Understanding Scheduler & Work Modes

[hank31980]

Hi there,

I have just had the following equipment installed and from a complete new user point of view trying to quickly master the basics.

14 x Solar Panels (455W each) installed
1 x Fox ESS Hybrid Inverter (6kW) (H1-6.0_E-G2) (master 1.29, slave 1.02, manager 1.44)
5 x Fox Ess ECS4800 batteries installed (firmware 1.11)

I've just joined Octopus Agile, so I've set a Schedules to do the following;

Battery Force-Charge between 01:30 and 05:30 in the morning to load up with low tariff electricity.
Battery Force-Discharge between 16:00 and 22:00 to mainly cover off high tariff times between 16:00 and 19:30 and anything that's left over after that for the house load.

However during the day in the week between these 2 existing time schedules, the Batteries seem to want to Discharge completely at the inverters full 6kW power, which I really don't want.

So for now, as a workaround, I've had to add a 3rd schedule for all other times of the day, ie from 05:32 till 15:58 and set it to Force Discharge, but set the FDMinSOC = 10% and MaxSoc= 10% so it doesn't do anything.

I tried Self-use, thinking that this would mean Solar and Battery power would cover off the 0.5 daytime house load, but to my surprise the Batteries started discharging at full 6kW power!

So I would like to know how to set the schedule so the battery and solar power covers off the 0.5kW standard house load in the weekdays?

[Dave Foster]

During the day between those 2 schedules if you are in self use mode it shouldn't be discharging at 6kW, possible a mistake in CT orientation.

From the V2 app can you swipe left on the main house screen and post the graph at the bottom that shows load and battery soc.

Can you also check what the time is showing on the inverter screen (just in case it's not been set correctly)

[hank31980]

Wasnt sure if i could drop/paste image into message so i attached view of online account activity?

[hank31980]

If you think its a CT direction issue, that is easily changed I guess and then I could test again?

[hank31980]

That change if CT direction has just reversed the Current Flow direction and it now looks like I’m Exporting to the Grid, but I’m not, ie PV production is 0.2kW, house load is 0.7kW and I should be importing 0.5kW from grid but it shows Arrow Flow direction as Exporting, so I’m going to switch that CT back I think.

[Dave Foster]

If you screen shot the phone screen you can then add it as an image here, the app shows the key relationships on one graph (load, grid, battery charge, discharge and solar) you can't see all of those on a single web page graph.

But looking at the trace you posted it is showing a negative load and I wouldn't expect to see that - do you have anything else that is taking load like an EV?

For now rather than switching your CT around - it would be worth turning all of your schedules off and leave your charge period on as a baseline to see how it behaves like that, i.e. when the inverter is set in self-use mode it will cover your house load from batteries (or solar) and not export anything to the grid unless you have excess solar which is unlikely at this time of year - we can then see what the inverter is doing without any other instructions.

Also just to check when you say you are force discharging between 16:00 and 22:00 - the force discharge will empty your batteries at the power you specify (FDPwr) into the grid (less any house load) so even with your 5 batteries fully charged at full power it will export your batteries in just over 3 hours - is that what you intended to do ?

[hank31980]

Well I definitely wanted to cover the Octopus Agile high tariff times of around 16:00 to 19:00 thereabouts, by dumping from Batteries to alleviate Grid Import.

I have now set the Inverter Power discharge down now to 4000W, so its not as fierce a dump of power, the background power drain for the house at this time will be the Heatpump running at around 3.5kW

[Dave Foster]

Well I definitely wanted to cover the Octopus Agile high tariff times of around 16:00 to 19:00 thereabouts, by dumping from Batteries to alleviate Grid Import.

I have now set the Inverter Power discharge down now to 4000W, so its not as fierce a dump of power, the background power drain for the house at this time will be the Heatpump running at around 3.5kW

That’s what I was getting at if the inverter is measuring the load correctly (assuming your CT is the right way round and in the right place) in Self-use mode there won’t be any grid import as it will meet all of the load automatically - force discharge is only used where you want to export back to the grid.

This guide written by Tony might help understanding the various work modes https://github.com/TonyM1958/HA-FoxESS ... Work-Modes

[hank31980]

I’ll take a look at that guide.

Not sure how to paste in screenshots in message body?

Anyway I can see that now my Heatpump is on at 3kW drawing from the grid, I’ve fudged the system so it’s now force discharging at 3kw however Fox App is indicating Load is 6kW, it shows Grid import is 3kw and battery export is 3kw, so something is wrong as I would expect 3kW load and zero power import from Grid

[Dave Foster]

Yes agreed, i’d give your installer a call, it’s possibly just where the CT clamp is located is wrong - you shouldn’t need to force discharge to cover normal loads the inverter does all of that for you if it’s measuring correctly.

[hank31980]

I’ve checked the CT location and I’ve moved it to a different mains cable, I think the one that is actually the Grid Feed cable, I think the installation engineer made a genuine mistake and clamped the wrong cable.

I forced charged the batteries for an hour to 20% then switched Work Mode to Self-use and then could see the Battery power was reacting to the Load and keeping the Grid use to more or less zero kW so I think I now have a chance.

I’ve now hooked up to Octopus Agile, and set Import rate and the Scheduler has populated with Charge times in the middle of the night.

I assume outside of these times it will default to Self-mode and maybe I will have a working system from tomorrow, fingers crossed.

[hank31980]

So looks like the battery stack charged up in the night to full power, via the cheaper tariff times, (Octapus Agile) , and this morning Battery Power is supplying the Electricity Load the house, and it looks like grid import power is just a few Watts, so I guess so far so good.

If we actually get enough light today for PV to generate something it will be interesting to see this power reduce slightly the Battery drain, and then I know I have a working system.


Thanks for the heads up with reference the CT possibly being the issue, now I can start to monitor and assess what's really going on and then can manage the system with a bit more confidence now.

[Dave Foster]

Great, it looks like you’ve got it sorted , that all sounds much better - there’s not much solar around for the next few months but with a clear day you should still at least a few kw’s daily generation.