Timed discharge disappeared from Android App - Options

Following the recent “upgrade” to the Android App the other week, I had managed to have it set to optimise my situation. However now that Timed Discharge has disappeared today I am struggling to sort it out so would be grateful for any advice.

I have 6.24 kW Solar array, Gen1 5 kW inverter and 8.2 kWh battery. As I am on an EV tariff I choose to fill my house battery overnight from midnight to 7am at around 1.2 kWh, and export as much solar and battery as possible during the day/ evening to maximise my SEG payment, whilst minimising grid use during the day.

With timed discharge disappearing if I choose Eco on the app the inverter tries to charge my battery from solar instead of exporting it. Is there now anyway to set the system not to charge the battery from solar, but allow the battery to meet home demand when it is not set to export?

Noenergy I'm aware that gen-1 behaved quite differently from more recent systems with regard to timed export and timed discharge. So I can only be of limited help here. But note that AFAIK this is just a UI change. The underlying functionality is unchanged, and it's just a change to which low-level registers the app adjusts. You can still do everything you could before, but might have to bypass the app and go via the remote-control page on the portal.

I don't have a gen-1 system, so can't test this, but AFAIK, timed-discharge set two lower-level flags: 'enable dc discharge' and 'eco mode'. But now, timed-discharge does something quite different on newer systems, to implement the documented behaviour of "covering house demand during the timed window".

What you could try is enabling timed-export, but with the eco flag on. I believe that a gen-1 inverter cannot actually export while the eco flag is on, but this combination is effectively what timed-discharge used to do.

Is there now anyway to set the system not to charge the battery from solar, but allow the battery to meet home demand when it is not set to export?

if the above doesn't work, could try simply reducing max battery charging power to 0. However, one desirable side effect of turning off eco mode (on my gen-3 at least) is that the first 5kW of solar will be exported, and the rest will go to the battery, but simply reducing charging power means you'll get clipping instead.

Thank you for your reply, it’s greatly appreciated.

I’ve never tried using the portal, so maybe I need to look into that. I did look at it when I had the system installed a couple of years ago but I didn’t find it particularly user-friendly at the time.

I had already tried your first suggestion on the app, but alas timed export switches off eco mode and vice versa.
However your second suggestion worked! I just need to remember to increase the charge level again in the evening to enable overnight charging.

I read your post a month or so ago about minimising clipping, I hadn’t realised that was possible as a workaround on the inverter’s limit. I have now done this on sunny days, however as I always charge my battery overnight to 100% I did wonder about the long term effects on battery health having an extra charge cycle each day.

Many thanks for your help.

Noenergy I had already tried your first suggestion on the app, but alas timed export switches off eco mode and vice versa.

Yeah, that's a very annoying and unnecessary feature of the UI - the two "modes" can coexist. But might need to go in via the remote-control part of the portal to access the "raw" flags, without the UI interfering.
see https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3650-understanding-the-settings-on-your-app-and-portal - the cogs in the top-right corner on the first image takes you to the second image.

(I think I was able to turn on timed-export without it turning off eco, but turning on eco did turn off timed-export.)

I find it rather more covenient to use the API to fiddle with the various flags. But then I work from home, so I'm sat in front of the computer anyway. I can do things like
givenergy.py eco=1 ed=1 de=17:00 dp=2000
to enable eco mode, enable discharge, with an end time of 5pm, and a discharge power of 2kW. Yeah, okay, it's a bit cryptic, but ...

And can also automate this stuff the same way. So can turn eco mode off at noon and back on at 4pm without having to intervene.

I think I need to find time to look at things in more detail, but for at least for now it’s working ok!

Noenergy Oh... forgot to mention another option: there's a third-party android app by a user on here:
https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials

The premium version has the option to control the inverter. Maybe that's more convenient. I don't use the premium version, but find the basic version very useful.

Can see the controls on https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials/tariffs - hopefully it will allow you to control eco flag and timed discharge flag independently.