FoxESS Community - Owners & Installers Forum

My Ohme ePod is draining my solar battery, and despite logic within Home Assistant to try and prevent this, I'm struggling.

I found this recommendation
at https://fox-ess.tech/community/main-for ... hatgpt.com

But why does it require/suggest two Henley blocks?

I'm trying to enable my EV Charger to function using Solar benefits (excess export etc), but not drain the house battery. A common task, asked in 11897 different ways, I know and appreciate.

I have Solar, with Fox 7kW HYBRID inverter and Fox EP11 10kWh battery.

You should be able to use HA logic to do it but it helps a lot if you have a shelly CT clamp fitted to the live feed to the EV charger, that way you have an absolute real time indication that it is charging.

But back to your question, you would expect every single phase hybrid to have the first henley block where the inverter and house load are connected, that is usually just after the live feed from the smart meter.

To have the EV charger ‘upstream’ of the inverter / house load so that it is not seen by the inverter you need to fit another henley block between the first and second henley blocks and the EV charger splits off there. That way the EV charger is in front of the inverter/house and it will not discharge your home battery, but the EV charger will be able to see any excess solar and use it.

If I can do it with a Shelly EM CT Clamp, I can probably DIY this and it would be cheaper than the Henley approach etc. The question is, will it definitely work?

Currently, with HA logic, if the Ohme calls for charge during Solar Excess, or IOG rates drop during the day allowing cheap charge, the battery gets set to 0A discharge and my whole house load ends up coming from grid. This feels wrong/expensive way of doing it.

I had Octopus IOG and HA, using bottlecap Dave's Octopus add-on it was simple.
You have an automation setup to charge the battery at the same time as your EV (very useful in Winter)

Can you not just use this?

MaterialBarracuda48 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2026 5:52 pm I had Octopus IOG and HA, using bottlecap Dave's Octopus add-on it was simple.
You have an automation setup to charge the battery at the same time as your EV (very useful in Winter)

Can you not just use this?

I don’t get this? Maybe I’ve described my issue badly. The issue isnt charging, but discharging.

I don’t want the car to discharge my battery. I’ve got no issues charging as such.

By forcing a change of your battery, it stops the system draining of course.
It's actually a benefit to charge it on the cheap rate.

Just depends on your PoV of course.

Import at 3.5p kWh (7-9p now) vs. export at 12p it is cheaper to run your system this way.

MaterialBarracuda48 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2026 6:45 pm By forcing a change of your battery, it stops the system draining of course.
It's actually a benefit to charge it on the cheap rate.

Just depends on your PoV of course.

Import at 3.5p kWh (7-9p now) vs. export at 12p it is cheaper to run your system this way.

My issue isn't at all with charging. I'm fine with charging my battery (both EV and Fox).

My issue is that if I connect my EV during the day, it is seen as normal load, and quickly drains the Fox Battery, resulting in expensive grid import (if the battery fully drains/solar is poor).

My desire is to have the EV load not visible to the Solar Battery, at all.

What @MB is alluding to is that most people charge the home battery to stop it discharging because the EV tariffs vs Export tariff make it the most commercially economic way to do it.

You don’t have to charge at high power, instead of setting the discharge current to 0A, you could set minsoc to 100% and the batteries will charge at 5A (depends on battery volts but typically ~1kW)

The Shelly CT is just a way of detecting EV charge instantaneously rather than waiting for the tariff to change which is not the quickest or most reliable method.

But from what you have said if your objective is to power the house from solar/batteries and the EV only from grid import/solar the only option for that is to move the EV charger connection in front of the inverter/house load as per your original diagram.

This’ll do it… yeah?

The only grey area there is where the inverter isolator joins the consumer unit, the ideal approach is as your first drawing i.e the consumer unit feed would be split before the consumer unit and the inverter connected there.

The issue with inverters being connected within a consumer unit is that depending on how it is wired, you can have voltages present on the busbar and the house circuits even when the consumer unit isolator is open.
Clearly there would need to be ‘Dual Supply’ Solar PV labels that warn that both supplies have to be isolated before any work is carried out but a significant risk exists.