Grid power usage spike always at sunrise! Using Grid power when not necessary.

jabaroon

Hi all,

I am wondering if you experts can help me explain a power usage pattern that seems to happen every day at sunrise when the solar panels start to generate (I think).

The top graph shows a view from my Growatt data logger dashboard that illustrates that ~0.45kw is imported briefly from the grid at ~4:30am.

The 2nd graph is showing the same time period, but from my MiEnergi dashboard. Strangely, it is showing a steady but tiny trickle of power being imported throughout the night (~0.05kw), jumping to 0.45kw at ~4:30am.

The last snippet is attempting to show what other activity is happening at this time (according to Growatts dashboard). As you can see, PV generation seems to start and as this happens, battery usage is interrupted briefly in favor of grid import. Then a short while later, things revert and the battery runs the load again.

In total, these x2 anomalies account for ~0.9kwh per day. Certainly nothing to get bent out of shape over, but with plenty of battery capacity (SOC typically at ~60+% at 5am), I shouldn't need to import anything at all during the night and certainly cannot explain the brief import spike that happens every morning.

Its also worth noting that once PV ramps up, the MyEnergi dashboard shows nothing being imported from the grid (as expected) and then when PV ramps down later in the day, once again, it shows a constant (tiny) trickle being imported. I get that its a tiny amount of power in the grand scheme of things, but it shouldn't be necessary — I think?

Any ideas?

The Inverter is a Growatt SPH5K.

Cheers,

Jab

graememk

Tiny trickle is somewhat normal with a lot of inverters.

The spike..it's as if the inverter briefly stops.

Is there any schedules happening around that time

jabaroon

Hi Graememk, thanks for the reply.

There is nothing happening at that time of the day. If I look at the rest of the chart lines (not included for brevity), the load is static. The only thing that I could see that was changing around that time was the PV was starting to kick in as the sun rose. Its almost like the inverter sees that the PV might be starting up and goes "Hey lets switch over to PV" and then realizes there isn't enough and then switches back! Very weird!!

With regards to the tiny trickly, I figured that could be the case. But its certainly interesting how the trickle stops once PV generation starts. You would think once there is battery available that it would be equivalent?! (In my simple mind anyway!).