Solis Hybrid - charge battery using Night rate

jkforde

I've a Solis hybrid 5G in a DC-coupled system (PylonTech 2.4kW).. and I've just signed up to a D\N meter, so been wondering how (if possible) to configure the inverter so that it charges the battery at specific periods during the night. I know how to get into the Adv settings and the Storage Energy Set > Self Use menu.. latest firmware has multiple time periods available.

jkforde

since I can't delete my own post 😂, just to say that by reading another recent thread (Solis settings) I see this possible in that Self Use screen,so Happy Daze. getting in the D\N meter on Wednesday so will try it go then.

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118000139#Comment_118000139

Im following your post in the other thread - I might try this. But I am not on Day/Night rate yet. I have the old fashioned spinning wheel meter. Is it worth it for me to chnage over to say/night now or If i do that do i lose out on the (potential) ability to send back to the grid with a Smart Meter?

Also - who did u get to change the meter to day/night?

jkforde

I would get them to replace it with D\N meter, the current smart tarrifs are downright cynical and will be until a genuinely innovative player enters our so called 'market'.

ESB Networks replace the meters but the work is scheduled via your electricity provider.

jkforde

So I've set the following Self Use settings, will this achieve battery charging from grid between 0400 and 0600 once SOC reaches 15% (Force Charge SOC is set to 15%).

20211013_152158.jpg

20211013_152132.jpg

reklamos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118014978#Comment_118014978

This will charge battery at 50Amps for 2 hours no matter if SoC is 15% or not.

Force charge SoC is to protect battery from getting low. If battery drops below 15% it will force charge it independent from the schedule be it from grid or from solar.

jkforde

ah right, that's what I essentially want anyhow as the battery (2.4kW) will always be at 15% SOC at that time anyhow. thanks!

reklamos

If you have a single us2000 battery then I would recommend set charge current to 25Amps as this is 0.5C and it recommended charge/discharge rate by manufacture for us2000. It can handle 50Amps but it is max rate and you should not push it at max. It should be able to charge it to full in 2 hours at 25Amps

jkforde

👍👍 spot on, I see that now in its specifications, will lower to 25Amps. this is why boards is such an invaluable resource.

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118015786#Comment_118015786

any advice for a Dyness battery? IN the app it says Battery current 40A . Its a 5Kwh (4.8) battery...

reklamos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118015952#Comment_118015952

4.8kWh would be 100Ah. Taking recommended 0.5C(which from what I've most manufactures recommended). It would mean recommended charge/discharge is 50Amps. I found this manual which confirms it but I do not know if this is the exact battery that you have.

reklamos

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118015870#Comment_118015870

Another recommendation to increase longevity of the battery is not to charge it to 100%. I would say charge it to 80%. To achieve this you can either cut down the Amps or reduce time interval. Monitor the first night and then adjust accordingly. This will also will leave you some room in case we are lucky and have sunny day.

jkforde

appreciate it.. yes, I forget it's just like any other Li battery! so I think I'll charge it at 15A for 2hrs and see how I get on. pity we can't vary this via the Solis app (gear is up in the attic). thanks again!

reklamos

My all gear is also up in the attic and I have it done. I can control inverter/battery settings from my phone/tablet/PC from anywhere where there's internet connectivity. You can also automate so it makes decision based on specific criteria or the way you want just not with the tools that Solis provides. But all this requires extra hardware, time and will to tinker with things which is not for everyone.

jkforde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118016305#Comment_118016305

sounds class, do you do consultancy!? 😂🤣

I'd love to be able to set it all up like that, I like a basic bit of automation, (tasker, ifttt etc) but I'm afraid this level of setup is beyond me brains!😁

would be great to get cloud cover forecasting (okta) and feed it into some decision flow, as in whether to charge from night grid or not on previous night..

reklamos

I thought I was doing consultancy already in all the threads :) I am happy to help if I can as I do hope that others will do the same. This is what the community is for to share knowledge. I have not tried to pull Okta but I did others and I do not expect this to be any different.

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118016205#Comment_118016205

How did you get on? I am following your path this evening - just got d/n meter today. I have set charge time to 2 hour window at 50amps atm. (Dyness 5KW battery)

jkforde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118086294#Comment_118086294

it's working great, charge at 15A from 0600-0800 so when winter time kicks in this weekend, the main morning load will be night rate and then battery before any morning solar topup. am considering adding another 2.4 module to existing 2.4kW but not convinced yet of the payback, but considering where energy costs are going and growing demand for residential batteries...... but one thing for certain, the future CEG tariff would have to be extraordinary for me to give up the D\N meter

SD_DRACULA

Mad as hell for going for the ridonculous smart meter instead of d/n 🤬

Can you set batteries to charge at night rate, discharge during the day when needed, but also top up charge with solar during the day?

jkforde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118087240#Comment_118087240

yep, how to configure in the inverter will depend on the make of inverter, it's pretty straightforward on a Solis anyhow.

Screenshot_20211024-164323~01.png

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118087590#Comment_118087590

i thought we were supposed to not set discharge time... i set mine to the screenshot you put up on post #6 in this thread:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118015172/#Comment_118015172

jkforde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118087608#Comment_118087608

that screenshot is from the manual's appendix. stick with only setting Charge Time in order to charge from night rate, leave Discharge times blank so that the inverter's default Self Use logic applies for rest of the time.

I didn't realise you could both time charge, and also solar charge, while discharging when needed. That's fantastic.

Only getting up to speed on batteries now, thanks mainly to this forum.

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118087608#Comment_118087608

Just an update on how I got on - pretty good i think! I was set to charge as above for 2 hours - but TBH i woke up and checked it after an hour and found it was already at 70% so i dropped the 2 hour window down to 80 minutes total. My battery got to roughly 85% full... and by the time I was awake and firing the first kettle I was back down to 52% - but all driven from my battery and the night rate juice.

Its 10:45am now and the battery is filling back up at 44% since its nice sunny day. Ideally it wont totally fill up - and I wont give any energy back to the grid today - but ill self-consume it all.

I think I will keep a close eye on this and the main adjustment will be moving the charging time to finish just before the night rate ends. That way i get the benefit of night rate to run the house load instead of having it drain battery. I might also lower the amps and shorten the time so that im under 80%.

idc

This is more for curiosity about the Solis inverter:

With these charge time periods can they only be set on the actual inverter? or can you set them via web interface and secondly you can only set the rate of charge and duration of charging ?

In comparison my AlphaESS system i set time period of charge (in Winter is set for night rate time period - basically as it makes more sense to use what little i generate from sun or import at night to only be used during day rate) and then i set a percentage SOC value. If the forecast is bad currently set it at 75% but if forecast is likely to be a good clear day then I drop it 50%. this is all configrable on device (menu driven) or on the web/mobile app. It does mean if the battery/sun gets me to say midnight with 30% battery left i don't use that during the night rate period. [ admittedly downside of this is spring/autumn is that if charging ends at 8/9am but PV is fulfilling house load before that time and has excess it gets exported (well to be eddie first) ]

Maybe theres some other settings but it looks like with Solis if you did have say 30% of battery available when night rate kicks in you'd use some of the 30% until you get to minimum setting and at 6/7 (or whatever time you start charging) you fill back up to whatever the rate of charge * time period gives you ? Does that make sense ?

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089665#Comment_118089665

AFAIK there is no app control of Solis for these settings. I jhave both the old and new Solis Cloud App - and its not remote control - its just Dashboards and historic data.

I only starting using this functionality - so I see it was being pretty simple - set it and forget it. From now on - even the sunniest of days - I will start the day with battery at say 80% from night rate. Then during the morning - before sun really kicks in - the battery will feed the house load. If it turns out its a sunny day - then target running heavier loads at peak - washer, drier, dishwasher, oven/hob. Sun and Battery togetehr will cover those loads (not ALL at once tho). Id like to see the battery at zero (20%) by 11PM... and then the whole thing starts again.

YMMV - everyone is different. Factors that play a part:

• House load Required at peak
• Size of your system - Inverter/Panels - max output etc
• Size of your battery - max output (battery doesnt automagically cover ALL House load!)

In spring id say ill be turning off the charging at some point.

Jonathan

I've been hacking around with my Solis Hybrid and wifi stick and have made some progress on accessing the data in real-time using this project.

https://github.com/MichaluxPL/Sofar_LSW3

Port 8899 on the wifi stick is open and you can communicate with it via V5 of the iGEN protocol, which is basically a wrapper around Modbus. Still have a good bit of work to do, but there is a good possibility that you can write to the Modbus registers as well. This would allow automation of charge times etc.

@reklamos had done some automation with an actual RS-485 adapter and a smart relay, but it seems that this isn't required and you can use the stock wifi stick.

Will report back.

EDIT: Details of Solis Modbus registers is here: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/coghlan/Elios4you/RS485_MODBUS-Hybrid-BACoghlan-201811228-1854.pdf

graememk

@SD_DRACULA the above post might interest you too! ^^

SD_DRACULA

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089791#Comment_118089791

Yeah I was able to get modbus to work when connected directly to the inverter logger port (wifi stick not connected) but if you can access it while at the same it is sending data to Solis cloud let me know 😁

Jonathan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089943#Comment_118089943

Yeah. Wifi stick connected sending data to Solis Cloud. Can query registers in realtime.

Register: 0x8119 (33049), Value: 0x12c5 (4805) <-- PV String 1 Voltage (DC)
Register: 0x811A (33050), Value: 0x002c (44)   <-- PV String 1 Current (DC)
Register: 0x8122 (33058), Value: 0x0842 (2114) <-- Total Power (DC)
Register: 0x8131 (33073), Value: 0x0920 (2336) <-- Grid Voltage (AC)
Register: 0x8138 (33080), Value: 0x07e4 (2020) <-- Active Power (AC)
Register: 0x813C (33084), Value: 0x07ee (2030) <-- Apparent Power (AC)

ELCAT2009

Screenshot_20211215-183308_SolisCloud.jpg

Screenshot_20211215-183519_SolisCloud.jpg

So I've been charging my Pylontech Batteries to about 85-90% at night to get me through a good portion of the day. Last night rather than a constant level charge of about 1.2kw, it shows spike of 13kw for short while? When I look at the graph for the SOC it is rising uniformly with no spike to reflect the charging spike? Is it just a glitch in the solis software? Wouldn't think spike of 13kw in the battery was possible and if it was I'm sure not good for Batteries! Anyone else ever have similar experience?

reklamos

More than likely a glitch in reading data from inverter. Battery has protection to shutdown if it crosses thresholds. Also the circuit breaker between the battery and inverter would have tripped. 13kW would be 250Amps it would have fried the battery if none of the protections worked. The other thing is you would need 3phases coming into your house to provide 13kW

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118327801#Comment_118327801

I've an 16kva supply, I can pull 13kw without breaking a sweat.. just need to charge the car, charge batteries and stick on a kettle.

ELCAT2009

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118327928#Comment_118327928

I was thinking I should be able to pull 13kw if needed. I also have 16kva supply and have prob pulled 10kw by having heat pump, kettle and oven on. With electric car coming I expect at night could easily be pulling 113 or 14kw. What kw should I be able to pull max with 16kva?

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118328291#Comment_118328291

Apparently its an 100amp fuse in the the ESB main head, then I have a 80Amp MCB after the meter.

15-16kW is about the limit

reklamos

sorry you are right. I was still thinking about mainland Europe single phase which is way lower what we go in here.

loopymum

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118328435#Comment_118328435

15-16KW seems a bit low for 80amp

I have a 65amp fuses which translates to 15.6KW

I have a zappi and they recommend setting it to 60amp if you have 65 amp fuse for load balancing. It seem to kick in though about 13kw which is fine as leaves room for anything coming on suddenly

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118334739#Comment_118334739

All depends on your voltage, acceptable range is 207-253v

And at higher loads the voltage will tend to drop. Sure 80amps at the nominal 230v is 18.4kW but at 207 it's 16.5kW.

That's why it's set in the charge points as amps not kW .

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118087635#Comment_118087635

This thread is really useful and I've gone into the settings and have the battery set up to charge between 4.30am - 6am.

The one thing that's still confusing me is the discharge setting - mine was set to discharge between 8am - 10pm and I have left it at this setting.

I don't understand what the 'self-use logic' is and what difference this would make to the battery discharge times - surely you only want the battery discharging when you are on the day-rate, which is after 8am? Or am I misunderstanding this setting?

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657963#Comment_118657963

If you rarely look or go into those settings you might want to consider changing that discharge time from 8am-10pm. You should change it to 9am-10pm. The reason is, once we go to "summertime" and the hour goes forward night rate time is from midnight -> 9am. So it's like this to be clear.

Winter = 11pm-> 8am

Summer = midnight -> 9am

Otherwise once summer comes you will be discharging your battery when your house could simply take from the grid at night rate. So you'd have put into the battery and taken out (incurring losses) and not benefited.

This maybe a moot point if you don't charge your battery at night time......after the hour goes forward in March, but thought I'd mention it.

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657963#Comment_118657963

I tried the discharge setting one day - but it did not work the way i wanted. It drained the battery 100% over a short period (2 hours i think) even though there was no house load needing it. It might be older firmware - but it didnt offer me the result i wanted - limit the time to day rate only.

Jonathan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657963#Comment_118657963

As @yankinlk says, don't set the discharge period. This is for when you want to discharge the battery at a specific rate during a certain period. Think octopus agile over in UK where you can make a mint exporting at times of very high grid demand.

Just set the charge period and then it will discharge throughout the day according to the demand in the house.

facehugger99

Thanks for the replies - I suppose I should have mentioned that I have geothermal heat pump/underfloor heating set up, so this often runs at night, when it is colder.

So, if I have the battery set to charge up to 6am, and then the heat pump kicks in between 6am and 8am, am I not just draining the power from the battery before I get into the day rate?

I am presuming you don't really want any discharge of the battery until after 8am.

Or should I set it to charge between from 6am to 7.30 am instead and leave the discharge blank as suggested?

Agreed about the discharge. Don't set a time at all. It then discharges when required.

ELCAT2009

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118658443#Comment_118658443

Yes you need to leave the discharge times l at 0. Then set your charge time to end at 8am when night rate finishes. This is because batteries will start to discharge to the house once they stop charging (if there is a load more than solar panels are providing). It also worth checking the clock on your esb meter that the time is correct as I know mine is gradually going out of sync and is now 25mins out. As a result my night rate is effectively from 1125pm to 825am so i set my charging times accordingly.

facehugger99

Checked it this morning and the battery was fully charged by 7am, so I'm going to adjust it to charge between 7.10am and 7.55am - that should stop it from getting right up to 100%.

I'll check the meter clock later.

Completely unrelated question, but does anyone know what the lightbulb symbol represents on the solas unit display? - it doesn't appear on the app.

Jonathan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118661946#Comment_118661946

Why are you charging the battery at 100A? It is easier on the battery to charge at a lower charge rate over a longer period.

The light bulb on the Solis display is the 'critical loads'. This is the load from the EPS or backup socket (if your installer put one in for you).

facehugger99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118662010#Comment_118662010

I'm charging at 50A.

yankinlk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118662120#Comment_118662120

Jonathan beat me to it. What size is your battery? Mine is 5Kw and I charge at 10A from 00:05 to 755am. This gets me roughly 99% - if you want less drop a few amps. Soon i will be lowering the Amps as the springtime arrives - but i will keep the same time.

facehugger99

It's a 4.8KW Dyness - I was going by the suggestion in post 11 to charge at 50A but I'll drop it down a bit and increase the charge time.

I presume setting the charge limit lower only affects charging from the grid and not when the battery is charging from solar?