FoxESS Community - Owners & Installers Forum

I frequently qualify for free electricity on a Sunday for a number of hours with EDF and to make the most of it, take the opportunity to do the jobs that use most - hoover, washing machine, tumble dryer etc.

Can anyone suggest what work mode and settings I should use to stop using the electricity I am generating for these tasks and instead draw from the grid? Ideally I want to be selling what I'm producing at the same time as using the free electricity. Is it even possible?

Unless you turn off your PV, not a lot you can really do.
The PV is 'free' as is the grid, so it doesn't really make much difference to your pocket.

My energy retailer provides 3 hours of free electricity every day between 11am and 2pm. I have my inverter set to force charge from the grid during these times. What happens is that all the available PV is used to charge the battery and the grid is used to bring the total charging power up to the maximum. For example if I'm getting 3kW from PV, I'll use 8kW from grid to charge the battery at the maximum 11kW. The most the inverter will use from the grid for charging the battery is 10kW. During this forced charge period any additional load from the house is also supplied from the grid. In the above example if my house load was 4kW, I would actually draw 12kW from the grid, 4kW going to the house and 8kW to the battery. I try to charge my EV during this free electricity period to maximise the benefit.
So absolutely yes you can do what you want using force charge with the "charge from the grid" enabled.

For single phase power, it is not possible to charge from the grid or supply your house load from the grid at the same time as feeding in your PV. At any time you either import or export. Can't do both at the same time. All you could do is charge during the free period and then at the end of that time do a force discharge at the maximum rate.
However the inverter is not smart enough to know how much PV you stored in the battery during the free period and only export that much. The only settings you have is how long to force discharge for and at what rate.
With 3 phase power technically there may be a way to do it as one phase can export while the another imports. Not sure if the 3 phase inverters have that ability though.