Battery Charging when set to export at percentage

I set my battery to export down to 40%, however, my battery was at 17%, so I didn't expect any export, and my house should continue to be served by the battery.
In fact, the Battery had stopped meeting the house demand, pulling all power from the grid, and steadily increasing my battery charge. Obviously, this is a massive problem as it means I'm importing power during peak agile (nearly 70p!). Surely this setting is there to ensure we can maximize any excess power, but this current behavior requires active user input.

Another weird behavior that is costing me money... When will the system settings ever behave as expected?

Giv-hy5.0 Invertor and battery

JK Another weird behavior that is costing me money... When will the system settings ever behave as expected?

Yes, this is a feature I noticed relatively recently.

Must have changed with a recent firmware, since I had previously been using a timed-discharge slot with a limit of 100% to implement a timed pause. Fortunately, in my case this was during the first hour of cheap slot, when I wanted to idle the battery to allow it to balance cells, so didn't cost me anything.

So I switched to use a timed-charge with target of 4%. And discovered another "feature" - it seems to impose a minimum charging target of 20%, so setting 4% actually resulted in it charging to 20%.

So I'm now using an external agent to turn eco mode off for that hour. (Though it's slightly academic at the moment - with no solar recently, battery has hit the stops before the end of the day...)

Oh, while I'm at it... yet another "feature" I noticed recently was that if you have a discharge slot with a configured limit, that limit is active during the time window even if you are not actively exporting. (ie the timed-export flag is clear).

I'm now using this feature to hold some battery charge back until 4pm - no financial incentive to do so, but if the battery is going to run out, I may as well try to avoid importing during peak period.

And I did recently suggest this as a way to implement a behaviour someone was asking for - I think they were on Flux, and wanted to charge battery from grid before peak period if and only if it was below some miniumum threshold, otherwise continue discharging battery as normal. It's a perfect fit for that... (Unfortunately, AIO didn't appear to have the same behaviour.)
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/5168-octopus-flux-pre-peak-top-up

I was so excited to see the update that allows multiple charging slots - but if the behavior is as above, it makes it all a bit pointless again. I've yet to be satisfied with the GivEnergy software and I'm over a year into ownership. Having to change the settings every day depending on the weather and price is so tiresome.

JK I set my battery to export down to 40%, however, my battery was at 17%, so I didn't expect any export, and my house should continue to be served by the battery.

Actually no... I don't think it would ever have continued to serve the house from the battery if the level was below the limit - it would idle the battery until the end of the timed export. It was a frequent complaint that people felt that it should switch to eco behaviour once the lower limit was reached, though I'm not entirely sure I agree.

I've been having the same problem as JK. I have things set to charge the battery to 100% between 02.00 and 05.00 (Oct Flux), and then to export from 18.30 to 19.00 down to 50% (with 50% battery charge @ 7pm my normal consumption from then on brings the battery charge down to c. 6% - 8% by 2am, which seems ideal). However, if the battery reaches 50% before 19.00 it then starts importing (at peak rate!) to charge the battery back up. If -as happened today - the battery SOC has already fallen below 50% by 18.30, then it just starts importing, again at peak rate. I wasn't sure if I was setting the various parameters correctly, but it appears from these previous posts that this is indeed a 'feature'. I imagine the only way to stop this behaviour is to actively monitor the SOC between 18.30 and 19.00 and disable export when it reaches 50%...

ChrisLav I imagine the only way ...

A better way is to start the discharge/export at the best time to reach the desired % at 19:00. My app is one easy option to do it automatically:

https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials/tariffs#flux

Many thanks for that. Basic app looks v good. Will play with it for a few days and maybe upgrade...

ChrisLav However, if the battery reaches 50% before 19.00 it then starts importing (at peak rate!) to charge the battery back up. If -as happened today - the battery SOC has already fallen below 50% by 18.30, then it just starts importing, again at peak rate. I wasn't sure if I was setting the various parameters correctly, but it appears from these previous posts that this is indeed a 'feature'. I imagine the only way to stop this behaviour is to actively monitor the SOC between 18.30 and 19.00 and disable export when it reaches 50%...

As you’ve concluded, this is the way that the export feature works on the GivEnergy battery systems.

You can think of it as ‘discharge the battery and export down to limit X and then hold at that limit’ - so once the battery reaches that limit and it starts holding the charge at that level, the only thing it can then do is let grid import meet any house load.

Entirely logical but not particularly useful with tariffs like Flux where you want to export in peak rates for the better export rate but want to avoid importing at that time as well. The only solution is to start the export/discharge at a time whereby you won’t run out of battery charge.

To be honest though the benefits of the peak rate discharge, especially in winter are quite limited. In my area (Eastern England), peak export is 27p, day-time import is 25.2p so after battery and inverter losses are considered, there’s marginal if any benefit in peak rates exporting if it means you might run out of battery charge later on and have to grid import before the 2am cheap rate period.
There’s a saving to be had by charging overnight in the cheap rate (15.1p), but you don’t want to import too much (e.g. fill the battery up) as the daytime export rate 13.44p) means that any solar generation that gets exported has actually lost you money vs not charging the battery as much overnight and letting solar fill it up the next day.

Its complicated!