eco mode - battery has power and yet pulls from the grid

Had my system up and running a few days now and happy so far with the exception of the AI of the system.
Even when the battery has power it pulls energy from the grid and therefore I have a huge surplus later in the day that I end up giving back to the grid.

There also seems to be a lack of configurability whereby multiple times and conditions can be set manually.
What I wish to achieve:

• Charge my battery when I am generating energy and there is surplus to my house demand
• Run off my battery when it has charge and I am not generating energy
• Import from the grid between 12.30 am and 4.30am to top up my battery (ideally to a pre configured level to get me through to the morning when I start generating again)

I will inevitibly end up integrating the GE system with node red or similar as I already have a home automation system in place but feel that this should be configurable out of the box. Or am I missing something?

beardyblair Is it for a prolonged period the pull from the grid whilst your battery has energy stored? It should use energy from the battery before grid in eco mode (when there is no PV).

beardyblair if you set

• eco / dynamic mode to enabled
• timed charged to enabled from 12:30am to 4:30 am and whatever percent you want it to be charged to
  the system should provide what you are looking for.

For info there are a number of threads on home automation + giv

Thanks for the reply Locked. They are the setings I first used. My thinking was that the timed charge would relate only to grid and that any PV power would always go to battery. Unfortunately in practice it just exported all my generated energy and did not charge the battery.

beardyblair

• Charge my battery when I am generating energy and there is surplus to my house demand
  This is Eco mode - any surplus will be sent to the Battery (unless it's already full)

• Run off my battery when it has charge and I am not generating energy
  This is Eco mode - when load exceeds PV, the battery supplies the rest (up to 3kw)

• Import from the grid between 12.30 am and 4.30am to top up my battery (ideally to a pre configured level to get me through to the morning when I start generating again)
  This is timed charge, Set the time window and the target %. Note that if the battery is above the % then it will continue to support house load and discharge to that level.

Just to be clear - both Eco Mode and timed charge are set - it's not one or the other modes.

You can determine timed exports in settings, so just adjust it that way? Not tried it though but if you timed it 4.30am to 1230am?

beardyblair I think @GrahamRead has the answer:

1. Set the inverter to ECO mode - this will charge the battery from any surplus PV and discharge when necessary to meet house load.
2. Set a Timed Charge for your off-peak slot and the "Charge to"%. Note that if the battery has a higher SoC than your "Charge to"%, it will discharge during the timed charge period (exporting if necessary) and hold that level until the end of the timed charge slot. If the SoC is less than your "Charge to"%, it will charge the battery as you might expect and hold it at that level until the end of the slot.

We currently don't use a timed charge slot as our batteries don't yet need charging during the night. Come the autumn, we will probably have to start charging house batteries and EV overnight due to overcast days when there is insufficient PV to charge the batteries up fully.

beardyblair integrating the GE system with node red or similar

This is my plan for the autumn: to assess what SoC I will need each night (given the solar forecast for the next day) to get me through to the next off-peak period. There are lots of automations and fair play to those who've done the work to develop the models, but I'll probably charge the batteries up to say, 70% to give me enough capacity to soak up solar should there be any but also guarantee that we can make it to the next off-peak slot from battery. The automation is likely to be some MQTT to find the SoC during the off-peak period and enable timed charge if SoC falls below the 70% (or whatever) setting.

While it'd be nice to be sure that I can maximise my solar and minimise my import, I'd rather charge to a level that ensures I can get to the next off-peak period from battery than import for the last couple of hours at standard rate because of a poor solar day. If I end up exporting on a good solar day, with an export tariff of 4.1p/kWh and an off-peak tariff of 4.5p/kWh, the approach would cost 0.4p/kWh.

I’m joining this thread much later but I can’t get the system to work as GivEnergy and others on this forum describe. I have a 9.5kWh battery and 3kW inverter, just installed 10 days ago. Generally everything is great but I can’t get eco mode to work as expected.

Normally I have Eco Mode enabled, Timed Charge set on to 2am to 6am (Bulb EV tariff) and Timed Discharge set to 6am to 2am. This works fine for charging up the battery overnight and running it down during the day. All works well in this mode, except…

When there is excess PV power during the day, the excess is exported. The battery doesn’t charge. Following advice in other threads I have disabled Timed Discharge and ensured that Eco Mode is enabled. Whenever this configuration is set it always imports from the grid and doesn’t use the battery (see screenshot example).

app screen shot showing zero battery draw and grid import

Can anyone offer advice on how to get Eco mode working to automatically charge using excess PV power but otherwise discharge if house usage requires available battery power?

Have you tried resetting to default your inverter?

Best to turn off timed discharge and just use eco mode plus timed charge.

As above. Reset (which should enable eco as std), then just add timed charge. From what I’ve seen on other threads, there are still some bugs with timed discharge…

@TX200 and @Smk82 - thanks so much for the advice. I have reset to defaults (which took a few minutes to sort itself out) and then set Timed Charge. So far, so good. It’s now running off the battery. I will have to wait for the next sunny burst to see if it starts charging during the day with the excess PV.

Thanks again 👍

Just had mine installed yesterday. The battery completely emptied itself overnight to the default reserve set to 4%.
I've turned the eco mode off for now and tried the schedule charge and discharge, but it is still charging and discharging the battery when it's not within the scheduled time? Any ideas?

Russ Yes, all new installations do this. The system goes through a cycle of full discharge and then full charge, regardless of eco mode or any schedules you have set up. It’s disconcerting but it does this to calibrate. After 24 hours it all settles down and hopefully works as expected.

grahamhobson ok thanks. I turned the battery discharge power to zero to reduce the discharge. it's currently discharging 10w and was discharging zero. will that effect it's calibration?

grahamhobson timed Discharge set to 6am to 2am

with that setting the battery cant charge from solar, you have told it to discharge from 6am to 2am. perhaps you wanted to set eco for that period? did you think discharge meant house use the battery?

Russ

Just reset it to defaults and let it do it's calibration. The web portal will ping you a notification when calibration is complete.
I'd recommend using the web portal rather than the app until you get used to the system. The app is far too flaky and the nomenclature is different to the web portal.

Just an update to those that advised me @TX200 @Smk82 @positor1 - I now have confirmation that Eco mode + Timed Charge is working perfectly. My system is charging overnight, discharging as needed during the day to power the house, and now I see that it is charging from PVs because I have a (small) excess of solar power currently.
Screenshot showing PVs sending power to house, grid and battery

Thanks for all of your advice, resetting to defaults and not setting Timed Discharge were the two key details needed.