Hybrid Battery Priority Bug?

Morning All,
As today is supposedly a good day for solar I'm looking to see if others suffer this strange bug with the hybrid Inverters when PV production is high but loads are equally high above the AC capacity of inverter (I believe this part is key.)
This has (for me at least) been reported & gone on for nearly a year now with no fix from GE. (So it's nothing to do with the new app before that gets asked.)
I'm normally the flag waver for this ecosystem but I think I've been more than fair so posting this in the hope that it will finally get fixed if there's enough of us!

Bug recreate as follows:
Needs High PV Output (in my case i'm running a 6kW array on a 5kW Hybrid)
Pull High load >5kW capability of Inverter (i.e. EV Charger at 7kW)
This pulls the battery into play at max discharge instead of using all the 5kW of PV.
PV (usually string 2) output plummets to near 0W as a consequence of this as the DC AC converter is saturated.
The rest of the load is made up from input from the Grid (as would be expected)

So basically, the battery discharge takes priority even though there is ample PV to saturate the AC conversion and max out the inverter.
This needlessly wastes both PV and Battery energy.

Fudge/Fix
Changing battery power level to 0 (or any other value) instantly pulls String 2 PV power up (the equivalent amount) to fill the gap. Doing this has been my fix for the last year but is an unnecessary automation I shouldn't need to do!

I'm surprised this isn't brought up more which would leave me to believe this is potentially a hardware revision thing and later kit doesn't do things like this. I've only seen 2 others and mine is 2020 install.
Firmware:
Inverter D0.449-A0.449
Battery: 3005

Pics of what you'd see:
Normal Load with high PV output

High Load (8kW) with High PV Output

Presumably from your install date, it is a Gen1 5kW hybrid inverter, and not Gen2.

It would be interesting if anyone with a Gen2 inverter is able to reproduce this, especially for me as I am about to place an order for solar PV, 5kW Hybrid Gen2 and battery.

Are you able to set the inverter to the timed mode with full a/c output whilst the EV is on charge, and see what happens to the solar gen then?

From my research in choosing the GivEnergy solution, I was planning on using this operating mode in combination with my Zappi v2 charger in ECO+ mode so the EV mops up whatever excess grid export would otherwise be generated (so potentially the 4574 grid power in your first chart). I was also hoping that this would work with a mix of say 3000 W solar PV combined with 2000 W from the GE battery less the house load of say 300 W, to provide around 4700 W going in to the EV. Is this actually possible?

I’ve a 3.6kw hybrid and 100% dod 8.2kWh battery.
I have two strings and haven’t seen this. The only thing I’ve seen today is the inverter max out at 3.77kw for about 2hours this afternoon when the battery became full. But all working exactly as designed as far as I can see.

Not sure if that helps you though!

Simon_C Zappi v2 charger in ECO+ mode so the EV mops up whatever excess grid export

hoggy As you know we have 2x5kWv1 Hybrids and each has its own 6kWp PV array and a recent 8.2kWh battery (ie actually 10kWh). We use our system exactly as @Simon_C describes. Our daughter is visiting at the moment and either their Kona or our Zoe is plugged in each day to top up from the solar. On days like we have been having, the house batteries are fully charged before lunch and the Zappi charges the car for however long it needs to top up in the afternoon. After that, it's just grid export at 3.68kW.
I'm not sure we could replicate your scenario but I haven't observed any situation where the battery has been drawn in preference to available PV. The inverters are both on firmware D0.449-A0.449 and the batteries are on old firmware 3001. We had one event when the batteries discharged overnight to fill the Kona (Zappi was in Eco rather than the Eco+ I had set it to) and both batteries dropped from about 17% to 0% suddenly before charging back up to 4%. Apart from that, the two inverters have been able to follow demand from PV if available supplemented by battery if needed. The highest load they have supplied was when a guest was using the en-suite 10kW shower which I hadn't expected, but the inverters ramped up and did their duty. Had I put the kettle on, I could have replicated your scenario then.

@Simon_C Yes it's a Gen 1.
Not sure i understand what you want me to do with timed mode - if you mean switch to forced battery export with PV then it essentially does the same thing (runs the battery at full power & uses PV to fill in the rest upto 5kW)

If you just leave it to do it's thing with a solar matching charger like your Zappi then it works as intended - the EV mops up any excess export from PV but the PV doesn't plummet or anything in that case as the charger would't ever go above the max inverter can export anyway.
If you get a cloud then sure it pulls the battery in for a bit (something you can stop with the new App pause button) which is as expected again as the inverter doesn't know its an EV it's just another load to fill.

This bug only seems to be when you breach the inverter AC capacity of 5kW and you start pulling from the grid - and given i've not had many comments saying "yeah me too" i think this may even be just a batch of them that do this!

@Tim Thanks for that. Yes with you having 2x Hybrids I imagine you'd have to saturate both alongside having optimum PV of 5kW+ which would take some coincidences with the weather we've had to date!

I can replicate this issue on 3.6kW hybrid inverters.
I have 2 x 3.6kW hybrid inverters (both with 8.2kWh batteries attached).
There are 13kW of panels feeding the two inverters.

If the solar generation < 7.2kW and the house load is > 7.2kW, then I would have expected the batteries to fill the gap between the generation and 7.2kW. What actually happens is that the 2nd panel input on both inverters (so probably not a broken inverter) drops to zero generation and the batteries end up producing way more than they should have to.

If I remove the load, then all goes back to expected behaviour. If I use solar diverters (I have Zappi and Eddi), then the problem doesnt occur in eco mode as the load is matched to the generation.

I have inverter firmware D0.449-A0.449 and battery firmware 3005.

@hoggy , I see what you mean after re-reading the description of mode4 operation.
I had it in my head that it was timed full a/c output, with whatever mix of PV and battery was required to achieve it.

It is actually described as 'Time Battery Discharge At Full Power', which has a slightly different meaning, with a Gen1 inverter limited to 2600 W discharge from the battery, that can then be made up to 5000 W a/c if the PV at the time is sufficient.

The loss of generation of PV on string 2 could be a rather crude protection mechanism that is triggered when the house load exceeds the a/c rating of the inverter. You would have hoped that the MPPT tracker on string 2 could respond a bit more intelligently by backing the power off rather than just switch off, resulting in the drain from the battery instead.

Simon_C , I am not sure about the protection theory. It all seems to work just fine when there is sufficient solar to not need the batteries. The grid just tops up the demand. Similarly when there's insufficient solar, the batteries deliver what they can and the grid tops it up.

It seems that the inverter prioritises battery discharge over solar when the load is more than the inverter can deliver. That feels more like a logic thing to me rather than protection.

So I've had some contact today and good news is theres a fix available. I've had it done and in the very brief window of sunshine it does appear to have sorted it.
Should anyone else be suffering this (and only this, it doesn't fix anything else or bring anything new to the table before everyone piles on) then contact support and they can sort.

I've also had my two inverters upgraded to D0.450-A0.451 and confirm that the behaviour has changed.
Not sure it's entirely fixed though...

If I demand more than both inverters can deliver (> 7.2 kW in my case), then the battery on one of them will now top up the demand if there isnt enough solar. However, there is currently enough solar to continue to charge that battery too and that stops when the load increases. This is new behaviour. Previously, the inverter could deliver up to 3.6kW while simultaneously charging the battery up to 2.5kW.

Since the upgrade, the other inverter has not discharged at all. It charged to 100% and did not meet demand from the house at all since.

I'll try some more testing but I think I am going to need help from Support with this.

MikeJ for discharge you need to enable the button then summit .I am also have same problem .enable button and timer not working perfectly on battery discharge .

I've had this problem, exactly as you describe Leigh, with an inverter installed early this year. My inverter is a GIV-HY3.6 running D0.449-A0.449.
Unfortunately Support are telling me there isn't a fix yet; they don't appear to be aware of the fix you say you got in May last year.