Can anybody advise as to whether the sudden reduction from 30% down to 0% of the Battery Percentage as shown on my Dashboard at 08:10 yesterday morning is normal or something to worry about? This is the first time I have observed this behaviour.
Do you frequently charge to 100% or discharge to 4%? If not, then the battery may not know exactly how much energy is stored. So, it may need to do a correction from time to time, in this case, it realized it has no more juice and reduced the reading to 0%.
That's how these batteries work, similar to your laptop or phone, really.
I had been using the system with all of its default settings (at least, I hadn't changed anything) until just about three weeks ago when after five power-cuts from the grid in less than 24-hours, it dawned on me that I could actually do something about it. At this point (7th December, so less than a month ago), I tweaked the settings to tell the battery to fully charge for three hours between 16:30 and 19:30 each day. That way, I figured it would provide me sufficient power to at least get through the night and hopefully, through most of the next day.
It is set to discharge down to 5%, I believe, although I have not changed that setting.
Thank you for the information bRhFDKtjRMK9.
Do you get cheaper power between those hours?
If not you are wasting money converting to DC into the battery and back out to AC to use later.
SoC drop seems the most likely cause as mentioned above. A calibration might help, maybe try a software update after NYD (in case you need support from Giv or your installer).
Have a read of some other topics on the forum to find out more about these options. There is a search function which may help find the right topics.
No, currently I pay the same for all units that I draw from the grid. I have had the battery in for less than a year, so haven't really made many alterations, and none to the tariff.
I did enquire of my provider whether I could move to a different tariff, and most importantly, retain my FIT (Feed-In Tariff) for my solar panel array, but was told that I would not be able to retain the FIT. This did not seem right to me, but I have not had opportunity to investigate further. Note: My FIT comes from a different supplier than I use for electricity supply. Thoughts?
ThePippins did enquire of my provider whether I could move to a different tariff, and most importantly, retain my FIT (Feed-In Tariff) for my solar panel array, but was told that I would not be able to retain the FIT. This did not seem right to me, but I have not had opportunity to investigate further. Note: My FIT comes from a different supplier than I use for electricity supply. Thoughts?
Your supplier is wrong.
Firstly you can change to any import tariff you want and it has no bearing on your FIT payments whatsoever.
Where the FIT payments do become relevant is if you want to get paid for exporting electricity. Your FIT payments comprise of two parts, the FIT generation payment for every kWh you generate and the FIT deemed export payment which is an assumed 50% of what you generate. If you want to get paid for what you actually export you will have to give up the FIT deemed payments, but you still retain the FIT generation payments.
This is exactly the setup I have, I get FIT generation payments and am paid by Octopus at 15p/kWh for all the electricity I export. Discontinuing the generation payments lost me about £100 a year but I get paid about £1200 a year in export payments as I have more panels than just my original FIT array. Whether this is worthwhile for you or not, you’ll have to work out.
There is a wrinkle though, if you have a smart meter fitted, you should give up your FIT deemed export payments anyway and move to measured export. Its in the FIT terms and conditions (which I didn’t know about until I was cancelling my FIT deemed export…)