Winter charging strategy: Predbat vs FoxESS Energy Management?
Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2024 1:38 pm
I've got my FoxESS Inverter (with solar + battery) feeding into Home Assistant via a ModBus adapter which is working fine. I'm running on Eon Next Drive tariff which gives me 12-7am cheap rate. Over the summer i've been generating plenty of excess solar during the day and the battery has been sufficient to cover overnight. As a result I've had the system set on a schedule (configured through the FoxESS app directly) to do 'Feed In Priority' during day to sell excess solar and then charge the battery overnight for cheap. So far so good.
However, now winter is approaching, I'm finding I'm using battery more during the day and run out of battery before midnight. Based on this I figure I need to switch to 'Self Use' mode so that on a regular day, any extra solar tops the battery back up first as no point selling it only to have to pay more to buy it back again later in the day.
This lead me to start looking round at Home Assistant based 'smarter' options. I've looked at FoxESS Energy Monitor integration - but from what I can see that just manages how much charge to put into the battery for the next day's usage - and as my usage is quite high we'll always end up using 100% of the battery so this doesn't help me? I assume what I really need here is to setup PredBat which offers more strategy? Can anyone share how they approach this?
However, now winter is approaching, I'm finding I'm using battery more during the day and run out of battery before midnight. Based on this I figure I need to switch to 'Self Use' mode so that on a regular day, any extra solar tops the battery back up first as no point selling it only to have to pay more to buy it back again later in the day.
This lead me to start looking round at Home Assistant based 'smarter' options. I've looked at FoxESS Energy Monitor integration - but from what I can see that just manages how much charge to put into the battery for the next day's usage - and as my usage is quite high we'll always end up using 100% of the battery so this doesn't help me? I assume what I really need here is to setup PredBat which offers more strategy? Can anyone share how they approach this?