Battery export & SEG query

7 comments started 2024-08-12 last 2024-08-13
GivEnergy ProductsHybridBattery
#1 Midlands_Solar

Hi all,

Now I have a decent SEG tariff with EON, I'm wondering if there's any advantage discharging the excess battery charge back to the grid, and top out at the off peak rate?

My inverter settings are pretty basic with no automation, I have ECHO mode switched on. Where would I specify this setting without disrupting the ECO mode?

D
#2 DD

Midlands_Solar There's certainly a financial benefit. There's a cost in terms of battery churn, so it's up to you decide how to play it.

My strategy is to charge overnight to 80%, then in the morning export back down to 40%, then send all excess solar to the grid (avoiding going through the battery), then in the evening export down to around 10%. I try to charge and discharge at lower power, to try to be a bit kinder to the battery.

Enabling timed charge and timed export shouldn't have any effect on eco mode outside of the configured times. (Though I don't entirely trust the UI not to mess with eco mode when configuring timed export.) gen-1 does have trouble with exporting and eco mode, but newer models shouldn't.

S
#3 SimonClarke

Charge to 100% on IOG then export solar all day then timed export for two hours. Hardly ever run out and then only after 10pm which I think resets the SOC. No over voltage or any other notifications. Touching wood! Gen 1 so called fast response software. On ECO no automation or anything other than Giv stuff. Not really computer literate either!

D
#4 DD

DD My strategy is to charge overnight to 80%, then in the morning export back down to 40%

Just to expand on that: I don't go up to 100% to avoid any over-voltage shenanigans. The morning export is to ensure there's plenty of room in the battery to avoid clipping on good solar days, plus the unsubstantiated hypothesis that battery is happiest with small cycles when it's roughly half-full, rather than making it work hard when it's close to full or close to empty.

#5 Midlands_Solar

Hi all,

I've set the inverter as follows, ignore the hi-lighted entries, as these were incorrect and reverted these back to the previous settings

D
#6 DD

Midlands_Solar The possible downside of using the discharge limit is that, when it hits that, the battery pauses and you go back to importing from the grid. That may be your intention, but it means you're sitting with 6% available battery.
OTOH, allowing the battery to idle while at relatively low charge is possibly a good thing, it allows the cells to rebalance.

#7 Midlands_Solar

So it worked ok last night as the battery dropped to about 35% by 10:30 after exporting at full power from 21:00, I stopped the export from 11:00 as it was clear the battery would deplete entirely by midnights, and I didn't want to pull from the grid at peak hours

Used about + extra 8KW to charge the battery than the previous night, so need to look at off-peak export vs export to maximize my SEG payments