Trying to understand Inverter Behaviour

Hi folks,

I have an 18 panel PV, Gen 3 Hybrid Inverter, and 9.5kw Gen 2 Battery.

It was all set up in March, and I've mostly just watched what it does, occasionally playing with charge/discharge/export slots when the Agile pricing drops very low. I am a tinkerer at heart but don't want to dive too much into automating stuff till i have a good understanding of all the plates being spun. So there's no PredBat or smart tarriffs configured.

On the 12th there were some Agile negative pricing slots, so I set an overnight charging slot on the GivEnergy app, enabled it, and left Eco mode enabled. Then I disabled the charging slot after the battery was charged, but left the times untouched.

On the 13th and 14th, as expected, it ignored the times in the charging slot because 'Timed Charge' was disabled. This morning, the inverter charged the battery even though the 'timed charge' slot was still disabled. I've had a look at the portal and it reflects what I see on the app. Also the remote control history on the portal show the timing slot being disabled (and so back to Eco Mode) after the first charging window on the 12th and no other logs since.

How do I work out why it did the charge this morning?

SirTeaBelly did it fully charge, or just charge a little ? I think there's a mechanism in place such that if the battery runs very low, it does an "emergency" charge to ensure that it doesn't go below the min. specificed voltage. But I think it only charges for something like 30 mins or something ?

DD 30 minutes at about 300W. I think it basically charges the battery back to a minimum of 500Wh, which equates to roughly 5% SoC.

Thanks for replying...

Nope it was at 49% when it started charging, which is about average for that time of night. The timeslot I set on the 12th was 0:30-5:30, and at 0:30 last night it charged at full whack till it was full then idled the battery till 5:30 - which is what it did (as expected) on the 12th. I'd have just assumed that I'd forgot to disable the timeslot if it had happened on the 13th and 14th, but that's whats confusing me - the remote control history on the portal confirms I did disable the timeslot and have not changed any configuration since.

SirTeaBelly Hmm - that is a weird one...

If you have Android, you could try https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials which reads values directly from the inverter. Or for iOS (or in fact lots of other platforms) there's a bbc basic app https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/438-how-accurate-are-the-import-from-grid-metrics/16

The portal generally reports what it last sent, rather than actually reading the inverter. (Though I think if you use the API to check the setting, it does actually go all the way to the inverter.)

Another option is, on the remote control page, there's a button to force the portal to read a value from the inverter - the little circular arrow icon IIRC

Or if you're not too fussed about diagnosing and just want to try to fix it, turning the setting on then off again should ensure that the inverter is in sync with the portal.

Sounds similar to my problem.
Hello, I’m new to the site and I’m experiencing trouble with my Givenergy battery and Octopus Intelligent Flux. During installation I inadvertently signed up to Givenergy Axle briefly, but then went back to Octopus. Since the installation date of mid June the battery has only charged overnight to full capacity a handful of times. Normally the battery charges to about 20% over night and if it’s a sunny day it will get up to about 40%. Octopus and Givenergy have been informed, but still no resolution.
Times are all in synced between inverter and battery. Both have been rebooted.
Hopefully someone has the same issue (unfortunately)
Regards
BAT

DD
Progress!
Thanks for the pointers DD The Monitor app shows that the inverter still has the time-slot enabled. Despite the app and the portal>settings>timed_charge showing it as disabled, and then once I'd found the right toggle on the remote control page (I'd only found the time-slot fields before) and read the value, the app and portal reflected that it was still enabled.

So the lesson is, I guess, whenever you write settings via the app/portal, you should do a read to confirm the write.

Thanks everyone