Battery Management

I've had the battery for about 6 weeks now and am still struggling to judge how much to charge the battery overnight. Factors, apart from the predicted sunshine, are if you're going out, and if you're in, what you intend to use during the day. It's frustrating when you could have more cheap electricity to use in the evening, or see solar being exported when it could be saved. Hopefully, I'll get better at it.

Also, some of the sunniest days have been when we're out, (not Planned that way), and surplus could be going into the car.

This might help, its a home automation routine written in python that uses a home profile (expected use by hour) and uses a weather forecast to calculate potential generation by hour for the following day and then updates the inverter with how much to top the battery up overnight with cheap rate. As it stands it does not take account of home / away but could be updated to have a home profile and an away profile. Code is on github :- https://github.com/lockedj/solarbatteryoptimize see the readme for full details

sixfoot2 Alternatively, you could just carry on with what you would have done anyway, relying on the energy stored in the battery when there's no PV and get yourself a SEG tariff for when you're out for the day in the sunshine.

I used to get anxious about ironing in the morning before the batteries were fully charged but it adds maybe 1kWh/week to the import. It's tempting to micromanage (or at least I am) but my other half just needs to know what to do and when and TBH micromanaging to the nth degree doesn't make a material difference. We're still £100s if not £1000s better off each year from the reduced dependence on imported energy. I used to kick myself when we imported 4kWh because I forgot to reset the EV charger mode after a reset. When you cost out the "mistake", it's about £1. How much is fuel on the forecourts, a pint of beer, or milk for that matter?

I used to get EV range anxiety, now I think I've got surplus home PV serenity! Karma.

Still waiting to get onto Octopus Intelligent to get the SEG.