Why is it not importing at night?
Have just had solar panels fitted with Givenergy batteries. Supposed to be on Octopus flux but after battery being 95% full it is only 37% this morning. Thought it was supposed to import in early morning hours.
Its not automatic that your battery charges up overnight. You need to setup a charge through the portal or the app, and similarly during the peak period a discharge if you want to maximise your export revenue.
There are smart tariff settings in the portal that can do this for you, but its probably simpler and more in control if you set the charge and discharge up yourself.
But to be honest, if you want to make best use of Flux, its not worthwhile charging the battery overnight. The night import rate is so close to the day export rate that by the time you include the conversion losses of charging your battery from grid, its actually going to earn you slightly LESS if you do this. Instead let your batteries fill from solar energy during the day, and only export when your batteries are full
Lynn you could consider moving to octopus intelligent flux - likely to be better rates for spring summer and fully automated by octopus.
Hi
I have now gone into the online portal to investigate the options. I am very much a newbie and nervous about changing anything. The inverter is showing eco mode. Does that mean I need to change the times for gaining from Octopus Flux? We live in the south and despite the lousy weather at the moment we do usually get a fair bit of sun. I thought the Flux tariff was for the summer months and the Intelligent Flux for the winter months.
Any suggestions would be welcome.
Lynn I have now gone into the online portal to investigate the options. I am very much a newbie and nervous about changing anything. The inverter is showing eco mode. Does that mean I need to change the times for gaining from Octopus Flux?
You almost certainly want to leave eco mode on. On older (gen-1) models, it can be necessary to turn it off to do some things, but I assume that doesn't apply to you.
I guess the question is... what is it you want your system to do ?
As mentioned above, cost-wise there's little benefit in charging overnight as opposed to from solar during the day. But on dull days, if there's not enough sun to charge the battery to cover the expensive evening slot, it does makes sense to charge overnight.
Do you prefer to configure using the web portal, or if the app, is it android or iOS ? You can do the same from any of them, but the interfaces are slightly different.
I thought the Flux tariff was for the summer months and the Intelligent Flux for the winter months.
There isn't really a single "best" tariff. There was a recent youtube video on 'Tim & Kat's Green walk' comparing various tariffs for summer, and Tim reckoned Intelligent Flux was better than Flux for summer. But IMHO his assumptions weren't entirely valid. But if you want to be hands-off, IF does make sense.
I don't think Flux or Intelligent Flux make sense in the winter, though. They're really better for when generation exceeds consumption.
Thank you. That's really helpful. I use the app on an android phone. I haven't see whete to change inverter but will have another look.
It's also interesting to read your comments re just using eco mode and not changing hours for flux.
We're now thinking of continuing running with eco to see how it pans out. If we have a run of really sunny weather we may try a run on Flux to see if there is anything to gain from the tariff. Certainly even in this rubbish weather in the last 7 days we have earned £5.15 in export against an input charge of £0.15 so we're reasonably happy with that at the moment.
Thanks again for your helpful reply.
Lynn the point about eco is that it can be (temporarily) overridden by other behaviours by configuring various timers, but by leaving it on, it will go back to a sensible behaviour when none of the timers are active.
So then you can configure one or more timers to charge from grid during off-peak times, and/or one or more timed discharge (NOT timed export) timers to dump excess battery during peak export rates, and just run in eco mode most of the time.
(First-gen systems did require turning eco off to dump battery to grid, but fortunately that's no longer necessary.)
Lynn Flux is a good alternative to the normal variable rate tariffs if you are new to solar and battery storage. Eco mode will do most of what you want automatically and as long as your battery storage and solar generation is higher than your house load, you should be making a bit of profit as well.
The only thing to watch out for is the peak rate import, which is comparatively expensive, so if you start finding that you are running out of battery in the peak period on cloudy days then you’ll need to put in an overnight charge for those days.
But learn how it works and fits with your home patterns.
For the winter you’ll almost certainly want to change tariff as you won’t be generating enough solar energy to see you through the peak
Thank you DD and geoffreycoan. The advice from both of you is helpful. As you mention the peak rate import is too large to consider so will keep with Eco mode. Weather not good today so will need to keep an eye on battery. Luckily we eat late in the evening! We also aren't heavy electricity users. Might try to put battery on an overnight charge tonight though.
Great advice from both of you so thank you.