I have my Gen 1 8.2kW battery set up to charge between 00:05 and 05:25 to a level which I vary by means of Home Assistant depending on the Solcast forecast for the following day.
This system has worked well for 3+years, but recently I've found a handful of times that the battery has not charged overnight.
This always seems to occur when the battery has discharged to its reserve before the start of the charging period.
When this has occurred, I've found that charging can start at full power in the morning when the PV panels first generate power, if I have extend the charging period to say 07:30.
I reported this to GivEnergy last week. As yet, they've tried a few things, including a beta firmware installation, without success.
Any ideas?
J
#2Jmossy15
Having the same problem here with the AIO. When it discharges to reserve it then doesn't seem to charge back up. Also reported.
B
#3BirchTreeHouse
I have observed that my battery can discharge below the reserve down to the cut-off occasionally.
When this happens the battery seems to be unable to charge from the grid, but can from PV.
Note that whilst the defaults for reserve and cut off are both 4%, I set my reserve higher.
I deduce that the beta firmware GivEnergy gave me has made things worse rather than better.
GivEnergy advised yesterday they are going to arrange for their technicians to visit. I was pleasantly surprised by this.
As an interim measure, I have created an HA automation to set the battery discharge rate to zero, in the event the SoC drops below the reserve.
B
#4BirchTreeHouse
I've just emailed GivEnergy as follows:
"I believe the problems I’m having are caused by the inverter firmware update I did myself on 21st June and/or the beta version installed by Lewis on 16th July.
My observations, which are based on Home Assistant logged data, are if reserve and cut off are both at their default settings of 4% and if the state of charge drops to 4% then cut off is triggered.
If I set the reserve to a higher value, the battery can discharge below the reserve going down to 4% triggering the cut off. If that happens, the battery does not charge overnight but will start charging normally once the PV panels start generating.
Last night I set the reserve to 8%. yet the battery continued to discharge below that. I had created an HA automation to set the GivEnergy Discharge Rate to zero, if the SoC fell below 6%.
The SoC fell to 5% triggering that automation and the battery stopped discharging. The battery commenced charging at the start of the designated period and behaved normally thereafter."
My findings may be of interest to any others with similar problems.
D
#5DD
BirchTreeHouse Not sure if this is in any way relevant, but I learned it recently:
With home assistant, you may be able to find the setting of this parameter on your system.
B
#6BirchTreeHouse
I think what is referred to there as 'bottom reserve' is more correctly defined as 'Cut Off'.
Both Reserve and Cut Off have default values of 4%. Perhaps one is tested as =4% and the other as <4%
My belief is that Reserve test is no longer (or not quickly enough) stopping discharge and the Cut Off test is being triggered.
