted it to run for a while first. If it cures lots of problems why would it be beta still?

SimonClarke I believe GivEnergy were working on this ‘fast switch’ firmware some while ago. Paul L mentioned it on the recent Instagram live video. Its only suitable for the newer Gen 1 inverters, but why its not been made more generally available, I don’t know.

Maybe its because Paul L and team haven’t finished testing it yet?

I will ask the GE staff member who installed it for me what its supposed to fix and then I’ll start a new thread

geoffreycoan Its because the portal can't automatically identify which inverters are eligible for upgrade.

SimonClarke If it cures lots of problems why would it be beta still?

See last post. Basically it kills inverters manufactured before week 10 2022.

Vestas See last post. Basically it kills inverters manufactured before week 10 2022.

Paul L said that there is a test they can run on the older Gen 1’s to confirm if the firmware can work on them, it apparently works on some of the older ones IIRC

Vestas Out of interest How can you identify the build date?

M_J Its the inverter serial number

eg mine are SD2237Gnnn

The SD is the model number (there’s a list somewhere)

22 37 is week 37 of 2022

The nnn is a sequential device number

Ahhh sweet I should have guessed as much from my past life of work...

Dohhh🙄

So CE 21 19 is 2021 week 19.

Thanks

So it had been sat around a bit until my install in Jan 22

geoffreycoan Yeah but they've given up on that idea as it wasn't 100% accurate. Frankly I think the only reason they used that test was because the build records aren't good enough to identify exactly when the build changed and the test narrowed it down somewhat. I could well be wrong.

Anyway, anything manufactured before week 10 2022 stays on older firmware permanently (assuming no security bugs).

2246 fitted April 23 but has been replaced by Giv since…. And probably will be again I think. More when I know it.

SimonClarke Intriguing...