FoxESS Community - Owners & Installers Forum

hi,

in winter time I notice that the installation is consuming continuously about 35 watt when there is no sunlight.
With the PV installation producing energy for about 8 hours per day, that leaves a vast majority of the day where the installation is only consuming ... which actually "undoes" the production of the day ...

double question:
1) I guess that energy consumption is normal ? Everything seems to work normally, so I expect no technical issues.
2) Is there a way to actually turn off the battery in the dark period of the year ? (so that the PV installation works "as if" there is no home battery connected ?

rgds, Bert

I don't understand why you think you need to turn your system off. At all times the inverter is on, while there is either (or both) PV or batteries with some charge, the inverter should be powering the house. The grid draw of circa 25W is normal and expected, the inverter, unless exporting, needs to "see" the grid to function. While there is low or no PV, such as winter, you can set your batteries to force charge from the grid if you have a cheap tariff such as an EV or economy 7 then use this stored power to run the house during peak rates, recharging if there's available PV.

I would also like to know if there's some setting to disable the battery.

I live in Belgium and I have a power plan where I have cheaper electricity from 21h till 6h and during the weekend.
So in gray winter weekends, I would like to turn off the battery from giving away it's energy, but still being able to charge from the PV panels if there's excess energy.
This would give me 2 days to top up the battery, so that I can use the battery system again when on Monday.

Bvdstee wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 7:31 pm hi,

in winter time I notice that the installation is consuming continuously about 35 watt when there is no sunlight.
With the PV installation producing energy for about 8 hours per day, that leaves a vast majority of the day where the installation is only consuming ... which actually "undoes" the production of the day ...

double question:
1) I guess that energy consumption is normal ? Everything seems to work normally, so I expect no technical issues.
2) Is there a way to actually turn off the battery in the dark period of the year ? (so that the PV installation works "as if" there is no home battery connected ?

rgds, Bert

1) Yes that energy consumption is normal, depending on the inverter it can take anywhere from 30-100w to stay awake when there is no solar - the idea being that if you have battery storage you might want to take advantage of cheap tariff charging and so the inverter has to stay awake and ready to charge for the set charge time period.

2) You haven't said which battery packs you have (HV, LV, Mira, Cube) but yes if you don't rely on the grid to charge your batteries on a low tariff you can turn off the batteries (Foxess recommend you do this in cold weather), there is no software option you will physically have to turn them off by pressing the power switch and opening the DC breaker on the battery/BMS packs.

Can you please explain item 2 above. I have cube battery and cannot see a power switch

ianrob wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 11:12 am Can you please explain item 2 above. I have cube battery and cannot see a power switch

Hopefully that should help, its on the master module (CM)