Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

[father-ted]

Ok understood, I did a simple copy/paste, lesson accepted
Do I need another battery or anything, or am I good to go with that?

Seems I fell lucky straight away, through the recommendation on here.
They have been very easy to deal with so far.
I could get the scaffolding a couple of hundred cheaper, but not really worth the hassle - may as well let them deal with everything.

 

[maddness]

there are two options:

Third party controls for the battery like home assistant. You can use it to ‘watch’ the octopus API and set the battery to charge at the same time as the car for 7p, you then let the solar export for 15p. Profit!

Changes to the way your CTs are set up or how your EV charger is wired into your house. This would make it so the battery can’t ‘see’ the EV charger.

The latter is set and forget but it could cost money if you need to get a spark in.

How is your EV and solar system wired in and where are the CTs located? Pictures would probably help.

Cheers they are coming to install the second battery tomorrow, they said it should be a quick setting change, I'll update what they did, cheers

 

[Ron-ski]

Ok understood, I did a simple copy/paste, lesson accepted
Do I need another battery or anything, or am I good to go with that?

Seems I fell lucky straight away, through the recommendation on here.
They have been very easy to deal with so far.
I could get the scaffolding a couple of hundred cheaper, but not really worth the hassle - may as well let them deal with everything.

Given your usage, I would think so, but they can be very easily added later, just make sure suitable space is left when they do your install if you only opt for one.

Certainly would be worth asking how much an additional battery would be, there's not much work to install it.

If this is the battery then they are around £2455 excluding VAT (note I only looked at the one website).

Batteries really help in the winter, charge off peak and use that instead or day rate/peak, as for ROI that's very difficult to work out, I just went big

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Cheers they are coming to install the second battery tomorrow, they said it should be a quick setting change, I'll update what they did, cheers

I can't see this being fixed with a setting change on the charger/battery.

They may be able to solve it by moving the CT's around, I guess that is what they could be referring to but other than that it is either a physical wiring or third party controls.

 

[maddness]

I can't see this being fixed with a setting change on the charger/battery.

They may be able to solve it by moving the CT's around, I guess that is what they could be referring to but other than that it is either a physical wiring or third party controls.

i'll update tomorrow, i'm not sure, but he went away to speak to the tech person and called me back to confirm the above.

i will keep hold of the givenergy ev charger however i have checked on octos website and my car + a give ev charger is compatible with the Intelligence Octopus Go tariff

Intelligent Octopus Go

The UK's most awarded energy supplier. We're doing energy better - for you and the environment.

octopus.energy

my other ev is not compatible but i guess if 1 car is it should be enough to stay on IOG?

in all honesty i dont mind if the the cars charge only @ 23:30 - 05:30, the day grid charging is only trickle charging tbh (most of the time)

 

[Journey]

I just went big

Went big, and stayed home to use all that energy.

 

[maddness]

Went big, and stayed home to use all that energy.

we know when ron is visiting lol

 

[b0rn2sk8]

i'll update tomorrow, i'm not sure, but he went away to speak to the tech person and called me back to confirm the above.

i will keep hold of the givenergy ev charger however i have checked on octos website and my car + a give ev charger is compatible with the Intelligence Octopus Go tariff

Intelligent Octopus Go

The UK's most awarded energy supplier. We're doing energy better - for you and the environment.

octopus.energy

my other ev is not compatible but i guess if 1 car is it should be enough to stay on IOG?

in all honesty i dont mind if the the cars charge only @ 23:30 - 05:30, the day grid charging is only trickle charging tbh (most of the time)

1 car OR 1 charger is enough to stay on IoG, the other car will only charge overnight in the fixed cheap period.

You don't want to grid charge during the day when you would otherwise be exporting solar anyway, its better to export that solar for 15p and buy it back later for 7p.

I've accidently plugged the car in when I got home on a sunny day and IoG kicked on almost immediately and I was only pulling 2kw from the grid and 5kw off my solar. Nope, I cancelled that.

 

[maddness]

ok second battery installed, took an hour to install & comission, was already on the latest f/w


the app setting mentioned is in the ohme app, you have to "enable price cap" in the app and this will stop the charging out of the 23:30 - 05:30 hours range

...yes i was a bit dubious and called ohme and they said the exact same thing (without me telling them about it), apparantly because octo recalculates your so called smart charging amount at end of day, so it wont charge in the day if it's over 7.5p... so batteries dont get used to charge the car

just need to make sure we dont force charge in the day, not needed to over the years so it shouldnt be an issue

like a cheat way but it works i guess, hopefully this helps someone else

 

[maddness]

i was just looking at the give ev charger manual -

guess option D is the best configuration of this lot ok it's cloud control only (not local), E will need a comms cable to the inverter

i was hoping to do a like for like replacement with my ohme at a later date, which is connected to the mains / grid, no clamp, will this allow me charge from grid / schedule / hybrid / solar, or will i need to have it rewired with a ct clamp

 

[b0rn2sk8]

ok second battery installed, took an hour to install & comission, was already on the latest f/w


the app setting mentioned is in the ohme app, you have to "enable price cap" in the app and this will stop the charging out of the 23:30 - 05:30 hours range

...yes i was a bit dubious and called ohme and they said the exact same thing (without me telling them about it), apparantly because octo recalculates your so called smart charging amount at end of day, so it wont charge in the day if it's over 7.5p... so batteries dont get used to charge the car

just need to make sure we dont force charge in the day, not needed to over the years so it shouldnt be an issue

like a cheat way but it works i guess, hopefully this helps someone else

I’m not sure I understand what they have done and how that prevents the batteries from discharging.

The batteries and the charger do not speak to each other. All the battery sees is a load and it will try to fill the demand unless you either tell it not to (e.g. schedule or 3rd party controls) or your circuits are designed in such a way that it can’t see the load. The settings on the charger have no impact on this as they can’t talk to each other.

Ideally you want to charge the battery whenever IO is active (e.g. between 11.30 and 5.30, also if you get any free slots outside of this time).

In terms of the GivEnergy charger, option C or E once it’s available. Cloud control isn’t fast enough for solar, it’s only updated every 5 or 10 mins and it will result unwanted grid usage if used in solar mode.

Edit: that is unless it’s just the charger being turned on and off using cloud controls, in which case that’s probably fine. Personally I prefer local, as it will work if the internet is down or givenergy go bust or stop supporting the product in however many years time.

 

[maddness]

so essentially setting price cap enabled means it wont charge in the day intelligently, it will only charge from 23:30 - 05:30 @ the 7.5p rate

my cars will charge between 23:30 - 05:30 (set in the ohme app)
and my pv batteries are set to fill from the grid 23:30 - 05:30 (set in the giv app / cloud)

if the batteries are set to charge at the same time as the cars then it wont use the batteries to charge the cars, also the rest of the house will use the 7.5 grid rate between these hours too

is that not how it works?

=============================

for the ev charger, it connects to wifi, and communicats over the cloud to the inverter, because I have a give inverter, option D or E is most suitable, i guess if i need to use wired, i need to see what the data / comms cable is, i can worry about that later

 

[maddness]

on another note does a new battery / comissioning go through initial optimisations, as it is belting 3kw from battery to grid depleting both batteries

 

[thewanted]

on another note does a new battery / comissioning go through initial optimisations, as it is belting 3kw from battery to grid depleting both batteries

Yes, new batteries need to be calibrated when they're commissioned.

I can highly recommend Predbat if you want to ensure that your batteries are charged when IOG slots are dispatched.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

so essentially setting price cap enabled means it wont charge in the day intelligently, it will only charge from 23:30 - 05:30 @ the 7.5p rate

my cars will charge between 23:30 - 05:30 (set in the ohme app)
and my pv batteries are set to fill from the grid 23:30 - 05:30 (set in the giv app / cloud)

if the batteries are set to charge at the same time as the cars then it wont use the batteries to charge the cars, also the rest of the house will use the 7.5 grid rate between these hours too

is that not how it works?

Sort of but not really. You are giving up a key benefit of IO over other (slightly cheaper) tariffs such as E.on drive next.

You’ll not get any additional cheap slots which are great over winter when the winds blowing hard but no sun to be had.

You could also cause Octopus to **** up your charging also. Octopus expect the car to charge whenever they tell it to. If you plug in the car and Octopus wants to charge it between 9pm and 11pm, the car will not charge.

I’d suggest what they have don’t is a bit of a bodge at best.

on another note does a new battery / comissioning go through initial optimisations, as it is belting 3kw from battery to grid depleting both batteries

Yes, and whenever you update the battery firmware.

I can highly recommend Predbat if you want to ensure that your batteries are charged when IOG slots are dispatched.

Pedbat is a good tool but massively overkill for just IO slots. I don’t bother using it anymore as I just don’t use its core functionality (battery charge prediction).

It can also be achieved with a simple automation in home assistant.

 

[maddness]

thats it, calibrated, i couldnt get the word out

i'll have a look, i used to love tinkering but nowadays i just want to leave well enough alone and let

 

[b0rn2sk8]

That’s what I said until I messed up trying to manually manage it.

I bit the bullet, set up home assistant with a few anutomations and haven’t touched it since.

 

[maddness]

Both my batteries are sat at 0% "calibrating" but still pushing 400w to the house, impressive

 

[b0rn2sk8]

they’ll do that for a while until they reach the ‘real zero’. The BMS will then know where the bottom is and the top once they fully recharge.

Not much you can do about the timing when they first commission them but if you get a battery firmware update in the future, you want to set it going in the evening so it finishes discharging at about midnight. It will then recharge on the cheap rates. You’ll get paid for the export once that is set up.

speaking of export, that is a good reason why you might want to get home assistant. You can use predbat to automatically export any surplus batter power in the evening before the 11.30 cheap rate starts to really maximise the return you get from the system.

 

[Pickers]

Are you using GivTCP?

You have to use the charge start and end times for controlling the battery charge.

Essentially my automation monitors for the octopus dispatching flag and when it turns on, it sets the battery to charge between 00:00 and 23:59.

When it turns off, it changes the charge times back to 11.30-5.30.

Technically it’s 2 automations (one for on, one for off), you’ll need to update the sensor/entity names to reflect your inverter and octopus account. I set up the blow in the GUI, below is the YAML code it created.

Spoiler: Octopus Intelligent On

alias: Octopus Intelligent On (charge battery)
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.octopus_energy_a_XXXXXXXX_intelligent_dispatching
from: "off"
to: "on"
condition: []
action:
- device_id: <your inverter>
domain: select
entity_id: <your charge time start slot 1>
type: select_option
option: "00:00:00"
- device_id: <your inverter>
domain: select
entity_id: <your charge time end slot 1>
type: select_option
option: "23:59:00"
mode: single

Spoiler: Octopus Intelligent Off

alias: Octopus Intelligent Off (Eco Mode)
description: ""
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.octopus_energy_a_XXXXXXXX_intelligent_dispatching
to: "off"
condition: []
action:
- device_id: <your inverter>
domain: select
entity_id: <your charge time start slot 1>
type: select_option
option: "23:30:00"
- device_id: <your inverter>
domain: select
entity_id: <your charge time end slot 1>
type: select_option
option: "05:30:00"
mode: single

Here is the post that I shall be using - thanks to @b0rn2sk8.

My question, is do you also have one of the GivEnergy charge times set to the overnight values, or does octopus send the signal at overnight time so that this automation kicks in anyway?