SigEnergy Solar: AI Mode disappointing

Littlenose · 20 Oct 2025 at 15:32

Is anyone else finding that the AI Mode is less than ideal?

I find that even with 50% + in the battery, it starts importing from the grid during the day.
This results sometimes in excess electric that I imported at the expensive rate and it get's dumped to the grid at the end of the day for less than it cost us.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that you use up the battery first, then buy any "expensive" electric as you need it.

Another one is that it won't consider that my export is limited to 3.68kW. So durin ghte summer it wasn't exporting until it had excess, then my slar production was getting "clipped" by the afternoon once the battery was full.
Surely it would make sense to dump some capacity from the battery into the grid during the morning when the forecast is for a sunny day.

There's a few other oddities, but these two drive me nuts.

I'm kinda hoping someone will point something out to me that makes me understand why it does it this way.

b0rn2sk8 · 20 Oct 2025 at 15:49

Ditch it, use home assistant and Predbat.

It deals with all those scenarios easily.

b0rn2sk8 · 20 Oct 2025 at 17:48

You may get a response posting in the main solar thread - a few people have sig systems in there.

Solar panels and battery - any real world recommendations?

Morning all, I've started to look at the mind field that is Solar and wondering if anyone can offer real world reccomendations? I've got virtual consultations booked for today and tomorrow with another company coming to see me on Tuesday. I've got people offering GivEnergy systems, another...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

200sols · 20 Oct 2025 at 17:59

AI is just a sales word, its meaningless. A basic algorithm will work everytime though.

Littlenose · 21 Oct 2025 at 14:53

Yeah, I get that AI is a sales gimmick, but I had hoped Sigenergy would have considered some of the stuff like I'd mentioned above in their algorithm.

I really didn't want to, but I guess it is time to consider setting up a Home Assistant... now to find a suitable platform

Littlenose · 21 Oct 2025 at 14:54

b0rn2sk8 said:
You may get a response posting in the main solar thread - a few people have sig systems in there.

Solar panels and battery - any real world recommendations?

Morning all, I've started to look at the mind field that is Solar and wondering if anyone can offer real world reccomendations? I've got virtual consultations booked for today and tomorrow with another company coming to see me on Tuesday. I've got people offering GivEnergy systems, another...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

That's true, but that thread is more like chating in Discord, where things get lost easily.

wonko · 21 Oct 2025 at 15:26

I don't know the Sigenergy kit but assume you've setup the tariff data correctly and given it a long enough training period?

I've gone down the Home Assistant and Predbat route too on my Solaredge system - it's not the easiest thing to set up but is working well for me. Home Assistant also lets you see lots more detail of what's going on 'under the hood' like individual battery stats.

Coran · 23 Oct 2025 at 07:49

b0rn2sk8 said:
Ditch it, use home assistant and Predbat.

It deals with all those scenarios easily.

I’d second this. It will take into account your average load for previous days, export what it doesn’t need for the highest price it can and import extra at the lowest price when needed.

Disappointingly for me, one of my inverters has shown a red light for the last month. Waiting on GivEnergy to respond…

Littlenose · Sunday at 09:52

This mornign I woke up to find empty batteries... I guess the clock change confused Sigenergy AI

b0rn2sk8 · Sunday at 09:55

Littlenose said:
This mornign I woke up to find empty batteries... I guess the clock change confused Sigenergy AI

Don’t worry, my home assistant addon for my givenergy system fell over also so the third party stuff isn’t infallible either despite not having problems before.

At least my battery was charged, it just didn’t unpause in the morning so I had 2 hours ‘on grid’.

Littlenose · Sunday at 11:16

That's interesting.
Thankfully we've had a sunny morning and the battery is half charged now, and I've set up HA on a machine in the garage to start learning that system

b0rn2sk8 · Sunday at 11:43

I was going to recommend using a NUC or SSF PC.

A Pi is fine but by the time you have added an SSD hat (HA kills SD card pretty quickly due to constant data logging), you are well into NUC territory already.

Just make sure you are running it either natively or in a VM, running it in docker is sub optimal.

Littlenose · Sunday at 12:28

b0rn2sk8 said:
I was going to recommend using a NUC or SSF PC.

A Pi is fine but by the time you have added an SSD hat (HA kills SD card pretty quickly due to constant data logging), you are well into NUC territory already.

Just make sure you are running it either natively or in a VM, running it in docker is sub optimal.

thanks for the input... I've set it up on a virtual machine on the HP Elitedesk I picked up for £50 (linky)
I'll just be testing for a while until I'm sure I know what I'm doing

b0rn2sk8 · Sunday at 12:32

You can set predbat up in read only mode.

Once you are happy with what it’s doing, unleash it.

reef · Sunday at 12:48

I dont bother with the AI mode on my Sigenergy system. I just stick to the time based schedule as I can control it. If there's a saving session or free energy period I can use the instant manual control to charge or discharge.

Littlenose · Sunday at 12:48

b0rn2sk8 said:
You can set predbat up in read only mode.

Once you are happy with what it’s doing, unleash it.

oh nice, so that works like a simulation mode before making it live?

Littlenose · Sunday at 12:49

reef said:
I dont bother with the AI mode on my Sigenergy system. I just stick to the time based schedule as I can control it. If there's a saving session or free energy period I can use the instant manual control to charge or discharge.

that's what I've got mine on at the moment too

wonko · Sunday at 13:09

Littlenose said:
oh nice, so that works like a simulation mode before making it live?

It's worth configuring and letting predbat run in 'read only' mode for a week so it has data of your typical consumption. Though it didn't run error-free for me until I'd put the solaredge inverter in 'remote control' mode.

You're probably aware already, but if you're running HA in a VM you may not be able to use USB devices like zigbee dongles.

Littlenose · Sunday at 13:29

wonko said:
It's worth configuring and letting predbat run in 'read only' mode for a week so it has data of your typical consumption. Though it didn't run error-free for me until I'd put the solaredge inverter in 'remote control' mode.

You're probably aware already, but if you're running HA in a VM you may not be able to use USB devices like zigbee dongles.

I didn't know that about the Zigbee dongles, but I was intending to just play with HA for a awhile, then install HA Bare-Metal.
But I don't know much at this stage, so maybe that's not the best option... it's all learning at the moment

wonko · Sunday at 13:49

Littlenose said:
I didn't know that about the Zigbee dongles, but I was intending to just play with HA for a awhile, then install HA Bare-Metal.
But I don't know much at this stage, so maybe that's not the best option... it's all learning at the moment

AFAIK, only some VMs do USB passthrough - just thought I'd mention it before you spent too much time configuring. You can get ethernet zigbee coordinators but they arent as cheap as the USB options.