My system was installed in March. The battery would be fully charged by mid day, now it doesn't seem to charge at all and hasn't for months so I'm using electricity from the grid. I thought solar energy is still generated in autumn/ winter. Is there a way of tracking the battery charging performance? Probably a silly question but I haven't a clue what I'm doing and my energy bills are going up which I don't understand.
KathlynThomas hi. Could you start by telling us what sort of system you have? Hybrid inverter/AC coupled/... And what size battery. If you're not sure of the former, knowing the firmware version would help. You can get that from the web portal.
Did the battery used to charge overnight from the grid?
take a look at this
https://kb.givenergy.cloud/article.php?id=7&oid=2
KathlynThomas I thought solar energy is still generated in autumn/ winter. Is there a way of tracking the battery charging performance
In. the GivEnergy app or Portal you can look at today’s solar generation, grid import and export, or scroll back and look at these figures for any previous day/week/month.
But solar generation in winter is awful. For comparison on a good day I’m getting 5kW generated whereas in summer I would get 60kW. Some people with smaller arrays are struggling to get even a couple of kW especially when its overcast
In the winter you would very likely save more money by getting a time of use tariff like Octopus Flux and charging at cheaper off peak rates than from the actual panels.
In December so far we have only had three days where we have generated more than a couple of kilowatts and no days where solar has entirely met our usage that day.
Days are shorter in the winter and the sun is much less intense, often with cloud cover.
GivEnergy does have very basic automations built into the battery so if you have a look at Smart Tariff in the GivEnergy app/portal you might be able to set an automation that adapts to forecast solar and weather to charge from the grid off peak.
You will need to choose a time of use tariff with your energy supplier and switch to that, and then connect your batteries to the energy supplier so it knows when your cheap times are. This is usually done with an API key that the supplier generates for you. I know Octopus are supported for this, I am not sure which if any other suppliers are.
In winter I go to Octo Eco7. I get 7 hrs of off peak elec to charge the battery and do any house load (night dishwash etc). During the day any sun either goes to house or back to battery. There is never enough sun for export and I have 27 panels.
In summer 6 months I use Octo Flux. I get shorter off peak charge time but there is a lot of sun and I make sure the battery is full by 16:00 and then do a peak export down to about 40%. That will then get me through to off peak charge slot.
Hmmm there is really a need for some basic education before folk get batteries and solar panels.
EV's need a different level of understanding too.
I guess we are in the growing pains until that education is mainstream.
Well done for the kind folk responding...
👍
What was wrong with a good old instruction book - even if it was online. Recent posts have been showing how little people are told about their shiny new systems. Personally I would blame installers for not showing people the basics and Givenergy for not supplying straight forward instructions for all normal operations.
SimonClarke I totally agree. I was expecting some sort of short tutorial after installation, or an instruction manual on how to program my battery storage. I have seen no savings on my energy usage, in fact my monthly direct debit has increased and I'm still in debit.
SteveCook thank you. Do you program the settings on your battery usage yourself?
Hi, what electricity tariff are you on? What size battery and inverter do you have? Do you have an export tariff set up? Do you have an EV? Do you have a heat pump or not?
If you can give us the answers to the above questions between us we can probably help you out and give a few suggestions to minimise your bills.
It can be complicated or not so complicated but depends very much on your situation as to what tariff is best (or easiest) for you. It sounds like you’re on a standard fixed rate tariff at the moment(?) but you might not be?
The key to maximising your savings is to get on a good time of day import and a decent export tariff. Or a smart variable tariff.
If you’re on a standard fixed rate import tariff currently you won’t really be making the best use of your battery (especially in winter, as there is only about 10% of the solar generated compared to summer). So you won’t run off solar or fill up the battery in a day during winter and your electricity bills will be the same as before during the winter months.
Depending on your answers and how technical you are there are certainly things you can do to utilise your batteries better to make £ savings.
For example, if you have a cheap overnight tariff (and/ or an EV?), most people will be charging their battery to full overnight every night at the cheap rate on a tariff such as ‘Intelligent Octopus GO’ or ‘Octopus GO’ or ‘EON Next Drive’ (particularly in winter, although if you’re on a cheap overnight tariff and fixed 15p/16.5p export rate then all year round).
The full battery from cheap overnight charging will then be used during the day so you’re running on the cheap electricity you imported to the battery overnight (until it runs out). To do this you need to program the battery (batteries) to charge overnight via the GivEnergy APP or their web portal. (The APP is probably the simplest to do this).
If you have a heat pump there are other smart tariffs available (as mentioned above by others) that will reduce your costs. Which tariff saves you the most depends very much on your equipment and usage.
If you can supply us with answers to the questions I posed we can certainly help you out.
KathlynThomas
Hi yes. The installer did good quality workmanship and got me on the portal, but that was about it.
It took 4 months of chasing - and not paying final invoice- before he sent me all the final installation paperwork and documentation.
My background is Building Services in the construction industry (40 years consulting engineer) and so i was expecting getting manuals/training to be an issue.
I did all the settings/programming by following posts on this forum.
I started with just putting settings in my Gen1 inverter but found that limiting.
I went to Octo R&D scheduler and that worked but could be flaky
I then installed HA and created my own automations which worked well
I was intrigued by Predbat and installed that about 1 year ago and it has been great.
SteveCook Hi Steve, I have questions about the tariffs you use. The Octopus website is comprehensive and wide ranging but sometimes it doesn't answer easy questions. So here goes: For Octo Eco7 what are the normal rate/cheap rate time periods? Are Eco7 and Octo7 'Smart' Tariffs, or not? Can you choose to swap betweeen the two tariffs whenever you like or do you need to give notice or stay on one of selected tariffs for a duration before switching again?
Thanks,
Tim
666tim666
Hi. You can see my day rate and night rate for Eco7 (import) and with that i have to have fixed 15p export, but not a problem as not much export over 6 winter months. Does not need meter to be smart as you can get a dual rate meter
Come April I will go to Flux but you need smart meter to be working if you want to get the full benefit of export as the tariff needs to know the half hourly time of day when export occurs, otherwise octo will just give you 15p.
I had to take them to the ombudsman to get smart meters working (took 4 years) and row and row with them and get the Ombudsman involved to get correctly paid for my export. The smart meters stopped working and I had a whole summer of peak export and kept telling Octo the meters were not working. They said they had no HH data and could only give me 15p/unit. I downloaded all the evidence from GivEnergy servers and proved how much they owed me, but they said "we dont accept 3rd party data". Ombudsman agreed with me!!
666tim666 For Octo Eco7 what are the normal rate/cheap rate time periods?
Google it
Are Eco7 and Octo7 'Smart' Tariffs, or not?
Economy 7, fixed rate and standard variable rate are not smart tariffs. All the others are.
Can you choose to swap betweeen the two tariffs whenever you like or do you need to give notice or stay on one of selected tariffs for a duration before switching again?
You can swap freely between smart tariffs, but if you swap between a smart and a non smart, you can’t change back for a month I believe.
geoffreycoan Thanks for that. I think I will switch from Agile to Eco7 as Agile is most often 18p to 22p at night at the moment.
This morning my battery was charging, according to the app the readings were increasing. It went to 95% by midday, then a few minutes later it was down to 0%. The app is showing the flow from solar to the battery, but the battery percentage is not changing from 0%. I an not sure what to do about it?
KathlynThomas
Are there any notifications in the portal
Are all breakers "on"
Is the battery "on"
may have to do a battery calibration form the portal