I have a new setup, with a schedule setup to force discharge from 4pm to 9pm (this when I get maximum Feed in Tariff) with the following settings,
Time 16:00 - 21:00
Work Mode Force Discharge
Min SOC on grid 10
Max. SOC 100
Forced discharge cutoff SOC (FDSOC) 30
MAX. AC power for forced discharge (FDPwr) 10000
When I have a cloudy day and no PV production after 4pm my system will discharge to grid and reach the FDSOC of 30% before 9pm, usually around ~ 8.30pm then the system will draw from the grid for 30min up to 9pm and not the battery, after which it will draw from the battery for the rest of the night. On days that I have PV after 4pm it does not become an issue.
So my question is does the schedule (time period) take priority, other than reducing the time period is there a way to make the system draw from the battery when the FDSOC reaches the 30% regardless of the time setting?
Inverter KH9.9
Battery EQ4800
Not sure of your level of technical ability but I've written a python script that will take care of that for me, except it also downloads solar and weather forecasts to try and predict battery charge/discharge/self usage at different times of the day to get the most benefit.
viewtopic.php?t=2855
Also if you're on the same plan as me, 4pm to 9pm is 6c/kWh, but jumps to 15c/kWh for the first 10kWh between 6pm and 8pm.
I'm not sure letting your battery discharging to 10% is the best strategy either, since then you probably have to buy power from the grid at a lot more than you get exporting it.
viewtopic.php?t=2855
Also if you're on the same plan as me, 4pm to 9pm is 6c/kWh, but jumps to 15c/kWh for the first 10kWh between 6pm and 8pm.
I'm not sure letting your battery discharging to 10% is the best strategy either, since then you probably have to buy power from the grid at a lot more than you get exporting it.
Thanks for replying, to be clear I have the grid cut off at 30% so I have enough reserve to cover the night and the next morning, until either the PV starts to charge or the 11am free power kicks in to charge the battery. (Glowbird Zero Hero Plan)
I will take a look at you script.
cheers
I will take a look at you script.
cheers
I missed that bit, I have the same limit and it's mostly working ok except for some reason the air fryer isn't being handled well and the inverter/battery one minute is exporting at 500W+ and the next power is being imported and the smart meter separates the two, but the Fox ESS API seems to combine them.
I'm yet to get a $1/day discount since switching Thursday. Yesterday we imported 300Wh for the 2 hours which is 5x the limit because the inverter/battery doesn't seem to react quickly enough to changing demand and I have no idea what can be done about it.
I'm not sure if other appliances also do the same but very annoying, and costly!
I changed tact yesterday and charged the battery more + we had lots of solar as well and it was full (42kWhrs) at 6pm.evilbunny wrote: ↑Sat Feb 28, 2026 11:31 am I missed that bit, I have the same limit and it's mostly working ok except for some reason the air fryer isn't being handled well and the inverter/battery one minute is exporting at 500W+ and the next power is being imported and the smart meter separates the two, but the Fox ESS API seems to combine them.
I'm yet to get a $1/day discount since switching Thursday. Yesterday we imported 300Wh for the 2 hours which is 5x the limit because the inverter/battery doesn't seem to react quickly enough to changing demand and I have no idea what can be done about it.
I'm not sure if other appliances also do the same but very annoying, and costly!
I then forced discharged the battery at 5kW from 6pm to 9pm and we got the $1/day discount and our electricity bill, including the daily connection fee, for yesterday was -10c
While this strategy will work well in summer I may have to just force discharge at 5kW while using appliances in winter, going to test this theory tonight.
Yes. I got a response from Fox on 26th Feb:
We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.
Our current system logic is indeed designed so that once the FD SOC is reached, the battery stops discharging during the Force Discharge period (especially if the time block is relatively long).
Thank you very much for your feedback. Our project team is actively working to optimise the platform, so that after reaching FD SOC, the system can automatically return to Self-Use mode, maximising self-consumption and overall efficiency.
We truly appreciate your suggestions and will strive to make this feature available as soon as possible.
The trick to over come that limitation is to base the export on time, not battery percentage. You just need to calc how long and at what wattage.alexls wrote: ↑Mon Mar 02, 2026 12:39 pm Yes. I got a response from Fox on 26th Feb:
We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.
Our current system logic is indeed designed so that once the FD SOC is reached, the battery stops discharging during the Force Discharge period (especially if the time block is relatively long).
Thank you very much for your feedback. Our project team is actively working to optimise the platform, so that after reaching FD SOC, the system can automatically return to Self-Use mode, maximising self-consumption and overall efficiency.
We truly appreciate your suggestions and will strive to make this feature available as soon as possible.
if you want to export 10kWhrs over 2 hours set the start/stop time and the FDPWR @ 5000W
Yeah. I can't be bothered doing that. The current functionality makes a 'set and forget' Octopus Flux schedule all but unusable, and it really should not be - especially since it used to work fine before they broke it.
Which is why I wrote a python script to automate it for me, but due to the tariff structure it's a seemingly complex problem to solve by using a schedule.
From 4pm to 9pm you get 6c/kWhr you export to the grid. If you export from 6pm to 8pm you get a bonus 9c on top for the first 10kWhrs. Nothing is paid at all other times for exports to the grid.
You also get free power from the grid between 11am and 2pm.
You get a credit of $1/day for not using more than 60Whrs from the grid also between 6pm and 8pm.
The script so far pulls solar forecasts to attempt to guess how charged the battery will be by 6pm, it also pulls weather forecasts to guess possible air con usage, and so on and so forth.
Also you can't use the solar forecasts for the free period from 11am to 2pm because when the battery is charging any solar produced is also limited by the 5kW inverter limit. That is, it's not 5kW from the grid + solar, it's just 5kW maximum, in hindsight a 6kW inverter would have been better but it is what it is.
So yea a complex beast to try and make sense of since solar can be variable not only season to season but even day to day with cloud coverage etc.
It's not actually that complicated:
It worked fine until Fox changed the logic to ignore MinSOC in schedule periods and broke it all a few weeks ago. If people really want to switch to grid at the end of FD, then they can set MinSOC and FDSoc to the same value and let the rest of us carry on as we were.
It really should be standard functionality and not require people to mess about with modbus and python.