Excessive trickle import?

appman999 · Sun Aug 24, 2025 4:33 pm

I've noticed that despite running our house off the battery which is generally recharged from our solar we have a trickle import of around 1kWh every day (around 40W load?)

Although small it still amounts to £75-£100 a year.

I'm aware that a small trickle import is required but this seems excessive and is measured both from CT clamps and Octopus billing.

Are there any settings to reduce this or other advice?

Mon Aug 25, 2025 6:32 pm

If you keep the inverter running in Self Use mode it’s quite normal for it to use that amount of power depending on what house load is typically.

If you place the inverter in feed-in mode overnight it will use a little but less, but a new feature was added to the KH and Gen 2 H1 inverters that allows a positive bias ‘grid compensation’ to be set.

This effectively changes the inverter bias point and knowing what your typical trickle is you can compensate for this - it obviously uses power from your batteries, but it will reduce as far as possible the grid import trickle.

You can find more details in this post https://foxesscommunity.com/viewtopic.php?t=1637

appman999 · Mon Aug 25, 2025 8:16 pm

Thanks Dave,
I had seen that post but unfortunately I don't have that inverter.

I can accept a few watts trickle but 40 watts seems a lot.

Over the 10 year life of the battery it comes to about 20% of the installed cost of the battery!

appman999 · Mon Aug 25, 2025 8:39 pm

I tried your suggestion to try feed-in mode overnight which may help.

However in the app I can't set say 18:00 to 06:00, the app says data invalid.

I have to set 18:00 to 23:59 and then 00:00 to 06:00.

Is that how it works or am I missing something?

If I set feed-in overnight does it default to self-use during the day if not specified?

Mon Aug 25, 2025 8:52 pm

Hi,

Good news, If you have a AC1-5.0-E1-G2 as your sig suggests, then you have an inverter capable of doing grid push back.
Your installer needs to update the inverter firmware and then set the grid push setting as shown in my video.

Mon Aug 25, 2025 9:37 pm

appman999 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 25, 2025 8:39 pm I tried your suggestion to try feed-in mode overnight which may help.

However in the app I can't set say 18:00 to 06:00, the app says data invalid.

I have to set 18:00 to 23:59 and then 00:00 to 06:00.

Is that how it works or am I missing something?

If I set feed-in overnight does it default to self-use during the day if not specified?

Yes you can’t set a time that spans midnight so you have to set it as you have with 2 schedules 18:00 to 23:59 and 00:00 to 06:00

appman999 · Mon Aug 25, 2025 9:52 pm

Thanks to both of you for your help.

Vesolc · Wed Aug 27, 2025 7:57 pm

Hi,
new user on this forum here

... nice to see that we have good support.

I have the same issue with tiny not needed import.
Just wondering if my inverter support grid push back option?

Wed Aug 27, 2025 8:47 pm

Yes, a H3 on the latest firmware support grid compensation "push back" but it's an installer only option.

Vesolc wrote: ↑Wed Aug 27, 2025 7:57 pm Hi,
new user on this forum here ... nice to see that we have good support.

I have the same issue with tiny not needed import.
Just wondering if my inverter support grid push back option?

appman999 · Wed Aug 27, 2025 9:23 pm

Will wrote: ↑Mon Aug 25, 2025 8:52 pm Hi,

Good news, If you have a AC1-5.0-E1-G2 as your sig suggests, then you have an inverter capable of doing grid push back.
Your installer needs to update the inverter firmware and then set the grid push setting as shown in my video.

Will
Could you please advise the latest inverter fimware or point where I could find it.

My master, slave and ARM versions are currently 1.35, 1.02 and 1.53 respectively. Are these relevant to firmware?
Trevor