Force discharge setting overrides battery

[Kipplekat]

Quick question regarding how to correctly configure force discharge slots. We have peak rate between 4pm-7pm so when we have a good day of solar like today we want to discharge our battery on a schedule like today so that it discharges down to a certain percentage. We tested it by setting it to 61%.

The excess power went to the grid which was great, but once the battery was at 61%, instead of discharging to the house it went into standby and we drew electric from the grid at peak price. Is there any way to configure the logic so it understands once this discharge to the grid level is met that it should then discharge the rest to the house?

We’ve disabled the discharge to grid for now until we understand how to configure it correctly.

[evilbunny]

I'm currently testing a python script I'm writing using @TonyM1958 FoxESS-Cloud python library

What I've come up with so far works out the amount of surplus power and then calcs how many watts to discharge at during the peak export period not the battery percentage because I hit the same limitation you did.

I also set it to not bother unless the export wattage exceeds house load so I don't get a nasty surprise that way either.

Still working on my script but once I'm happy with the results I'll publish it on my GitHub repo.

[GregHoward]

Fox ESS need to urgently fix this, in Australia it's costing lots of people with Globird money every day. I've emailed Au support 5 days ago without any reply other than the auto reply that says they will reply within 24 hours??

[Kipplekat]

Is it by design or an actual bug? I’m manually discharging and then switching it off now to prevent drawing from the grid

[evilbunny]

Is it by design or an actual bug? I’m manually discharging and then switching it off now to prevent drawing from the grid

Most likely over looked, I've not heard of anywhere in the world but Australia getting free power due to so many rooftop solar systems installed.

As I wrote above, use time + watts to work round the lack of a better solution for now.

The script I've written downloads hourly forecasts from BoM to guesstimate air con usage between 2pm and when solar drops off, which was about 5:30pm today but it's a moving target so fun and games getting my head round such a complex beast.

[evilbunny]

Fox ESS need to urgently fix this, in Australia it's costing lots of people with Globird money every day. I've emailed Au support 5 days ago without any reply other than the auto reply that says they will reply within 24 hours??

Would have been more productive banging your head against a brick wall, they never answer the phone either.

[GregHoward]

Agree, they need to get on top of the support. Any reply is better than none. But if your going to sell a product into a country then you need to work with the countries conditions. I would think it's an easy fix to coordinate turning off discharge with the end time & the maximum battery %

[evilbunny]

Agree, they need to get on top of the support. Any reply is better than none. But if your going to sell a product into a country then you need to work with the countries conditions. I would think it's an easy fix to coordinate turning off discharge with the end time & the maximum battery %

That will take time to dev and then test etc

Even if they come up with something that can do self use after hitting a SOC the reason I'm writing a python script is to go a step further by also using weather and solar forecasts among other things to maximise battery life, not too much, not too little kind of thing.

[alexls]

Is it by design or an actual bug? I’m manually discharging and then switching it off now to prevent drawing from the grid

I think it's (another) bug in the new app. AFAIK it used to discharge down to Force Discharge SOC, and then would perform normally down to Min Soc.
I saw this same behaviour yesterday though - it discharged down to 40% (FD SOC) and then started drawing from grid even though my MinSoc was 10%. Fortunately I was keeping an eye on it and so updated work mode to Self Use.

[GregHoward]

I have a feeling the old app was the same? but not 100% sure as I only used it for about 2 weeks before the new one was released

[alexls]

It used to work. Otherwise Octopus Flux would be pretty much useless for any Fox customers.

See

[Kipplekat]

Does my installer need to raise a bug or do fox review this forum?

[B16YUG]

I'm experiencing exactly the same problem on this new firmware on both my installations - I'm 100% certain it used to discharge to the SOC value and then resort to self use / e.g. run the property from battery.

I'm trying to raise a support ticket myself but haven't got the email confirmation to do so yet (asked for it at 5:30pm - now 20:30 and nothing in junk.... maybe that part of the system is buggy too!
Wish i hadn't upgraded the firmware now!

[alexls]

Additionally, tried a standard 'don't discharge' eariler. This is where I want the load powered from solar first, then excess from grid without using the battery. MinSOC and FDSOC set to 10%, MaxSOC 100%, FD power 0W.
This definitely used to work, but today it basically just turned solar off. All load came from grid, with 0W solar even though it should have been around 1kW at the time - which is what I got when I disabled the scheduler again.
So they've really screwed something up somewhere.

[evilbunny]

Additionally, tried a standard 'don't discharge' eariler. This is where I want the load powered from solar first, then excess from grid without using the battery. MinSOC and FDSOC set to 10%, MaxSOC 100%, FD power 0W.
This definitely used to work, but today it basically just turned solar off. All load came from grid, with 0W solar even though it should have been around 1kW at the time - which is what I got when I disabled the scheduler again.
So they've really screwed something up somewhere.

I set mine to 1W yesterday between 11am and 2pm and the battery charged from solar + 1W from the grid and everything else including the hot water system pulled power from the grid as well.

I also noticed when getting the schedules from the API it has solar limits shown not just grid limits.

Code: Select all

             {'enable': 1,
              'endHour': 13,
              'endMinute': 58,
              'extraParam': {'exportLimit': 100000.0,
                             'fdPwr': 1.0,
                             'fdSoc': 80.0,
                             'importLimit': 100000.0,
                             'maxSoc': 100.0,
                             'minSocOnGrid': 30.0,
                             'pvLimit': 20000.0,
                             'reactivePower': 0.0},
              'startHour': 11,
              'startMinute': 1,
              'workMode': 'ForceCharge'},

[alexls]

Just came across this:
https://github.com/TonyM1958/FoxESS-Clo ... Fox-App-v2

Discharge Cut-off SOC: sets the battery SoC where discharging should stop. On newer inverters, battery discharge will stop when the SoC falls to this level and the house load will be met from the grid for the remainder of the time. On older inverters, the system will revert to self use mode and the battery will supply the house load until Min SoC.

I now realise (from that page, and the lack of a setting in the app even though it's there in the web interface) it's because they don't even look at MinSOC in the FD schedule. So that renders Flux unusable on 'newer inverters' then. Who on earth made that decision?