AC3 Inverter Problem

I have an AC3 inverter and 9.5kWh battery. I use Home Assistant and GivTCP to pause the inverter or charge the battery when my car charges outside the normal cheap period. This has been working well for months. I upgraded GivTCP to version 3 a few weeks ago with no issues.

This morning the car is charging for most of the morning so GivTCP paused the battery as normal. Then from around 6:45am, I stopped getting readings from the inverter into GivTCP. The car charging stopped at 7am, but the battery remained paused.

I can see the inverter data in the web portal, but cannot change any settings via the web portal - I get a timed out error. I have restarted the inverter but this made no difference.

I restarted GivTCP v3 and the logs show this error:

runAll2 Error processing registers: ('KeyError', 'read.py', 1825)

I have now stopped GivTCP v3 and re-started version 2.49 - this shows the inverter sensors, but doesn't allow me to change any settings.

Any idea what I should do next (other than contact GiveEnergy support).

andydsmith cannot change any settings via the web portal - I get a timed out error. I have restarted the inverter but this made no difference.

Does the portal report the inverter as online? Are the readings up to date? Both setting registers and restarting from the app/portal require that the cloud can speak to the inverter. Did the inverter actually restart (eg did the LEDs change).

andydsmith it sounds like the inverter isn’t accepting commands locally or remotely. Rebooting the inverter is all I can suggest to do.

In GivTCP you can delete the /config/GivTCP/*.pkl files which are local cache files and this forces a re-initialise of GivTCP but it sounds like your inverter is playing up

Reading registers over modbus is an active process - client has to send a message asking for them. So I can't immediately think why you'd be able to read registers, but not write them. (You can get registers passively, since replies are broadcast to all connected clients, so when the inverter sends registers to the cloud, givtcp also receives them if it's connected.)

DD The portal is showing the inverter as online and it did restart. I have now managed to reset it to factory defaults via the portal and re-set the the timed charge settings, so I can now write to it via the portal at least. However it's still not discharging the battery. All the power readings on the portal and GivTCP version 2.49 look right.

One odd thing that I've just seen in the battery trends is that the battery charged from 5:30 to 6:45 this morning despite being at 100% SOC. My normal charge period is from 23:31 - 05:30. My automation will change this if the car charges outside the cheap period, but only if the SOC is below 95%. The automation didn't ask the battery to charge at 05:30 so I don't understand why this happened. The GivTCP trends show the battery voltage increased from 53.3V to 55.9V. The problems started at the same time that this charge ended.

So, at the moment I can change all the settings using either GivTCP or the portal, all the readings look right, but the battery isn't discharging.

andydsmith If you have reverted from GivTCP 3 to 2 then it may be that your battery entities in Home Assistant are not updating - check the last updated time on them.

When I moved from v2 to v3 last week I had to delete all the battery entries from MQTT as v3 creates them with slightly different MQTT pathnames https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/4986-experiences-with-givtcp3-and-predbat/107

In going backwards you may have the same problem, that the battery entities are stuck pointing to the v3 ‘addresses’ which are not being updated by GivTCP v2. The sensors will have a state of unavailable or unknown in HA.
You could follow the same as I did with MQTT Explorer, or I would suggest going back to GivTCP v3 as its more stable than v2, there’s no real benefit to using v2 any more

geoffreycoan All the GivTCP entities are updating correctly. I didn't have to make any changes when I moved to v3 either. I only moved back this morning because v3 had stopped working.

I can get the battery to discharge be setting up a timed export, but it still won't discharge using the normal eco mode.

andydsmith Might be worth checking the CT clamp and circuit breakers, that the lights are flashing on the EM115 CT clamp monitor if the inverter can’t detect house load in Eco mode?

geoffreycoan I'll have a look when I get home, but I'm getting the house load on GivTCP and the portal so I don't think it will be that. I've done a reset to factory settings and re-started the inverter again, but it still won't discharge the battery in eco mode. For now, I've set a forced discharge from 7am to 10pm at 750W - that should fully discharge the battery without exporting much, so will be better than nothing until I can get it working properly.

Still having the same issues with the battery not running in eco mode. This morning I've had a low battery voltage notification. My battery charge period ends at 05:30 and I have now set up a timed export starting at 05:31. Battery voltage was showing 58V at 05:30 and then dropped to 4.9V at 5:31. It then increased gradually to 10.4V at 6:25 and then jumped back to around 54V. These readings must be wrong, but it can't be a coincidence that it happened when the inverter switched from the charge period to discharge.