FoxESS Community - Owners & Installers Forum

Hello, I’ve recently upgraded my home-brewing system to a boiler with a 2900w element (Grainfather G40). I’m getting very poor heating performance because it appears that the inverter (h1-5–e) is restricting power to the device, in favour of charging batteries and feeding the grid. I didn’t have this issue with a lower powered heating element (2kw). I think the work mode is set to prioritise local devices but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Any ideas?
Also can anyone recommend an installer/service company in the Swindon area? My original supplier went out of business.
Thanks!

On the app, can you post the overview page when you have turned the heating element on (it takes 5 mins sometimes for the app to show it) and if you could swipe left from that page and screen shot the graph at the bottom of the page - just trying to work out what could cause that i.e. battery performance or similar.

Could you also let us know what batteries you have fitted please.

For installers if you have a Facebook account can I suggest you join the community group here https://www.facebook.com/groups/foxessownersgroup as there are a considerable number of users and installers on there and i’m sure someone will be able to help.

As an alternative William Eccles (the founder of this site and the Facebook group) offers services to check and update systems remotely where people have lost their installers - in my view this is really excellent value https://ecclessolar.com/digital-services/ feel free to contact him.

Thanks Dave. 2x H2600s. The older ones I think.
The app screen changes between about 4500w and 400w load. But mostly stays at the lower figure. Even with heating element reporting full power - which should be 2900w. This is a replacement boiler, both had same issue hence why I’m checking the supply. Boiler has a pid controller but I’ve checked and it is requesting 100% power. Have joined FB group. Will try William
Thanks again!

LOL looks like I can only make beer when the sun shines!

Ahh ok, if you only have 2 HV2600 batteries that will be your limiting factor - the 2 batteries will have a typical battery voltage of 102V and the H1 inverter has a maximum charge/discharge current of 30A.

So even on a perfect day with the temperature at 25C the maximum charge / discharge the batteries can provide is 3060 watts (DC), after losses that’s probably around 2800 watts AC that they can support, the rest would have to come from solar or grid - so that’s a yes, definitely make beer when the sun is shining

Thanks. Planning to upgrade batteries but would have expected to be able to make up required power from the grid. Seems like the inverter is saying “Sorry Dave, I can’t do that” and trimming down my power demands. Would not expect this, but really don’t know much about inverters, and it’s not been an issue until now.

If your inverter hasn’t had the firmware kept up to date or the settings regularly checked it’s likely you won’t be getting the best from your system - if you get in touch with Will he can sort all of that and check over your system remotely.

I can see you are using the old Foxcloud app, that app is no longer supported by Fox and the new one is a huge improvement - if you search for Foxcloud2.0 that is the new app and will give you a lot more information - not least the graphs show all the information together to see how load, battery, grid is being used .