Coming from a Voltronic setup I am battling with the time of use settings, I understand how it works, but it does not seem to blend in battery power, only grid, not much, but over the space of a few hours it does add up to almost 3kw, with the Voltronic SBU setup it would pull that from the battery, and then top up the battery from solar when the load drops, effectively switching off the grid 8am till 5pm. (ICC time setting was used to do that).

What I am seeing is that it is blending in a small bit from the grid, 0.3-0.6kw instead of drawing that from the battery. 

The battery is staying on 100% SOC, almost like it is ignoring the time of use settings. 

Then on the time of use, what is the power field, I cannot find any reference to that anywhere. 

8KW Deye, Hubble AM2 battery.

Attachments:

1) Battery power - shows that battery is idle

2) Effergy Engage, red line shows where grid is used instead of battery.

3) Day overview

4) Time of use settings in place

 

 

 

2 hours ago, CyberJoe said:

Coming from a Voltronic setup I am battling with the time of use settings, I understand how it works, but it does not seem to blend in battery power, only grid, not much, but over the space of a few hours it does add up to almost 3kw, with the Voltronic SBU setup it would pull that from the battery, and then top up the battery from solar when the load drops, effectively switching off the grid 8am till 5pm. (ICC time setting was used to do that).

What I am seeing is that it is blending in a small bit from the grid, 0.3-0.6kw instead of drawing that from the battery. 

The battery is staying on 100% SOC, almost like it is ignoring the time of use settings. 

Then on the time of use, what is the power field, I cannot find any reference to that anywhere. 

8KW Deye, Hubble AM2 battery.

Attachments:

1) Battery power - shows that battery is idle

2) Effergy Engage, red line shows where grid is used instead of battery.

3) Day overview

4) Time of use settings in place

 

 

 

I am sure @Steve87 may be able to assist. 

Hi @CyberJoethis is a weird one. Can you share your battery page settings...What BMS settings do you use. Is Comms established with the inverter. Share your Li BMS page also. 

Something Definitely not right here. 

Sanity check/ info gathering.

What are your Work Mode settings? Are you providing power to essential loads only, or also to the house?

What's your Zero Export setting? Typically around 20W.

Do you have load priority enabled? Or battery priority? What charging/discharging Amp limit is set on the battery?

Maybe share your State-of-Charge throughout the day, so one knows when the battery level is below 50%

The inverter is providing power to essential and non-essential (geyers).

Zero export to CT, set to 20w

Load priority is battery. 

State of charge for the battery, 100% the whole day. 

Now the interesting part is tonight when the solar dropped right down the battery the load over, currently running on battery, I've updated it to run to 60% SOC incase Eskom changes shedules. 

Attached the day, see how the grid drops to the 20w as the solar is dropping too. 

Edited October 8, 20232 yr by CyberJoe

36 minutes ago, Steve87 said:

Hi @CyberJoethis is a weird one. Can you share your battery page settings...What BMS settings do you use. Is Comms established with the inverter. Share your Li BMS page also. 

I have not actually checked that comms are established between the inverter and the battery, cable is in though, but I am pretty sure the installer would have checked. 

Until you know that Comms are established, the Work mode timer is unfortunately not Gona be reliable. It's of utmost importance to establish & verify Comms. Those percentages need reliably & until you verify it the solar assistant number don't mean much. 

Share you solar assistant page, where does Solar assistant get it's battery metrics: from the inverter or from the battery direct? 

6 minutes ago, Steve87 said:

Until you know that Comms are established, the Work mode timer is unfortunately not Gona be reliable. It's of utmost importance to establish & verify Comms. Those percentages need reliably & until you verify it the solar assistant number don't mean much. 

Will go look shortly, need to find that bit first.

4 minutes ago, Steve87 said:

Share you solar assistant page, where does Solar assistant get it's battery metrics: from the inverter or from the battery direct? 

It is set to use inverter values, I have not yet reconnected the battery cable to Solar Assistant. (To be blatantly honest, I actually forgot to tell the installer about it, so might need to make sure the cable is long enough to reach.)

Try setting the load priority, not battery priority. Might still be some other issue, but currently the solar power is variable, dips below the load at times, could be just a cloud or the battery's BMS and how it manages the SOC, and then might be that while it recharges say from 99%-100% it prioritises the solar power to charge the battery, and draw power for the loads from the grid. Pure speculation, but simple enough to check if it makes a difference.

I have now connected the SA cable to the AM2 to get proper readings in SA. 

I also increased panels and I never updated the max PV setting in SA, not sure if that is related, but maybe let me first see tomorrow what it does. 

Then, where do you check that the inverter has comms with the battery? The cable is connected from the inverter to CAN on the battery. 

19 minutes ago, GreenFields said:

Try setting the load priority, not battery priority. Might still be some other issue, but currently the solar power is variable, dips below the load at times, could be just a cloud or the battery's BMS and how it manages the SOC, and then might be that while it recharges say from 99%-100% it prioritises the solar power to charge the battery, and draw power for the loads from the grid. Pure speculation, but simple enough to check if it makes a difference.

Yes will have a look at this tomorrow when there is sun to test. 

I checked, no comms on the inverter, will check the pinouts tomorrow.

CANbus Comms pins 4 & 5 on the inverter. 

27 minutes ago, Steve87 said:

CANbus Comms pins 4 & 5 on the inverter. 

Yeah thinking back, the installer did not ask me anything about the pin specs for the hubble, so I am not sure what they used but that is easy to check. 

I think it was the max PV setting in Solar Assistant, today so far it seems to be running as expected.

On 2023/10/08 at 9:05 PM, CyberJoe said:

I checked, no comms on the inverter, will check the pinouts tomorrow.

OK, cable was good, it was a dip switch, comms established.

It is still not functioning as I am expecting, in my mind it is linked to the battery SOC, or maybe I am wrong. 

If you look at the attached graph, grid was effectively off, then suddenly it started blending in grid when the pv dropped, but the battery remained at 100%, mode at the time was Discharge above 50%, not sure if it is related, but this started about 15min after the battery reached 100% SOC. 

This is not a major issue, probably more an irritation but it does all add up over a day. 

Again my only reference is the Voltronic SBU mode which I ran for more than a year, and the grid line was flat 8 till 5pm. 

 

On the work mode settings there is a setting "Solar export when battery full', mine is disabled, could it be linked? What does that setting do? 

1 hour ago, CyberJoe said:

It is still not functioning as I am expecting, in my mind it is linked to the battery SOC, or maybe I am wrong. 

If you look at the attached graph, grid was effectively off, then suddenly it started blending in grid when the pv dropped, but the battery remained at 100%, mode at the time was Discharge above 50%, not sure if it is related, but this started about 15min after the battery reached 100% SOC. 

This is not a major issue, probably more an irritation but it does all add up over a day. 

Again my only reference is the Voltronic SBU mode which I ran for more than a year, and the grid line was flat 8 till 5pm. 

 

On the work mode settings there is a setting "Solar export when battery full', mine is disabled, could it be linked? What does that setting do? 

Keep the solar export disabled unless you have municipal permission to export, and a bi-directional meter installed. Have you tried setting the energy pattern to prioritze the load over the battery, and did it have an impact?

58 minutes ago, GreenFields said:

Keep the solar export disabled unless you have municipal permission to export, and a bi-directional meter installed. Have you tried setting the energy pattern to prioritze the load over the battery, and did it have an impact?

I have a Conlog prepaid, so cannot export, was just wondering about that setting. 

Yes, I have changed between load or battery, no difference. 

15 minutes ago, CyberJoe said:

I have a Conlog prepaid, so cannot export, was just wondering about that setting. 

Yes, I have changed between load or battery, no difference. 

I'm near certain you still can export. Meter will either trip after a certain threshold or just merrily export away while your units deplete as it cannot differentiate if electricity is going in or out. My Conlog Prepaid doesn't trip and from experimentation doesn't appear to have a threshold where it will trip either and it gladly accepts export all while charging me to send power back. Something to be careful of.