Thanks surfer. I’ll look that one up.

Only the installer can change the operating mode eg from max self consumption to scheduled charging.

The normal app operation for solaredge is the same. However you can get around it by registering as an installer and taking full control of your site. Alternatively solaredge are working on owner control via the app. I got access to this beta yesterday but not had the time to explore yet.

I’m with Foxees and fortunately I can do that from the app, although unlike others I cant force discharge my battery. Having said that I cant see a situation when I would. I need the battery close to full in the evenings anyway to be sure of getting to the 2am cheap charge window. I find I am doing that with lots to spare at the moment but I would still only be messing around trying to discharge up to around 30-40% of my battery (about 4kw) so its hardly worth it. Same with the diverting. My battery is usually full by 4pm so its feeding any solar in then already so not really worth changing. If I had a much larger battery and array, maybe.

The normal app operation for solaredge is the same. However you can get around it by registering as an installer and taking full control of your site.

I’ve done the same with Huawei, but it wasn’t necessary to change the operating mode.

thanks for the info uponthedowns and footflaps, it all helps.

I’d suggest joining the Facebook group for what ever inverter system your thinking.

See what the common issues are. Identify which are issues for you as opposed to gripes.

We landed with a solid hybrid mainly as id had a solis string inverter previous and I wanted puredrive batteries so had a choice of brands of inverter -and the solis offered the better control.

Ours is a givenergy system; I like the app, it gives you absolutely loads of data to look at in shiny graphs, you get pretty good control over how you want the battery to work and what times you want it to charge and discharge, it updates every five minutes when you’re away from home but every ten seconds when you’re on the local network. It is occasionally a bit temperamental about whether it can find the inverter on the local network, but most of the time it’s fine. You can talk to the inverter using modbus from something like Home Assistant if you want (but I haven’t). I like it a lot.

Hmm first real look at the solaredge changes and they seem limited. Can set multiple high cost bands but no way of setting a low period or any kind of ranking/weighting to the different periods. Still no way to force charge when you want.

Another point re Huawei.

A rather minor gripe…

When you program force charge you have two options, you can just specify a period, eg 3-5am, and say charge during this period. Or you can also specify a maximum charge state and say charge up to, say, 60% between 3 and 5am.

However, if the battery is over 60% at the start, or at any point during the charging period, it just sits there doing nothing ie not powering the house off the battery. Admittedly, we don’t draw much power between 3 and 5am but even if we have a fully charged battery, we end up using power from the grid.

Just seems a bit of an oversight in how they’ve implemented it.

I’ve switched back to max self consumption for the summer, but was running force charge up to 60% over the winter to make sure we always had enough to make it till after peak evening pricing.

Is there such a thing as an AC buffer/capacitor that can be installed to fill the gap between demand and the battery kicking in? My system has a very small draw from the grid before the battery kicks in and this usually isn’t aproblem, but say you’re cooking something for a long period in the oven, the heating element switches on and off with quite some regularity. Even at only 80deg over maybe 4 hours, over half that power use is from the grid due to the latency.

Is there such a thing as an AC buffer/capacitor that can be installed to fill the gap between demand and the battery kicking in?

Nope, all batteries are DC, so require inverter circuitry which has to be switched on etc. No reason why this can’t be very responsive though. My guess is they wait a bit to stop over reacting as that probably improves the longevity of the batteries (just a guess).

Depending on the install, it might help a tiny bit to swap the grid CT for a meter which transmits power through RS485, which will be more accurate. But to be honest I don’t think there’s much you can do without changing the inverter. Mine is pretty quick (eg maybe 2-3 seconds lag).

Don’t forget that it has to sense you drawing power from the grid before it can ramp up to match.

Finally got faith my flux is hooked up right. All the reading are live in the app and it’s showing my meter details correctly.

It’s all been backdated to April 19th and my net bill for the 28 days Lecky including standing charge is £2.68

Numbers looking great now even on slighlty dull days bringing in high 20’s with a high of 40Kw and lots around 35Kw+

The last 7 days (on Flux) Octopus has paid me £29.39. Including fixed charge our daily usage was around (this is an average based on our annual daily usage and on the basic tariff) £6. Thats a weekly saving of around £70. Obvs there is a big payback required for the installation but that is now looking to be around 6 years…

Octopus are taking ages to sort out export. They have all the paperwork and the MPAN but for some reason turning Flux on requires weeks of waiting.

I removed the export block on our system last week and for the first time I’m seeing the full generation potential. We hit a new record on saturday of 60.4 KWh and have averaged about 45/ day for the week.

However, it’s all being donated to the grid… fingers crossed they will back date it like trail_rat.

(10KWp array, 6.5 limit on inverter, 40:60 EW split, oxfordshire, 10kwh battery)

Octopuses. Where do you see your export information? I can see export amounts in the app now but only from the point they set it up (no historic ones) and nothing for export on my last bill.

Octo aid doesn’t seem to pick export data up for me either.

I use octopus watch….. But if they have not committed to back dating they don’t automatically and even even it’s wurh the caveat they can retrieve the historical data

Just got estimate through for this years Solar Together scheme… £8.5k for 12 panels + 3.2kWh battery, £10.5k for 9.6 kWh battery. Price seems reasonable, need to do some research on the installer now!

Flux up and running properly now. Last week up until today has been great – averaging £9/day net income.

I have been onto Solar Edge to tweak the battery profile so now it’s going to charge between 2 and 5am and then maximise self-consumption between 4 and 7pm so any solar is exported. I’d like to be able to tell it to discharge a few units at peak time too but that didn’t seem to be an option. It was all or nothing. That might mean getting to the evening with an empty battery and needing to import anyway.

The relatively similar prices for the off peak import and export means that this is probably not worth too much effort but i thought i’d try it out. With wholesale prices dropping, it will be interesting to see if these levels stay the same. I guess the best outcome for me is selling high this summer and buying cheap(er) in the winter when the import prices drop.

Price seems reasonable, need to do some research on the installer now!

They telling you ? Usually goes to reverse auction after your all signed up.

Also getting about £15/day net with Flux too.

Albeit it’s somewhat exaggerated because there appears to be an issue with the way their system interrogates my meter but they say they’ll honour the overpayments. Quietly hoping that it takes as long to fix as everything else related to smart meters usually goes on for.

Missing the 5p overnight rate for car charging but will go back to Intelligent Octopus for the winter.

Getting about £5 a day currently (22kwh export). Clipping for around 4/5 hours by about 1.6 KWh. I used the hardware throttle on our car charger over the weekend so it charged at 3Kwh. By starting this before the sun hit the side properly I pull 70% of the house battery into the car then got a good period of 5Kwh production with 3 going to the car, a bit to house usage and the rest to the battery but slower.

Not exported anything as I am “off-grid”, but I have only bought 34 KwH fromthe grid while using 521 Kwh for the month. At the 60p a unit I currently pay that means I have saved £290 for the month. I’ll take that.

Well, May’s numbers are in. 5.4kWp array, South facing, in the SW, 19kWh of storage.

841kWh generated! 562kWh used, 21kWh imported, over 300kWh exported (and not paid for). Electricity bill for the month is £6.79. Standing charge £15.75. So less than £30 inc vat.

Appointment for final issuance of export certificate tomorrow. Had we been able to export, we’d have earned a net profit of ~£50.

731kWh produced, 382kWh consumed and 364kWh exported. £21 income for the month despite payment only starting on the 20th.

So, I’ve signed up for Flux and the tariff has registered as Flux Import and I can’t see any export data at all – it this what happened to others when they first signed up?

My kit is all signed off with DNO approval and I have my MCS certificate, all of which have been given to Octopus.

@Daffy, yes exactly that. It took weeks and weeks after Flux import showed up before Flux export came online. Once it is up and running you can see export data in both the app and website. You’ll also not get paid for anything exported until setup is complete.

itll be 4-6 weeks most likely before you see the export data.

They will backdate it till the date they can find – i signed up april 4th , flux import went live on the 7th and flux export went live on may 17th but they backdated to april 19th as thats when flux had data for my export.

That was moving from an existing SEG provider .

the previous 68 days of billable use inc standing charge have cost me £2.54 – including 12 days of no flux export.

over the time exports been live I’m on £-11.316

The month of may which was pretty dire for sun its £-6.95 – in may we only generated 444kwh – of which we consumed 309kwh

Hopefully we will start getting some sustained sun for the summer. -But flux has boosted my business case for some north facing panels to take advantage of their 31p rate.

Ah – okay, I’ll stop fretting about it, but will try to record my export meter readings in the hope of some form of reclaim.

Today is crunch day (final day I can accept my Solar Together quote)! I am minded to go for it, with 12 panels & the smallest battery option (3.2 kw) as they are modular units (Pylontech) and I gather you can just add more yourself if you like later (assuming you can source them)?

One thing I’ve just thought of which might tip the balance – we have a massive issue of overheating in the bedroom of our chalet bungalow, as (I guess) there’s no loft-space above to act as a buffer… would solar panels on the (south facing) roof absorb enough energy to make a significant difference? 🤔

After much to-ing and fro-ing with our provider, our order (placed Oct last year with a verbal installation date of March this year) has been scheduled for Week 32-36 this year. Maybe, probably.

This is a relatively small installation (12-16 panels and a 5 KWh battery) and their excuses have pissed us off enough to look at cancelling and re-ordering elsewhere. This installation promise date was the result of us getting very annoyed with them.

Fingers crossed they actually manage to keep to a date this time.

Wilard, I think I landed lucky… ordered Jan 2023, fitted end of feb 2023.

Battery size is a funny one. We have 12.8kWh of Greenlinx batteries and with Octopus Flux we fully charge and discharge them each day to max the peak/offpeak price gap. I guess if we had a smaller battery then would still use flux tarif and charge to 100% overnight which is easier (and pretty cost neutral) on set up/management than charging batteries from solar I think. At the moment the solar is making 37-40kWh per day and domestic usage is c10kWh (though doubled this week with portable AC!). So battery usage is low.

Will be curious to see how batteries help in winter. I expect they will just help keep us on the 19p per unit overnight leccy.

Very impressed with solar so far. P4Solar in Ilkley, recommended from this forum.

I’d look very hard at the cost vs benefit of adding extra cycles to your battery by doing a full charge/discharge cycle on a daily basis. Given that the net income is about 85% of 35p/kWh at best, it must be pretty marginal in the long run if you need to replace the batteries (and probably the inverter) halfway through the predicted life cycle.

The manufacturer almost certainly publishes degradation data and yours will be at the bottom end if you’re discharging and charging at the full load of the inverter. Certainly for mine (Fox ESS) it wasn’t worth it in the long run and I just take the solar output which is already generating £10/day.

I’ve done the same calculation as flaperon and have decided not to force discharge my batteries on a regular basis.  My paired batteries did discharge down to 13% during the winter, but in spring that had disappeared and late spring summer, we rarely get below 60% no matter what is happening.

An extra few ££ a day for at most 6months a year isn’t going move the needle much.  At most, it might cover 50% of the battery cost over 10y.

Edit: 85% of 15p/kWh if you charge from the grid.

<p style=”text-align: right;”>Flaperon and Daffy, you are probably right from a profit/loss perspective. However I like the idea with helping with national load shifting (combined with solar if its sunny my system pushes 6-7kW continuously to the grid 4pm-7pm), if we have enough of that nationally then thats fewer gas powerstations revved up. Based on c£1.50 a day extra from having the charge/discharge cycles its c£5000 extra over 10 years. Payback on whole system is c6 years and then £2000+ profit per annum. If I have to spend a few £k in 7-10 years on replacement kit then thats not disastrous. The wear on inverters is a funny one. As its an AC coupled system I have three inverters (one dumb one for panels and twin Lux Squirrel pods that give 7kW flow between them). The panels inverter runs at 3.5-3.6 kw for large parts of the day when sunny, so if any will fail its this. The Squirrel Pods charge at full rate for two hours each night, then sit there doing not much if its sunny till 4pm when they are set to discharge at 45% rate (c1800w)  so they get down to 15% DOD by 7pm. The 15% covers us till 2am when they charge up again.So the squirrel pod inverters have a fairly easy life most of the year as the are dormant whenever the sun is out. Will report back over the years as batteries age, but right now cant see why I would have the capacity and not use it.</p>

I have been discharging some of our battery capacity for a couple of hours some days for similar reasons as above in that we have the capability to do so so we may as well use it. In terms of load on the inverter an extra few kwh at a low rate is negligible compared with what the system will push through on a long sunny day; in terms of battery cycles it does not cycle anywhere near as much as the full charge / full discharge every day over winter. I discharge ours so by 2am they’re still at at least 30% so it’s not doing a very deep discharge. I wonder about the opposite, actually; if it weren’t for doing this the battery would spend the summer over 90% pretty much all of the time and 100% for most of that, which isn’t good for the battery in itself.

What I wonder about is recharging the batteries again; even though the overnight rate is very slightly cheaper, doing it from solar is currently lower carbon (overnight grid power isn’t particularly low emission at the moment), solar tends to recharge it slower which I assume is better for the battery, and on a good day we can charge the battery with DC power above the AC rating of the hybrid inverter so it’s “free” power that we couldn’t export anyway.

I’m happy that we’re essentially off grid and fully green for 97% of our energy requirements at the moment, even if there’s a rainy day or two, there’s enough reserve capacity and generation capacity that we’re still off-grid.  That, in my opinion is the best thing I can do.  Charge the house, charge the car, export the extra.  It’s enough for the moment.  I wanted to do more this year, but I need to save the pennies for the impending mortgage hammer that will happen next year.  £5-7k extra a year is a tough pill to swallow.

Octopus have told me that the export will go live tomorrow morning.  Really good given we only switch to Octopus on the 8th and then onto Flux on the 10th.  Whoop!

Octopus have told me that the export will go live tomorrow morning. Really good given we only switch to Octopus on the 8th and then onto Flux on the 10th. Whoop!

have you asked them if you can backdate ?

I do have readings, so assume that they could, but it’s not the end of the world as we’re talking £25-£30 from the point of transfer, but I will ask once its live.