Solis hybrid battery and Zappi

[openspaceman]

At home it looks like we will break the duck and buy electricity for the first time since early March. Two dull days have depleted the battery, I did think I was on schedule to last it out into the first week of October.

In the meanwhile in sunny Shoreham the system is still performing well but my daughter charged her car from the grid last night. She has not yet got the hang of the extended solis app and the zappi emptied the battery as I expected,

Is there a way of preventing this by setting the battery to charge to a preset percentage AND/OR current during the period the car is charging?

[Stinsy]

I'm not a Solis expert, but they're all pretty similar!

Inverters have a setting to not discharge during a specific time period. My inverter calls this "charge priority" yours might call it something slightly different. This is great for tariffs with a fixed cheap period (eg Go) but a bit more of a faff when you have a variable cheap period (eg Intelligent). So far I've only charged the car in the fixed cheap slot or from excess solar. With very occasional use of the dynamic cheap slots involving manually changing the settings on my inverter and then manually changing them back again. You don't want to charge your car from your battery!

This winter I plan to plug the car in once the battery is depleted to benefit from extra cheap slots without having to change inverter settings.

If you can connect your inverter to some automation technology (eg HomeKit) then you can use a Shelly (or similar) to detect when your car is charging thus inferring an additional cheap slot is active, and automatically stop your inverter discharging. However all that is above my paygrade and as much as I'd enjoy learning about it all 3-kids demand too much of my time.

[openspaceman]

This winter I plan to plug the car in once the battery is depleted to benefit from extra cheap slots without having to change inverter settings.

If you can connect your inverter to some automation technology (eg HomeKit) then you can use a Shelly (or similar) to detect when your car is charging thus inferring an additional cheap slot is active, and automatically stop your inverter discharging. However all that is above my paygrade and as much as I'd enjoy learning about it all 3-kids demand too much of my time.

My daughter has already decided she won't go to a tariff with variable times until she can see a fool proof way, so she will have to see what fixed times tariffs are on offer.

My Growatt is fairly simple (see picture) as I can set the times and the power it charges by as well a a SOC to stop at. If this is available to the Solis then all she will have to do as the Autumn progresses is to fully charge the car and simultaneously charge the battery to varying amounts based on the likely solar input for the next day. I was thinking for now just charging the battery to about 40% SOC while the car is charging. It is a bit frustrating that she is a bit far from me to be able to help.

[Stinsy]

This winter I plan to plug the car in once the battery is depleted to benefit from extra cheap slots without having to change inverter settings.

If you can connect your inverter to some automation technology (eg HomeKit) then you can use a Shelly (or similar) to detect when your car is charging thus inferring an additional cheap slot is active, and automatically stop your inverter discharging. However all that is above my paygrade and as much as I'd enjoy learning about it all 3-kids demand too much of my time.

My daughter has already decided she won't go to a tariff with variable times until she can see a fool proof way, so she will have to see what fixed times tariffs are on offer.

My Growatt is fairly simple (see picture) as I can set the times and the power it charges by as well a a SOC to stop at. If this is available to the Solis then all she will have to do as the Autumn progresses is to fully charge the car and simultaneously charge the battery to varying amounts based on the likely solar input for the next day. I was thinking for now just charging the battery to about 40% SOC while the car is charging. It is a bit frustrating that she is a bit far from me to be able to help.

I charge the battery to 50% in summer and 100% in winter on cheap rate. You need a ToU tariff to ensure the batteries pay for themselves.

If you want to limit how full the batteries get from solar so that you export more and therefore more gets diverted into the car by the Zappi then I'm sure the Solis has that setting (my Lux does) but I can't help you find it. However I'm not sure doing so is a good idea!

[openspaceman]

I charge the battery to 50% in summer and 100% in winter on cheap rate. You need a ToU tariff to ensure the batteries pay for themselves.

Both my daughter and I don't need to take any electricity from the grid in summer, solar PV supplies all household needs via the batteries and in her case the EV charging. So now she qualifies for the GO tariff but I don't as I have no EV. The flux tariff only seems to offer me a saving of £45 per year as I will not export because of the deemed export on FIT and Octopus have not replied about removing me from the FIT export register. Frankly I am only interested in being self sufficient.

If you want to limit how full the batteries get from solar so that you export more and therefore more gets diverted into the car by the Zappi then I'm sure the Solis has that setting (my Lux does) but I can't help you find it. However I'm not sure doing so is a good idea!

Quite the opposite, I want to maximise PV use so I do not want to start the day with the battery so full that I cannot store any PV generation.

Similarly with my daughter and her set up.

[sharpener]

In the meanwhile in sunny Shoreham the system is still performing well but my daughter charged her car from the grid last night. She has not yet got the hang of the extended solis app and the zappi emptied the battery as I expected,

Is there a way of preventing this by setting the battery to charge to a preset percentage AND/OR current during the period the car is charging?

There is a discussion of some ideas here and a myenergi FAQ article here.

Even so I still make mistakes, it is all too easy to leave the Zappi set to Eco+ at the end of the day, and it then charges during the night boost periods even if you don't want them.

[openspaceman]

In the meanwhile in sunny Shoreham the system is still performing well but my daughter charged her car from the grid last night. She has not yet got the hang of the extended solis app and the zappi emptied the battery as I expected,

Is there a way of preventing this by setting the battery to charge to a preset percentage AND/OR current during the period the car is charging?

There is a discussion of some ideas here and a myenergi FAQ article here.

Even so I still make mistakes, it is all too easy to leave the Zappi set to Eco+ at the end of the day, and it then charges during the night boost periods even if you don't want them.

Thanks, she has that all in hand for solar charging, she has an export margin of 100W set and seems to use eco++ which works well if the sun charges the car completely while it is shining, else she has to remember to switch it off once solar PV power drops below 1.4kW or the zappi then draws the 1.4kW from PV plus grid.

From reading what I have it looks like she just needs to learn how to charge the house battery while the EV is charging as the only way of preventing it discharging the battery. I think she will set the charging period from the car and the home battery charging period from the app, if we can figure out how thee app works.

[sharpener]

Eco is the mode that has a minimum of 1.4kW and can easily cause battery drain. [The pop-up descriptions in the app are not correct(!)]

Eco+ which is what I use doesn't, provided you set the Minimum Green Level to 100%, perhaps that is the problem? You can set it from the app.

[openspaceman]

Not being there or having an EV of my own or a zappi charger I thought it was the car that dictated the minimum charge it would accept to be 1.4kW.

[sharpener]

Not being there or having an EV of my own or a zappi charger I thought it was the car that dictated the minimum charge it would accept to be 1.4kW.

According to myenergi it is written into the standard.

Eco mode will top up any available PV to the minimum 1.4kW by drawing from the grid as necessary.

Eco+ mode will wait indefinitely until the PV is at least the % of 1.4kW specified by the Minimum Green Level setting.