New EVO 10-5-H only charging at 1.6

[elljay]

Hi! I just had an ESS EVO 10-5-H installed.

I set up a schedule to charge overnight during Octopus IOG's cheap rate, but to start with it wasn't charging at all. Waking up in the middle of the night as you do I realised the problem was that I'd set "Min. SOC on grid" to 5%, so I changed it to 98. (This setting doesn't appear to be available through the app interface, but that's a different issue...) The schedule now looks like:



The next issue is that the battery only charged at about 1.6kW (between 4am and 5:30am):



The Import limit doesn't seem to be the issue:



Any ideas why it's charging that slowly and how to increase the rate? It wasn't below 5C last night... Thanks

[Dave Foster]

Your post is missing the schedules, could you try re-attaching them please.

I’m confused about what you said about the minsoc on grid, that would normally be left set the same as minsoc (or a bit higher if you want to keep some battery reserver) - if you lift it to 98%, the batteries will charge but only at a slow rate - that could be the reason for the 1.6kw charge rate.

[elljay]

Thanks for the quick reply. I set the schedules up yesterday through the web interface - which is the top picture:



Originally the "Min. SOC on grid" defaulted to 5%, but when I looked during the early hours the battery wasn't charging at all so I changed it to 98% and that started the battery charging! I'm not really sure what the setting means. I Googled it but didn't find anything useful. The other fields are obvious... I'm guessing it means if the SoC is above that level then stop charging? The value it's set to becomes the minimum value for the FCSOC field, so the two are connected in some way...

Today I deleted all the schedules in case that might help and recreated them using the app interface. On the app there isn't a field for "Min. SOC on grid".

Also realised I didn't need the schedules for the two self-use slots as that's the default so I didn't recreate those.

These are the current schedules viewed on the app:



And on the web:



And this is the detail of a Force Charge slot on the web:



To be honest I can't remember if I changed the "Min. SOC on grid setting", but it looks like I probably did because the other Force Charge slot is showing 10% for Min. SOC on grid.

[elljay]

I just created a new Force Charge slot through the app:



And this is how it looks on the web:



So it looks like Min. SOC on grid defaults to 10%.

[Dave Foster]

The force charge between 00:00-05:29 should have the min soc set to 10%, the fact that it’s at 98% will force the battery to slow charge.

Minsoc on grid has been renamed several times by Fox (aka battery reserve) and is now just called Minsoc - it’s basically the point at which the system will allow discharge to whilst it’s on grid and is usually left set at 10%.

But from what you’ve said the million dollar question is will it charge at all when it’s like that - now you’ve deleted them all and re-created them on the web, hopefully they should function correctly but worth trying a test period for now with your force charge settings and making sure it’s ok.

There was an EVO user recently who had part signed up to Intelligent Octopus Flux and that had taken control and stopped the charging irrespective of what was requested - so just checking you’ve not got any 3rd party control on your inverter have you ?.

[elljay]

Ah ok, that makes sense about what Min SOC on Grid means.

So I went to create a short Force Charge window and discovered that the battery had been charging at just over 1kW since 19:00 when the previous schedule had expired, despite the "Remaining Time Slots" being set to Self-use!!! SoC has gone from 12% to 19% at peak rate...

Anyway, I created a three minute Force charge with the settings you suggested and the battery stopped charging during that period! (Maybe three minutes wasn't enough??)

(Also created a Self-use slot until 23:30 to stop the battery charging during peak rate!)

I'm currently on IOG and Outgoing. Have asked Octopus to move me to Agile Outgoing, but I've never been on IOF.

So - no charging when it's told to Force Charge and charges at ~1kW when there's no schedule set. Confused you will be!! Any ideas what to try next?

[elljay]

[Dave Foster]

Hmm ok, not sure why it doesn’t charge using standard force settings, I think the best course here is to raise a ticket on Fox and get them to investigate that, quite a few possible settings that could be wrong but you need installer access to check those.

In the meantime, it would seem that raising your minsoc does allow charge (albeit at a reduced level), and so until Fox can assess your system i’d go with what you had before either a schedule for the period using either workmode as self use or a force charge but set the minsoc to 100%

[elljay]

Thanks, will give that a go. I'll give the installer a call first thing on Monday!