Givenergy, Hypervolt Pro3 & Octopus Intelligent Go

I have
GIV-AC3.0 Inverter
2 battery packs with total capacity of kWh

Solar PV
and Hypervolt Pro3 integrated with Octopus Intelligent Go as we have two EV's and this lets Octopus control the EV Charger for allocating charging slots, especially if it is outside the 23:30 to 05:30 standard period. for example yesterday it was 23:00 to 07:30

If the car is plugged in, and it is outside an Octopus allocated slot, the Hypervolt Pro3 is in "battery safe" mode, only charging the car if more than 1.4kW/6A power/current, but additionally limit charging if home battery system is draining.
All good.

I have my inverter on a time charge of 23:30 to 05:30 to coincide with the standard Octopus period.

The question is: In the past, before the Hypervolt pro 3 battery safe mode, I would manually adjust the inverter to a charging period eg 23:00 to 07:30 in yesterday's example.

Do I still need to manually adjust the house battery charging period, or will it hold its SOC whilst the EV is being charged.

Just asking for other peoples experience whilst I perform trial and error experiments.

No help really but I have a similar setup, 5 kw gen 1, 9.5 battery with a Hypervolt pro 3 (foc replacement) on IOG. The ct clamp is placed so the charger has no effect on the rest of the system so I don’t have any issues with the battery being discharged by the charger. I just wondered if you had noticed a large increase in the amount of extra low rates as I have since changing from using my Tesla to connect with Octopus? For example I plugged in yesterday and it immediately gave the 7p rate from 18.20 to 0530 whereas before we were lucky to get anything?
Not complaining just a bit puzzled.

SimonClarke That chimes with anecdotal evidence I've seen from other EVSE integrations, particularly Ohme. I am eager for them to get Home 2 chargers integrated!

browellm that was what got replaced! Must admit I was pleasantly surprised by Hypervolts attitude as previously they had been unhelpful

Thank you everyone,

I will monitor to see if any more EV charging slots get allocated.

So looks like I will have to keep manually moving the timed charging period for the house ( GivEnergy) battery, otherwise the Hypervolt will draw from the house battery, which is no use on a cloudy day.

It doesn't seem like there is the ability to integrate with intelligent go slots outside of the standard overnight block, it's annoying having to switch the battery to charge manually for each slot or end up with a drained battery

Dave_Sw1 It can be done with home automation. Predbat is a very popular way to integrate Home Assistant and the Octopus charging slots with control of your inverter to avoid the situation you described (and more).

It can be done by moving the ct clamp

SimonClarke you can stop the battery discharging into the car during extra IOG slots by moving the CT clamp (and potentially have to rewire the inverter to house connection), but you can’t program the battery to charge in those slots without automation

So depends on what you want to do and how much you want to maximise the IOG rates

It does surprise me how many EV chargers seem to be wired up without any knowledge of the home storage battery so the battery discharges to the car. Maybe electricians just don’t know enough about the different options

geoffreycoan I don’t think we have ever charged the house battery from one of the extra IOG slots as it is always charged in the normal time. As we would normally load shift the hungry appliances we don’t gain much there either so the only real gain is from the heat pump which requires no intervention.

SimonClarke

I understand moving the CT clamp to stop the car draining the home batteries but won’t your heat pump and home use still continue to drain the batteries (as normal) during any extra early IOG slots though? ie battery and also some grid is powering the house and HP? (Along with just the grid charging the car?).
I guess moving the CT clamp removes the unwanted car charger drain (the main problem) but it doesn’t help to take advantage of topping the batteries up at the same time, instead of them still draining under normal house (and HP) use. And you’re also missing out on the potential of exporting that extra energy gained for 15p.

I guess if your batteries last the whole day still it’s not a massive problem. More of a first world problem. But for those that run out early this time of year I presume being able to add some charge to the batteries during the extra IOG slots is extremely beneficial to avoid peak import prices later.

I guess what I’m saying is; even if you move the CT clamp to stop the solar battery drain problem - without automation, you haven’t solved the lack of charging the batteries during that extra IOG slot time; People still have to manually hit charge for the home batteries or re-program them to charge during the extra slots. This is ok if it’s all in one hit but usually it isn’t (or the slots change after you’ve set it all up).

I understand the logic but personally I haven’t moved the CT clamp. But I do have to sometimes manually charge the batteries at the same time for the (very rare) extra slots I get out of the core IOG hours !

I’d go Predbat if I could to automate this but I need the EMS first for my dual inverters because I need to be running the balancer software.

I think for those that have less battery capacity; automation that recognises the extra IOG slots and charges the batteries at the same time is probably pretty essential and the way to go.

If tariffs change so that export becomes less than import again, it’ll be beneficial to dump all the solar battery into the car again. ie when people return from work. I guess if that were to happen you can just more the CT clamp back again !

geoffreycoan It does surprise me how many EV chargers seem to be wired up without any knowledge of the home storage battery so the battery discharges to the car. Maybe electricians just don’t know enough about the different options

This 👆🏻 and also the majority of new owners probably hasn’t even thought about it yet or know what they want to be able to do. So I guess that’s why it comes as a surprise to a lot of new system owners when the battery just dumps straight to the car ! (Hence all the posts from new owners with this problem.)

But also sometimes people will want the ability to be able to do that as well. Not right now maybe but if tariffs were to reverse again to it being less for export than import again. I thought about it pre-install and wanted it like that (because export was far less than import price at the time, so made sense) but I’m pretty sure they would have wired it up like that anyway even if I hadn’t had the discussion. 😂

Pete UK so far there has been no issue missing out on extra charging slots because when they happen the whole house is running on the 7p rate including the heat pump. Before we had the Hypervolt pro3 we got a completely negligible amount of extras but we got the heat pump at roughly the same time as the new charger so the summer may cause us to rethink but the amount of cash is probably also negligible. We will see.
Hubris bit me last night as when I plugged the car in IOG refused to work at all and I couldn’t reset it. This of course happens on the one time I need a full charge as Autoglass need at least 100 miles range to fit a windscreen! Dont ask!