Hi, all. I have..
2x Fox 5kWH batteries
7kW peak in PV panels; facing East
Fox 7kW inverter
I have been trying everything I know to setup a summertime regime whereby the sun comes up at 5-6am, batteries are fully charged by 7am and are thereafter just exporting all surplus to the grid. I'm on Octopus so between 4pm and 7pm I can export at peak rate. However, the sun is in the West then and my generation is low. Knowing that at 7am the following day the sun will be charging the battery again with vigour, I want to be able to set the system to force export/feed-in from 16:00 - 19:00 down to about 50% battery to get me through the night.
Despite all of my best efforts using the FOX Cloud 2.0 mobile app and/or the FOX ESS Cloud website, the system still fails to export and keeps the battery at 100% into the evening.
The settings I setup in Mode Scheduler (says 'Enable' are:
- Start = 16:00
- End = 19:00
- Work Mode = Force Discharge
- Min SOC on grid = 50%
- Max SoC = 100%
- Forced discharge cutoff soc = 50%
- MAX C power for forced discharge = 500W
It saves OK and has the enabled switch on green, but it just ignores this and when 16:00 comes around the following day it stays at 100% battery.
Can anyone advise, please? Have I got any of these settings wrong? MY installer has done a firmware update but has since gone silent.
Many thanks in advance.
Is your FDPwr really set to 500W or is that a typo ?
The FDPwr setting is the max power the inverter will discharge at but this takes into account house load so for example if your house load was 500W or greater it wouldn’t force discharge at all - you should really set that to your inverters max power 5000W
The other thing to check is that you have no schedules before this that end at 16:00 - schedules start at xx:xx:00 but end at xx:xx:59 so if you have a previous schedule that ends at 16:00(:59) it could overwrite the next schedule. i.e. you would end the previous at 15:59 and the force discharge schedule at 18:59.
The FDPwr setting is the max power the inverter will discharge at but this takes into account house load so for example if your house load was 500W or greater it wouldn’t force discharge at all - you should really set that to your inverters max power 5000W
The other thing to check is that you have no schedules before this that end at 16:00 - schedules start at xx:xx:00 but end at xx:xx:59 so if you have a previous schedule that ends at 16:00(:59) it could overwrite the next schedule. i.e. you would end the previous at 15:59 and the force discharge schedule at 18:59.
Many thanks, Dave. Co-incidentally FOX did reply back to me with exactly the same advice and had set this remotely for me earlier this morning. My mis-understanding as I thought the 500W was the max amount to discharge to the grid ABOVE any other house demand. So I thought 500W between 16:00 and 19:00 would be ~1.5kWh and that would be great to try it out.
I haven't got any other schedules that would affect it.
I did get a strange symptom though, well two actually.
1) I have an EDDI current diverter. When the system tried to force-discharge at 16:00 the EDDI seemed to say "that's surplus. thank you very much, I'll grab all of that to heat your water". Not ideal. I've written back to both FOX and MyEnergi to see what ways around this could be, other than using the app to turn the EDDI off and on each day around these times.
2) My system is set to 'Battery reserve capacity = 50%'. Hence, once the system force-discharged down to 50% (and the EDDI grabbed it all) the battery now refuses to give out any more and so I'm running off the grid with 5kWh still left in my battery that it's hanging on to. I've tried dropping that but I keep getting the frustratingly usual and unhelpful “Code:44096, Unsupported Function code” error message and it ignores the request. This too is on the e-mail to FOX
If you, or anyone else, could offer any advice it would be most appreciated, please. Many thanks.
I haven't got any other schedules that would affect it.
I did get a strange symptom though, well two actually.
1) I have an EDDI current diverter. When the system tried to force-discharge at 16:00 the EDDI seemed to say "that's surplus. thank you very much, I'll grab all of that to heat your water". Not ideal. I've written back to both FOX and MyEnergi to see what ways around this could be, other than using the app to turn the EDDI off and on each day around these times.
2) My system is set to 'Battery reserve capacity = 50%'. Hence, once the system force-discharged down to 50% (and the EDDI grabbed it all) the battery now refuses to give out any more and so I'm running off the grid with 5kWh still left in my battery that it's hanging on to. I've tried dropping that but I keep getting the frustratingly usual and unhelpful “Code:44096, Unsupported Function code” error message and it ignores the request. This too is on the e-mail to FOX
If you, or anyone else, could offer any advice it would be most appreciated, please. Many thanks.
On the EDDI there isn’t an easy fix as it will see the export and turn on, you can disable it during the Flux period or it’s also possible to set a higher ‘export margin’ in the EDDI/Zappi settings so that it doesn’t switch on until it exceeds this value.
I also have an EDDI and use home assistant to disable it when I force discharge, but now that the amount we get paid for export has improved, I have changed my export limit to 4000 watts so that the majority of my export goes to grid and use the low overnight tariff to heat my water, charge my EV.
On you MinSoC problem, the unfriendly message you are getting ‘44096…’ actually means it won’t let you set it because you have schedules enabled.
Looking at your force discharge schedule, change the minSoC setting to 10% (but leave FDSoC at 50%) that will do exactly what it does now i.e. discharge until the battery is at 50% SoC, but the minSoC will be returned to 10% once it has completed the schedule.
When you change the minSoC setting in a schedule it endures after the end of a schedule and so if you do change it you need to set a schedule afterwards to set it back to your default setting - it only needs to be a something simple like set workmode to self-use with a minsoc of 10% for 10 minutes to do it. But in your case FDSoC (Force Discharge minimums SoC) will do exactly what you want and so you can leave you minSoC setting set to your normal default.
I also have an EDDI and use home assistant to disable it when I force discharge, but now that the amount we get paid for export has improved, I have changed my export limit to 4000 watts so that the majority of my export goes to grid and use the low overnight tariff to heat my water, charge my EV.
On you MinSoC problem, the unfriendly message you are getting ‘44096…’ actually means it won’t let you set it because you have schedules enabled.
Looking at your force discharge schedule, change the minSoC setting to 10% (but leave FDSoC at 50%) that will do exactly what it does now i.e. discharge until the battery is at 50% SoC, but the minSoC will be returned to 10% once it has completed the schedule.
When you change the minSoC setting in a schedule it endures after the end of a schedule and so if you do change it you need to set a schedule afterwards to set it back to your default setting - it only needs to be a something simple like set workmode to self-use with a minsoc of 10% for 10 minutes to do it. But in your case FDSoC (Force Discharge minimums SoC) will do exactly what you want and so you can leave you minSoC setting set to your normal default.