Settings for Solis inverter to charge overnight, not drain immediately & preserve some charge for backup

[bignose2]

Hi,
Just installed batteries to my 3.6kw Solis inverter so new to the battery usage. only US5000 at the moment, I know not much.
I have looked at a few video but can't quite work out what I want to do.

I have quite high drain for a lot of the time, when cold, heating etc. so know batteries can't keep up over night & often during a cloudy day. Just trying to mitigate as much as possible.

What I want is.
Charge overnight for E7 00:30 to 4:30. I have set this OK

Most say leave the discharge time but I think I would quite like as..

Don't want to start using/discharge the battery until say 10am.
Basically it would be flat by 6 or 7am, often 5kwh - 10 kwh overnight until the day warms up.

A big part of the reason for batteries is to have backup available for one circuit, office computer etc. if power failure, no matter how rare.

So basically still have a full battery by 10am so hopefully PV will start to top up when needed but also much more chance of plenty of power if case of a grid failure.

I thought I had set the drain time 10am - 8pm last night but it was down to the min 25% by 7am, all used up. fortunately it was used for powering my heating & not to the grid (not sure how to stop that though)

Going to raise the drain limit to 25%, perhaps little more so have 1 to 1.5 kwh if ever power failure. Not yet sure how the backup will work & if allow further drain or if use the 25% for backup or if I will have to change settings during.

Think done most settings correct otherwise, Self use..


Sorry if this info is out there but most seem less demanding

 

[monkey5]

Hi, I think the discharge setting is for sending it back to the grid, for if your on agile tariff etc. I don't have mine set to anything, and the battery is used from 430 onwards. There must be a setting for priority use, not sure where as not needed it, but I contacted solis about something else and they were very helpful so might be worth contacting them and asking how to setup as you want.

 

[bignose2]

Thanks, understand that now,

Little experimenting and realized that my cunning plan has quite a flaw.

I was hoping that mainly for my business, any power failure & the computer, phone system & credit card machine could run for an hour or so, enough time that either power is restored, time to start generators or ideally sunny enough to keep 1kw into the battery which should be enough to last, of course chances are power cut is in the wet & windy weather but you never know.

Anyway, I should have realized that you set the SOC at 30% & it will ALSO not power the backup circuit below the 30%.

In my situation a fair chance not a huge amount or any surplus in the battery a lto of the time.

This is sort of OK but not 100% automatic which is a shame, I think I could show staff how to easily change the SOC to 20% in this event.

I wanted to do the same on my home setup, little more chance of having spare juice in the battery but the inverter is in the loft and not that easily accessible in an emergency power out.

Perhaps there will be a way to do this remotely?



Just at the moment struggling with the backup circuit, still testing but as only 20% in the battery limited testing ability.

The backup circuit is fine when inverter ON, 238v, L & N all correct & Earth is separate (TT rod anyway) & OK.
Isolated the power to the inverter using the DP switch, I assume imitating power failure, and get 240v L to N but getting an earth fault, which makes sense, the earth has no way back to the inverter.
Just started so will investigate.

 

[monkey5]

There is a way to change settings remotely but you need to ask solis to allow you to do it before it will work, I only found out a few weeks ago from another member on the forum, but has been useful as I don't have to go in the loft to stop batteries charging if the weather is going to be great the next day or vice versa.
https://solis-service.solisinverter...02373796-inverter-remote-control-application?

 

[monkey5]

Hi @bignose2, I may have inadvertently discovered a way to stop the battery being used till the time you want. Basically I've not needed to charge my batteries up overnight due to the good weather, so I changed the charge amount to 0A but kept the times 1230 - 430 in place and even though the batteries aren't charging I'm using power from the grid at them times.
So what I'm thinking might work for you is
Set the charging times 1230am-430am as you have (eg 50A) then on one of the other charge times (I have 3 available) set from 430am - 10am but leave the charging current on 0A
Then the battery will start to discharge from
10am,
I've not tried this scenario but could work.
Let us know.