Battery missed charging twice

I have Gen 1 Hybrid 3.6kW and two 2.6kWh batteries, I got Andrew Miller's excellent Monitor for GivEnergy Inverter app and have been using it to charge the batteries in every Cosy cheap import period. It hasn't missed a beat until yesterday evening, although I'm not convinced that the app is at fault.

It missed the 10pm to midnight session and the 4am to 7am session this morning. There is a message about a comms problem on the android phone it's running on, but it has been reading and displaying the data correctly all morning and in my GE app on my day to day phone the next charge session this afternoon is correct in the Timed Charge section.

On the GE portal on desktop everything looks ok, no errors.

So I'm not sure what has happened and wondered whether anyone else has had a similar experience?

Relying on servers to talk to other servers and then your inverter over the internet may be a bit "flaky".
I think that is why people go down the HA route. Your server and inverter on your network with your code!

TRBob It could be just a temporary comms problem or it could indicate that your inverter has decided to ignore the charge instructions it receives which occasionally can happen.

I’d suggest you instruct the inverter to do a quick charge during the day using the inverter app you use, and check that the inverter responds as expected.

If it doesn’t respond then it’s a case of rebooting the phone, then doing a ‘reset to defaults’ of your inverter in the givenergy portal which should fix it. Then re-test

TRBob , you are not alone.
I am trying to use Myenergyoptimiser.co.uk. First off, I have been superb help from the developer over the last fortnight.

Every day MyEO sets up a conditional boost at 1400 to 1600 if the SOC is below 70%.

Richard also set up a boost in the cheap rate period 0200-0500. There are no error messages in the GE log and everything looks OK in MyEO except there is no import.

Last night I set GE to operate 30 minutes before MyEO. The battery was charged and there was no conflict. Charge stopped on time.

The investigation proceeds.

Nothing is 100% perfect! Whatever you use for automation, you can expect that a few days per year it might go wrong. As long as it's only occasional the impact on your energy bill shouldn't be significant.

With my app there are 3 tabs; Controls (for immediate), Schedule (for automation), and History (for when things go wrong). The History tab may tell you what happened, although it is possible the entry might be missing. The rightmost column should be one of Accepted, Rejected, No Connection, Wrong Register, or Wrong Value.

Occasionally the inverter (dongle) loses connection with the portal and can spend up to 3 minutes trying to re-establish the connection during which time it becomes deaf to any commands from my app or GivTCP. The underlying cause my be with the portal, the internet generally, your broadband, or your wifi. It is rather unpredictable, and may generate a No Connection message.

A known issue (for Gen1) is that occasionally commands can get corrupted. Later firmwares includes error correction which may fix this. If you see the response Wrong Register or Wrong Value, it means that the command was corrupted. Almost certainly the correct command won't have been done, mostly nothing bad will have happened, but worst case the command may be misinterpreted and might even kick off a battery calibration!

I am aware of these issues, and I am working on improved reliability.

Rubikcube Hi Rubikcube - I have your app which I enjoy a lot (my installer was impressed and asked for details when I showed him), but a question for you regarding the automation, does this work with the GE AIO set-up (I get an error message when I try to access the powerbar at the bottom "...battery information not available from your invertr because protocal doesn't allow it"

CW I have your app

Thank you for your support and I am glad you find it useful. The app is designed to work with my Gen1 Hybrid system which has only the basic features. Newer systems have more settings and features, but still retain the same basic functions which in fact are all you really need. The settings and automation should work with the AIO just fine. The battery cell information currently only works with 16-cell batteries (that is the 2.6, 5.2, 8.2, and 9.5kWh original designs). The AIO contains a massive 96 cells and so there are 96 voltages to display. This is a little more complex than just making a long list and adding to scroll bar. The cells are somehow arranged as 4 sets of 24 and it's not clear what the impact of a failing/faulty cell is. When you only have 16 cells, one of them failing is pretty bad, but if you have 96, is a faulty one as serious a problem? I may do something with this in future, but it is not a priority yet, and to some extent I'm waiting to see what the upcoming range of equipment has in terms of batteries.

Rubikcube Hi I have been using your app for submitting manual requests but about to delve into the automated aspects of the app with an old Android mobile.

If the phone goes to sleep will it still submit the commands?

Does the App wake up the phone or will I need to find a way to keep it awake all the time?

I will have constant power to it to keep it charged.

When we have cheaper Agile day rates maybe tomorrow I will test it.

Nice App...

Rubikcube Nothing is 100% perfect! Whatever you use for automation, you can expect that a few days per year it might go wrong. As long as it's only occasional the impact on your energy bill shouldn't be significant.

We (the App Admin) and I have been trying to resolve the issue. The App works as expected for a mid afternoon boost. GE settings work for an early morning low rate charge. Thereafter things get interesting.

If the App is set to run 0200-0500 it fails.

If set GE to start at say 0200-0300 and then the App at 0330-0430 that works.

If I set the App to start at 0200-0300 and then GE (as a fall back) 0330-0400 nothing works.

This success or failure is repeatable. GE at 0200 and the App at 1430 provide the control I want but it is a niggle that we have yet to resolve.

There is just one other thing. I am told "When you signed up for Intelligent Flux, Octopus connect to your inverter account in order to control it. That connection is still active according to your inverter"

How would I remove this connection? Should resetting the inverter fix this?

M_J Does the App wake up the phone or will I need to find a way to keep it awake all the time?

In the the top left corner there's an eye icon. Enabling that keeps the screen awake. I assume that's the intention when using it on this way.

Roy124

Maybe a full system reset to original might work.

There is an option to revoke authorisation. I will try and find it when I log back to my pc.

You effectively delete the API key so Octopus can't access the system.

Roy124 see perhaps https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/4345-octopus-keep-taking-over-after-i-removed-their-access or https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3600-revoking-api-access ?

DD Thank you, done that, now wait till tomorrow and see what happened.

M_J If the phone goes to sleep will it still submit the commands?

Almost missed this question, sorry. Yes, even if you turn the screen off, the background process will keep collecting data and submitting any scheduled commands.

Ahhh ok I have forced the screen to stay awake with the eye icon. Good to know thanks.

Roy124 Just to fill in this rabbit hole. I found out that a Discharge OFF setting inhibited the Charge ON setting. Deleting the unnecessary Discharge OFF has cured the problem but leaves an issue for the MyEnergyOptimiser Admin to resolve.