AE-NMidlands wrote: ↑Sat Apr 27, 2024 12:07 pm
a month or two further in, and I'm (quite) enjoying juggling Flux import, solar charging of the battery and evening export, but the app./ website controls have (politely) been described as "clunky!"
The most annoying thing is that when you set it to export, the control says "This mode will hold your battery power and discharge it at full power during a period you define" - and it does,
not allowing the house to access the power before or afterwards, so that you go straight to grid import. This is only resolved by going into the inverter control and switching off the timed export until you want to do it again a day or maybe two later if it hasn't been very sunny. Sometimes even then you don't seem to be able to stop that import without pushing the "Reset to factory default settings" button! The delay while your attempted reset (via their cloud/website and then back to your inverter) takes effect is very frustrating as you can't see whether you have actually achieved your intention - or whether you have stopped exporting at 6.30pm but are importing at peak rate instead!
They also don't separate the "export down to
x% battery" from the "feed my house [afterwards] down to 4% battery!" So currently you have to set the export for "start at 4pm, export at
n kW down to
x% SOC" but then watch out for it getting there, turn off the export instruction and reset the (separate) battery minimum to allow it to feed the house again. Ditto setting the export power: you can't set the inverter to export at say 2.5 kW without it refusing to allow the house to use more afterwards unless you go back and change it back up to 3.6 kW again!
I am considering another program/website
https://www.wonderwatt.com/service-dashboard/ which supposedly gets round this by taking over that constant manual setting and resetting. They major on using Agile Octopus to minimise import costs, but I think that their original product was intended to allow you to set it up in one go to say:
1) Export 3.6 kW from 1600
down to 30% SOC
2) stop at that (even if it is before 1900) then reset the battery minimum back to 4% and feed the house
and then (This is the one bit of Givenergy controls which does work)
3) at 2 am charge from the grid up to (e.g.35)% SOC.
I noticed that the Wonderwatt website says the product is for Growatt too, so maybe that kit has similar issues?
A
It's been a while since any of us has posted on here so hoping the past issues experienced by all have been resolved, ie connection to Octopus Outgoing along with apparent Givenegy concerns?
Since that time I've had an EMS installed which oversees the two Giv AC Inverters, keeping the batteries balanced and removing the previous spikes often seen on graphs. So good news on that front.
Due to their different schedules menus, Givenergy and V2H, then with the former being flexible in their timings for each whereas Indra's V2H has a selection of fixed timed schedules it took me a while to find a selection which would work successfully without the two systems swapping energy. I've since also been advised of a modification to placement of CT's involving an additional Henley block to resolve the energy swapping matter to be completed in the next week or two.
Subsequent to all this I hadn't been content with the amount of daytime energy that was not being captured so leading to much heavier consumption, approx three times that prior to EMS fitment. Making checks against the time it took for system to recognise when 3kW kettle was activated there were times when it didn't appear to be recognised or only two thirds of consumption had been taken over by the batteries.
Ensuring this wasn't being interfered with by V2H I made it inactive until the matter was resolved. I emailed Giv with my findings, they responded the next day advising that I'd apparently changed one of the settings back in May which they had now corrected!
All seemed fine the following day until 9pm when IHD began showing increasing consumption figures culminating in me putting kettle on for late cuppa with circa 900 W's escaping to consumption meter until boiling occurred. Checked on Status of battery's and with them being at circa 25% SOC reduced setting from 20% down to 10% as there was still an hour and half to go before charging would take over.
Advised Giv of above the following morning before going out, upon returning home late afternoon a reply had arrived to say that a default setting of 30% SOH had been left in place after commissioning, so me altering settings lower than 30% were not having the desired effect. Apparently my units preceeded the time when commissioning automatically reset the default figure down to 4%.
All appeared to be working fine with no unexpected consumption showing on IHD the following day. Checking on Octopus half hour figures for this period, the total for day time rate consumption, 05.30 to 23.30 came to a much improved, reduced that is 0.59 kWh's.
To check further, then consumption for the following day amounted to 0.45 kWh's so looks like our heavier daytime consumption episode may finally be resolved.
Can't wait now for Henley block mod to be carried out hopefully resulting in far less interaction/monitoring by self.
With these darker days and increasing daytime consumption I've reduced the Export hours slot down to one third of that set for summer months suspecting that most of you had already cottoned on to the need for this some weeks ago!
