Inverter - settings a question

[Wendy Winnard]

I have hybrid inverter, solar panels, batteries, desktop app and shinephone app.

Made mistake of allowing grid to charge batteries to 100% ... during peak time.
Agggh.

Now know how to prevent this BUT

Any ideas on what settings to change on desktop app, to get battery to discharge rather than grid when drawing power when PV not available.

Split from hi-jacked post.

 

[Tomr182]

Ouch!
No expert by any means. Just inquisitive hah

Go into the settings for your inverter on the desktop (scroll down, looks like 3 slide bars in a big round button on the right hand side) and in the settings go to where it says ‘battery first’ if you don’t want any battery charge from grid turn ‘ac charge’ to off.
If you want some, then set ‘ac charge’ to on. Then create your time windows below it and turn each one on or off. With this inverter, one hour will charge c3kwh of your battery. Check the 3 windows below as well as there are 6 windows over 2 sections.

The password is growatt20230424 (if you do it today) it’s always todays date but year month day order.

So figure out how much you want it charged, and then what time of the day.
Mine is set for 6-7am and 2.30-4pm at the moment for my cheap octopus windows. The 6-7am gets me to about 60% as I’m usually carrying charge from previous day and sun is up earlier now too. The later one the battery is normally full from the sun so doesn’t charge from the grid. But at least on a cloudy day, I’ll have enough charge to get me through the expensive 4-7pm on widow.

 

[johnb2713]

New to this Tom and you sound like a seasoned expert!

Have hybrid inverter, solar panels, batteries, desktop app and shinephone app.

Made mistake of allowing grid to charge batteries to 100% ... during peak time.
Agggh.

Now know how to prevent this BUT

Any ideas on what settings to change on desktop app, to get battery to discharge rather than grid when drawing power when PV not available.

If it's not set to AC charge then it should be taking the house load the rest of the time until solar runs out or the batteries are flat, you dont need to anything with the app.

 

[Tomr182]

completely misread the original message.

What John said but if you do want the grid to charge the battery, just change the time to when it’s cheaper and it’ll default to load first when its peak and drain battery instead of grid. Or if sun is out, may even charge battery and run the load off remaining solar.

 

[WendyW]

If it's not set to AC charge then it should be taking the house load the rest of the time until solar runs out or the batteries are flat, you dont need to anything with the app.

Thanks for all your help! Real experts

Now discharge settings.

Ideally I would assume that, if battery has enough charge, power would come from that in preference to the grid.

However do I now need to change discharge settings on the desktop interface? (friendlier than the app)

 

[Tomr182]

If it’s set to load first for all times other than when you’re doing battery first then it should auto drain from battery before the grid. That’s what mine is doing now on that basis.
Just be aware the battery only charges and discharges at 3kwh so if you whack the oven, kettle and iron on at the same time; the battery will max at 3kwh flow and the grid will top it up.

And yes, the desktop is miles easier for settings than the app. I just use the app for monitoring

 

[Wendy Winnard]

If it’s set to load first for all times other than when you’re doing battery first then it should auto drain from battery before the grid. That’s what mine is doing now on that basis.
Just be aware the battery only charges and discharges at 3kwh so if you whack the oven, kettle and iron on at the same time; the battery will max at 3kwh flow and the grid will top it up.

And yes, the desktop is miles easier for settings than the app. I just use the app for monitoring

Great stuff. A real help Tom
Do you set battery first to top up from grid in cheap tariff time and if so have you got screen shot of the desktop settings?

 

[Tomr182]

Yes. I’ll get one for you

 

[Tomr182]

A few…

 

[Wendy Winnard]

Thanks so much Tom

 

[Wendy Winnard]

Thanks so much To

If it's not set to AC charge then it should be taking the house load the rest of the time until solar runs out or the batteries are flat, you dont need to anything with the app.

Thanks so much.
I have many questions but will try these.
Was really frustrated that there was no clearly written manual to explain the apps.
This forum is like goldust.

 

[Tomr182]

I agree completely. I asked the installer and they just said Google it. Thankfully I found this and got a lot of help and a bit of playing about myself to see what happened

 

[johnb2713]

Thanks so much To

Thanks so much.
I have many questions but will try these.
Was really frustrated that there was no clearly written manual to explain the apps.
This forum is like goldust.

Just be aware as mentioned earlier the Growatt inverters are max'd out at 3kW on battery no matter what size you have (mine is an SPH6000 - 6kW but still only 3kW on battery), it's an inverter limitation not the battery.

 

[Wendy Winnard]

Just be aware as mentioned earlier the Growatt inverters are max'd out at 3kW on battery no matter what size you have (mine is an SPH6000 - 6kW but still only 3kW on battery), it's an inverter limitation not the battery.

Called out the installers. They had wired incorrectly!!!!!
Hence battery was never discharging!
Thanks for all your help.

 

[michael8554]

Hi Wendy

Did they explain in what way it was wired incorrectly ?

If the battery was able to be charged, then it should be able to discharge., with the same wiring.

Sounds more like settings to me.

 

[WendyW]

No it was wiring. Battery was neither charging nor discharging. I have piece of wiring he removed.

*project manager not original engineer

 

[michael8554]

Understood, but you said it was charging to 100% during peak hours.

 

[Wendy Winnard]

Understood, but you said it was charging to 100% during peak hours.

That was on force charge from Grid.
Wrong Wiring affected both charge from PV and discharge from bat.

 

[ronholledge]

Ouch!
No expert by any means. Just inquisitive hah

Go into the settings for your inverter on the desktop (scroll down, looks like 3 slide bars in a big round button on the right hand side) and in the settings go to where it says ‘battery first’ if you don’t want any battery charge from grid turn ‘ac charge’ to off.
If you want some, then set ‘ac charge’ to on. Then create your time windows below it and turn each one on or off. With this inverter, one hour will charge c3kwh of your battery. Check the 3 windows below as well as there are 6 windows over 2 sections.

The password is growatt20230424 (if you do it today) it’s always todays date but year month day order.

So figure out how much you want it charged, and then what time of the day.
Mine is set for 6-7am and 2.30-4pm at the moment for my cheap octopus windows. The 6-7am gets me to about 60% as I’m usually carrying charge from previous day and sun is up earlier now too. The later one the battery is normally full from the sun so doesn’t charge from the grid. But at least on a cloudy day, I’ll have enough charge to get me through the expensive 4-7pm on widow.

What APPS DO you us. Looks like you have got it well susse Roy

 

[Badger]

No it was wiring. Battery was neither charging nor discharging. I have piece of wiring he removed.

*project manager not original engineer

was that the can cable that was incorrect?