Very timely video as I'm just adding a battery/inverter to my system. There may be a simpler way to implement your hard wire approach, which I am considering. Simply ask the electrician cut the copper bus bar inside the consumer unit that links the Zappi breaker to the Inverter breaker. Reconnect them with a loop of cable, but run this loop outside the consumer unit, making it possible to fit the Inverter CT.
@@tomasmcguinness And thank you for highlighting the hardware fix. Always better than a software compromise! Reminded me of Boeing's MCAS fix for the short comings of the 737 MAX design. A dreadful, but avoidable, tradegy.
@@19sjaakWent one step further on this by bringing out two series CT loops. This allowed for a solar priority sequence of: house first, then battery, then zappi car charger, and if any energy left over to heat water via immersion. It was getting a little cramped in the consumer unit, so we upgraded to a much larger one with individual RCBO's. System has been working for about 6 months now with no problems or software issues to worry about. Well worth the effort. I think maybe there maybe a market for dedicated solar consumer units like this.
This is what the export margin setting is for. For anyone with this issue, get the installer to set the Export Margin properly before having it rewired. Also make sure your kit has v5 firmware as there was issues with Export Margin on the previous v3 firmware. The rewire trick does work but is more hassle now that firmware has fixed the issue. I had exactly this and was on the beta testing of v5 and it works great now. Depending on your inverter, it can be a bit hit and miss trying to work out what the export margin should be, but start at 50w and increase it until you see the battery not getting drained. For me, I think I settled on 150w on my Victron inverter. You are aiming to get a value as low as possible that the inverter doesnt normally export to before its real excess solar. Inverters will always flip flop a little around the import/export point to some degree, you are trying to find what this usually is with no excess and then set it a little higher on the MyEnergi kit so that it will always wait for that amount of export before starting to take it.
You're right and I did try the export margin, putting it up as high as 150W. It just didn't work for me. Now, V5 has just come out in beta at the time, but I decided to press ahead with a solution I *knew* would work. The obvious downside to the export margin is that you end up exporting power that you might otherwise use. Over the 6 hours or so of surplus I get after my battery is full, that amounts to almost 1kWh. Doesn't seem like a lot, but it adds up over time. It's 4 miles of driving or 26 litres of hot water.
@@tomasmcguinness fair point. How much does it cost to add the extra board and rewire the Zappi/Eddi? And how much export does that equate to? I guess at todays rates it’s offset a lot quicker but at the typical 4p/kWh it would take a while to be offset (export rates will drop along with import rates and already are heading back down) With v5 you shouldn’t need a high an export margin either as the new algorithm does a much better job of tracking the true excess and not reacting to spikes you get on hybrid battery/inverter setups. Would be ideal if all these devices could use a standard to communicate and do away with these workarounds entirely (MODBUS maybe?)
It was £400 to rewire the consumer unit and to add a new supply for the Eddi. The payback will probably be a decade, like the solar panels themselves. My goal is to use all that I generate as I don’t generate that much (30kWh on the best day). You’ve convinced me that I should try the v5 firmware and see if the export margin works. That would be a nice follow-up video I think. As for standards, you’re dead right! It feels like the situation with smart home tech. Each vendor wants to lock you into their eco system. Thankfully that’s starting to change with standards like Matter, but I suspect home utilities have a long way to go!!! Most don’t even offer any form of local control.
Thanks for the excellent explanation, really clear. I am having the same problem with the battery draining during the day as soon as it drops below 100% and the Export Margin part does not apply. The Zappi then draws from my panels and batteries and does not stop. In addition at night, no matter what I do I cannot stop the battery discharging. Sadly I cannot see a way to limit the discharge of my battery through my Deye inverter while the car is charging at cheap times of the night. The firmware update has not solved the problem either. As a result, when I watched your video, I thought it would solve my problem, and it would......but it also nearly made me cry!!! When the installer first set up my zappi, it was put, in error, directly onto the mains and separate to the consumer unit. After many calls with them and myenergi, they came back, realised their error and wired it through the consumer unit. Of course, I now realise that leaving it alone would have solved my battery drain issue!
Agggggg! That's annoying. Have you tried upgrading your Zappi to version 5 of the firmware? I'm told that will resolve most issues with the Export Margin. I'm going to try this on my own setup when I get a chance, just to see how it works.
Nice video. I have the exact same experience. I have export set to 150w and it has been fine most of the time. I've the inverter set to self-consume and once the battery is fully charged, it allows then for the Zappi to run (due to observing export on the grid CT). Once the charge starts with say 2.5Kw of solar from the panels, 2.5Kw of that would be going straight to the car All is fine and works as I would expected. Battery is full at this stage with no discharge. The exact same thing happens that you explained: suddenly a cloud comes over and the solar generated drops, the inverter still thinks the house requires 2.5Kw, so then the inverter starts tapping into the battery to supply that demand. Even though I have export set to 150w, using my shelly EM I see it bounce around. It does try to get back to 150w export, but it is a sea-saw effect. Car charging is steady, but the odd thing is that if the sun is out again after a cloud passing, suddenly the charge is now heading to 3-4Kw. I'm just in this zone where the zappi observes a jump in export and adds that to the demand. I'm sure there is probably some adjustments to make with timings. For the meantime my fix is to set the battery on the solis app to not discharge during the day for a few hours if I have the car plugged in. A bit manual, but besides doing a rewire, it's the only way at the moment for me on a good sunny day to be sure. I may look at something smart with modbus and home assistant, but I suspect the rewire would be the faster approach.
Have you upgraded to the V5 firmware on the Zappi? Some people have commented that the new firmware fixes this issue. V5 was in beta when I was looking at a solution. The reviews of it were terrible at the time. I'm told it's fine now :)
@@tomasmcguinness Yeah I'm on v5 presently. Their latest for both the eddi and zappi. Forgot to say that in my original reply. Mind you I have been having some odd issues with the v5 since the update. Main one that I had a few weeks back was the zappi losing connectivity to the harvi which is less than 10 meters away. A whole system reset did fix that, but I've been dealing with the battery drain since day one. The installer would have wired in the CT to the meter tails, but there is new regulations on what can be installed in the ESB meter cab. I guess main thing is that the car gets charged from some form of free energy.
Ugggg, so it’s not as fixed as they claim. I always figured that the issue wasn’t the Zappi, rather it was the inverter. That seems to remain the case!
Came here for battery drain and multiple CT clamps from different vendor equipment. Straightforward solution and well explained. Perhaps one day we'll have defined standards for Smart meters that extend power control into the home... for now it's RU-vid, Henley blocks and software hacks :o)
Thank you! I think we're in the same place that smart home stuff was about five to ten years ago. It's taken a long time for Matter to emerge and get adopted by the big players. Maybe we'll see something similar in home infrastructure stuff, like EV chargers and batteries.
Did you try adding an extra CT clamp on the output of your inverter/battery so the Eddi and Zappy can monitor it? It will then show up in the myenergi app as a solar/battery device. That may have been a simpler solution than the re-wire. I have the same setup and use two of the wireless harvi CT clamps. One at the smart meter and one at the inverter/battery output.
I did that shortly after installing my Eddi, but it didn’t help. The clamp cannot tell the difference between what’s coming from solar or what’s coming from the battery. It has more accurate information for sure, but battery drain still happened. That’s when I went for the rewire. I didn’t cover that in the video. Probably should have! I guess there are a few different variables at play and the responsiveness of the inverter is one of them. With this change, I won’t have to worry about export margins or anything, so it’s been worth it from that point of view.
I have a Solax inverter and battery. I tried tweaking the export margin, but once it started discharging the battery, nothing stopped it. A feedback loop of sorts!
@@tomasmcguinnessyep we had this - added a harvi (ran out of CT clamp slots) to clamp the battery/inverter output. That appears as a ‘dumb’ battery on the myenergi app and you can set the zappi up to ‘avoid drain’ so it adds that CT clamp to its excess calculations. All seems fine so far.
Thanks for the video .I have the same setup as you ,but I use the battery to smooth out the solar output and keep my car charging , I just monitor the solar output and battery discharge so I can stop the Zappi charging and keep the charge I need in the battery.
@@tomasmcguinness I just set the zappi on ECO and adjust the Tesla charging current up or down as I get more or less Solar ,watch the battery % and stop the zappi as and when needed to preserve the amount of battery I need .
Your solution was exactly the way my electrician put in my zappi. It works perfectly my 4k sola- Solis hybrid inverter and 10kw puredrive batteries run the house and my zappi will use any surplus from the sola and charge from the grid. You have done pretty much exactly the same as me and it works great. I just don't have an Eddi yet but hopefully soon. Thanks for the video it really helped me back up the decision to put in the Henry blocks. Ps: I get the same graph issues the data is pretty much correct but all the colours are wrong.
No, it won’t. The inverter cannot see the load from the Zappi, so it won’t know to discharge the battery. You could set to Eco plus and then force the battery to discharge. The Zappi would see that as a surplus and divert it into the car. Does that help?
That sounds about the same situation I was experiencing, however, I did notice you were charging the car at 3.5kwh but surely the Zappy can deliver 7kwh, why?
Hello Tomas, good solution. Mayby the only issue is that you have to wait the battery 100% charged before having surplus energy available from your panel to load tha car. Sometimes, expecially in winter, this may happen very late consequently you can not load your car early in the morning. Regards, Nicola
That is true of any hybrid inverter I believe. You could turn the charging off or force it to discharge in these instances. For me, I just didn’t want the battery being discharged by the charger. The addition of the Henley block solves that.
Thank you Tom, very helpful, I'm about to get an EV and a Zappi and was trying to figure out a Solution using Solis config only...you can do it that way, but I think I'll go with your option right from install... 😊
....Thanks again Tom, my Zappi install was done as per your video and all works a treat. Quick question: I'm on Octopus Intelligent GO which integrates to the Zappi through the Octopus app. I get charging slots in the Octopus app as soon as I plug the car in. My question is, with surplus solar, given the car is plugged in and the Zappi on Eco+, will it still push the surplus solar in to the car, my point being, will the Octopus app integration cause any issues? 😊
Hi, great explanation of the issue! I have a similar set up: 7kw solar, 5kw solar edge inverter, zappi, eddi and a tesla powerwall 2. I initially had the same issue, but the export limit and setting priority order for surplus solar to: house, eddi, battery, zappi completely solved the issue. The only remaining issue is the frequent stop starting of solar surplus to the car due to british weather. I worry as to what impact this constant charge cycling will have on car battery life and also the wear and tear of constantly stop/starting may have. I intend to solve this by going on to Octopus Flux tariff and charging my car and tesla powerwall only in the 3 hour night window; letting amost other surplus solar go to export. At 20p for export and 18p for import during the night window, this makes financial sense and means my car has a nice, level, regular charge of about 21kwh per night which will cover my 250 mile per week use (car averages 3.1 miles per kwh so needs 70 kwh per week of charge). Hopefully my solution makes sense? I might also flip to octopus go for a few months in winter when solar production crashes and back timo flux in March.
Thank you! That's a good point with the start/stop of the charger. I hadn't really given it much thought. Have you seen any studies or data on the impact of it?
@@tomasmcguinness I haven’t and I can’t find any data, but my one year old 9000 mile BMW iX is in the workshop right now for a warranty repair on a failed charge port. It could be coincidence, but it is a nagging thought that all that stop start and variable charge rates may be a factor here. A switch to octopus flux would allow me to have a fixed charge for 3 hours a night and focus solar on export and then in winter, with no solar, a flip to octopus go would offer the same nighttime charge window for 4 hours.
Interesting about the charge port. We're always told that repeated charging of your phone etc. degrades the battery. I wonder if it's the same for car battery. I moved from Octopus Go to Octopus Intelligence a few months back. You get a longer window and a slightly cheaper rate. Would be worth checking if you can avail of it.
@@tomasmcguinness I looked at octopus intelligent, but did not like the idea of handing over charging control and have concerns that a daytime charge triggered by them would be at the ‘boost’ rate and may take a blend of battery and grid power. I am currently crunching numbers on all 3 options (go, intelligent and flux) as my current ‘go’ tariff ends on 3rd august
With Intelligence (for EVs) you get cheap power between 11:30 and 5:30 regardless. When the car is plugging in, it might get scheduled to charge outside those hours, but that power is off-peak too, so you don't have to worry. People try and trick it by saying they need their car at 100% by 4AM. I've seen examples of them scheduling charges at 9pm and people putting their washing machine on etc. The only downside with solar, is that I need to keep the control turned off most of the time, otherwise it won't charge on surplus solar. They are supposed to have support for the Zappi charger coming soon, but I've been waiting a long time. They do have a new tariff called Intelligent Flux coming soon, which you might be interested in - octopus.energy/press/smarter-cleaner-cheaper-octopus-launches-new-smart-tariff-to-unlock-solar-and-storage/
Hi Tomas, thanks for a great video, I'm currently at the stage where I have the solar, Foxx inverter and home batteries plus an Eddie (with Harri), and using the Export Margin I have managed to balance my house battery drain when heating water. I have just got an EV so am now looking to get a Zappi installed, my hope is I'll be ok using the Export Margin tweak in v5 of the firmware to balance my car charging in the day from solar, the worry that I'm posting about is overnight charging of the EV. I want to be able to charge my car from the grid in my Octopus Go period (4 hours early morning), but I worry that this will start draining the batteries first. So as an example the car will start charging at lets say 3kw at 1am, my inverter will see this as house load and will start draining the batteries instead of letting the Zappi just take from the grid. I have heard that the way to overcome this is to set the house batteries to also charge at the same time, but in my scenario I don't want to charge the house batteries overnight, I want those to be topped up by the sun the next day. Could your rewire (which I could get done when having the Zappi installed) be a solution to this?
I believe it would. As I understand it, it's about the location of the CT clamps. Adding the Henley block, as I did, means that the Inverter never sees the load from the Zappi or Eddi. If you did something similar, the Zappi could be drawing 7kW from the grid and the inverter wouldn't know and therefore wouldn't discharge the battery to meet the demand. You just need to make sure that the Eddi/Zappi clamp sees *all* the load from the grid. You're also right in that it would be difficult to use the house battery to charge your EV. Have a chat with your installer and they should be able to advise you best!
One of the issues your solar+battery setup has is that they share an inverter, which is great for efficiencies, but means that the Zappi has no idea of whether it's the solar panels providing the excess power (Zappi should consume) or the batteries (Zappi should NOT consume). That's the choice you have to accept with a hybrid solution (unless you can somehow monitor the DC power from the batteries to the inverter! ). Also your setup won't allow you to charge your car from banked solar when you come home at night. Of course if you only intend for the batteries to apply your house then this is moot. Great video!
Thanks for watching! I had the Zappi installed before my solar and battery, so the installers probably didn't think about any potential issues with the hybrid inverter. I wasn't really aware of the difference at the time, so had no input. I do have access the inverter's data, so I can see the breakdown of it's output i.e. power from solar and battery's charge/discharge amount, but sadly there is no way to push this into the Zappi. I had some crazy idea about trying to "fake" the battery by simulating a CT clamp, but I've no idea if that could be made to work. I need to understand CT clamps a little bettery And you're right about not being able to charge the car via the battery. That was a conscious decision I made. I believe I could force discharge the battery, but I haven't tried that yet. My inverter software/control is terrible.
We have the same problem. We have 32 solar panels, generating almost 8kW at peak together with 17.7 kWh of battery storage. Looking at page 26 of the Zappi manual, it says that ... "If the property has a static AC battery system installed, it is possible to get the Zappi to work in harmony with the battery system, PROVIDED A CT HAS BEEN INSTALLED to monitor the battery inverter. Then in the Zappi settings, set it to "Avoid Drain' and this should stop the Zappi draining the battery when using surplus power from solar generation. So we are waiting to get another CT installed as described above and then we will see what happens.
If you have a separate inverters for the solar and battery, this would perfectly well, since the Zappi would understand when the battery itself was discharging. As mine is Hybid, it cannot tell the difference between battery power and AC power. I guess Let me know how this works out for you!
Can I ask and apologies if I missed is your battery DC? I am sure my inverter and battery on a different CU what difference if any would this make? I am even happy to have all battery and solar excluded from Zappi as it is a small array. Last still works the same boost charging?
That’s well explained, but is it all really necessary? I’m not quite sure that what I’m experiencing is the same as you. What happens to me is that when the solar dips down below the threshold needed to keep the car charging, the Zappi is being kept going by the battery at a fluctuating rate of about 1.5-2 kw in total (battery plus whatever solar there is). So unless something happens to interrupt the charge (like turning on the kettle) the car continues to charge at this rate indefinitely and eventually the battery would drain. The battery isn’t discharging at its maximum rate though. I don’t think I have this Zappi fix you mention, because I am not seeing a 200 watt export while the car is charging from the solar. There is a small, fluctuating amount of export most of the time, but sometimes it’s zero, and I’ve never seen more than about 80 watts. I mentioned the solution you have adopted to my installer, and he had a different suggestion. As you said, the battery will discharge until it’s at the minimum charge set - yours is at 10%, mine is at 4% by default. But this is user-configurable. My installer advised me simply to set the protected % on the battery much higher to ensure that any excessive drain by the Zappi is stopped before it does any damage. I have settled on protecting 93% (of a 9.5 kwh battery, so about 0.66 kwh), because this seems to be all the system needs to function when there is enough solar around that charging the car is a practical proposition. What happens is that when the sun goes behind a cloud the battery kicks in and keeps the Zappi going at about 1.5-2 kw. This usually tides the charger over until the sun comes back out again. When that happens the charging power picks up and the battery starts to recharge ready for the next cloud. There is even a small bonus. While the inverter caps the generation at its rating (5 kw for mine) when the battery is at 100%, while it’s charging the generation is uncapped. Thus in full sunshine the Zappi can keep going drawing 5 kw while the rest of the generation goes into the battery. I find that 93% is enough to tide the Zappi over for about half an hour. If the sun hasn’t come back out by then the battery stops feeding it, the charge is stopped, and the remaining solar is then diverted to recharging the battery. If the solar then recovers sufficiently the Zappi will start again, but if the clouds have thickened drastically or indeed if it’s the end of the day and the sun is setting, then the charge stops for the day. It usually doesn’t take too long for the battery to recharge as there’s usually about 1 kw solar happening anyway. This way, if you are charging your car direct from the solar, all you have to do is change the % battery that is protected on the inverter settings to your chosen figure (93% for me) in the morning, then forget all about it until evening, then remember to change it back before the house needs to draw more than that to run overnight. There’s no possible way your battery can drain out that way, and the whole system works more efficiently than if the Zappi is constantly turning off and on again every time a cloud passes in front of the sun. Well, it works like a charm for me. I can’t see any downside. Is there some reason that wouldn’t have worked for you?
Hi - thanks for your comments! The answer is no, it's not really necessary, but it has taken away a major irritation and meant that my battery is only being used to supply my house. As you have a Zappi, you should have the export margin, but it's something you need to enable as it's not switched on by default. Once enabled, you can tinker with the export margin too. As for your approach, I can see two downsides. The major downside is the manual intervention is required. I guess it could be automated, but that just introduces more complexity. It would also mean that you might not be able to meet some electrical demands. For example, if we turned on the oven/hob and there wasn't enough solar PV by itself, the battery would start discharging. In your configuration that wouldn't happen if the battery was at 93%. We would end up pulling from the grid, in spite of the fact I have a few kWh in the battery. Here is a useful article from Myenergi on how to setup the export margin - support.myenergi.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4716922623633-Hybrid-PV-Battery-Set-up-Avoid-Draining#:~:text=Set%20the%20Export%20Margin%20to,divert%20power%20to%20the%20car.
@@tomasmcguinness Thanks for your reply. I'll read the article, but I don't think I need to bother as I'm happy with the system as it's working at the moment. You say that "manual intervention is required" but really it's so minimal as to be insignificant. This morning I thought it was so cloudy that the car was unlikely to charge, but I flipped the battery % anyway. Took about ten seconds. Then I went off on my bicycle. When I got home I was surprised to realise the car was charging, and had got nearly 3 kwh despite the dull weather. It charged for nearly three hours, getting almost 6 kwh, before the battery reached 93% and the charge was cut. This is despite the solar fluctuating between about 1 kw and 3 kw the entire time. If the Zappi had stopped every time the solar dipped below 2 kw (which is about what it seems to need to operate without battery support) I'd have got virtually nothing. If I turn on the oven/hob/whatever when this is going on and there isn't enough solar to keep it all going, it doesn't draw from the grid. What happens is that the Zappi stops charging and all the solar becomes available to the house. I suppose if you turned something heavy duty on just at the precise moment the battery hit 93% and it hadn't had a chance to recharge at all, theoretically it's possible, but I've never seen it happen. (The other thing is, the oven isn't going to turn on by itself. If I do decide to cook at lunchtime, which I don't do very often, it's easy enough to check on the situation and alter the inverter setting if necessary.) The main issue is remembering to put the battery % back once the car has stopped charging. I have a post-it on the oven door! It's not the intervention that's the issue, that's literally ten seconds on the phone, it's just remembering to do it. And - we're off again. In the 15 minutes or so it took me to type that (and make a cup of coffee, so the kettle was on), the solar recovered, the battery charged back to 100%, and the car started charging again. The cycle will repeat, depending on the solar available, and the car will get maximum benefit of what's available. As for automation, well, I'm only doing this on the days the car is actually plugged in and likely to charge, and it takes seconds, so I don't see the point. Also, when my G99 FINALLY comes through and I'm getting paid for solar export, I'm probably not going to do this much. Right now I'm doing my damndest to get every watt-hour in to the car that I can rather than export it for nothing, but when I'm getting 15p for export and paying 7p overnight tariff I expect I'll just export the lot and charge overnight. So really not worth £200 to my installer to change the wiring, or even messing around with the Zappi settings. I actually find it *advantageous* to allow the Zappi access to that top 7% of the battery. As I said, it keeps the charge continuous when the solar is fluctuating up and down between 1 kw and 3 kw, which seems to happen rather a lot round here. You get the benefit if it brightens up, then the battery keeps the charge going, then when it brightens up again the charge picks up immediately. I find it really convenient and I really wouldn't want to give that up.
A PS to that post. After the charge re-started it continued as before for more than an hour and a half before the battery fell below 93% again. In total, in these two sessions in pretty dull weather, the car went from 44% to 60% and put on 29 miles of range. I don't believe that could have happened without allowing the battery to support the Zappi. The Zappi would have been on and off half a dozen times as the sun briefly peeked through, and picked up very little charge each time. It's now too late for the charge to start again even if the sky miraculously cleared, so I'll flip the battery back to 4% protected ready for any evening house load. I note that it took just 35 minutes for the battery to be back at 100% after the Zappi stopped charging. I also noticed that I did in fact manage to do what I said hadn't happened. I turned on the kettle just at the moment the battery hit 93% and the solar was quite low. Couldn't have timed it better if I'd tried. There was a total grid import of, wait for it, 0.05 kwh. So yes, it's something to be aware of if I was going to use an appliance that drew a lot of power for more than a minute or so just at the wrong moment, and you may say you don't want to be aware, or change the settings to let the house have more battery when you do that, but I still prefer this to having the Zappi continually cutting in and out on cloudy days. It's quick and easy to change the % on the phone.
I had exactly the same problem, but solved it in a different way. My AC coupled system comprises of a 3.4kw grid tied solar system, a Sofar me3000sp inverter, Pylontech Us3000c batteries, plus a Zappi and an Eddi. After using 50w thresholds described in the My Energy forum, the flip flopping between components fighting for priority was cured but I still had the issue of the Eddi and the Zappi draining my batteries if either of them were set to use the Octopus Go 9.5p Tarriff between 12.30am and 4.30am. Switching off the batteries on nights I wished to charge the car was not a cost effective or convenient solution. I then discovered the time of use mode from RU-vid, especially the one posted by Rural Electric Systems on 1st May 2021. He was using old Sofar Firmware, version 3 hides the"Time Of Use Mode" under an extra "Work Mode Set" menu. He goes through setting manual override timers which are called "rules" . You can force the inverter to manually come out of auto mode and charge the batteries at given times. You can stack up these timers under rule 1, rule 2 etc. Each for various days of the week and months of the year, enabling them to work in conjunction with each other or alone. This functionality is not described in the manual. Other inverters probably have similar functionality, I don't know. Then the penny dropped, if the batteries are charging they can't be discharged! Initially I disregarded this thought as why charge batteries from the grid and potentially waste solar energy during the day? But Time Of Use mode let's you set the charge rate for each rule. I set the timer to switch on and off at Octopus Go times with the SOC (state of charge) set to 100% and a charge rate of only 100w from Jan 1st to Dec 31st. This works perfectly, 100w for 4hrs only costs arround 4p you could set it lower. The only downside is the house runs from the grid during those 4 hours, in my case the house only consumes about 200w at night, costing me arround 8p on the 9.5p Tarriff. I was then left with one unrelated issue that might be worth mentioning and could be limited to my type of Sofar inverter. Ben Allen in Poole who Carrie's out Pylontech repairs thankfully came to the rescue. My Sofar v3 firmware will only discharge the Pylontech batteries to 20% before switching back to the grid. He sent me a link to the setfirelabs.com website that explains in detail how to upgrade the Sofar me3000sp firmware to v3.06 with a link to the file download. This will enable discharge down to 10% for the Pylontech us3000c's which can cope with only 5%, so there is still a margine of safety. Hope this helps someone!
Thanks for sharing that! I had the same problem, which I solved in a similar way, using a long “forced charge” period. Once I had this rewired done, I shortened the force discharge to only 90 minutes, so if the battery has any power, it can continue powering the house during the Octopus Intelligence off-peak period. I also avoid any issues with Octopus charging my car outside the off-peak hours.
I need to read this several times as this is exactly the issue I'm going to suffer. I didn't upgrade the firmware as I head stories of people wrecking the units so never did anything. I'll look into you advice and carefully adopt it . Thanks so much for posting so fully.
Thanks Tomas - a really helpful video and nicely explained! I'm fairly new to all this, and just need a bit of help making sense of all these options! I have 4kW solar pv, an 8.2kW GivEnergy house battery, and a MyEnergi Zappi (v2) which I've just upgraded to v5. I'm a relatively low mileage, infrequent EV user and the house is new, all electric and pretty efficient (ASHP etc), though I don't find I'm exporting all that much overall. I'm thinking of getting onto the Octopus Intelligent tariff, so that I can charge the car at cheap rates overnight on those occasions I need to plug it in. And if the car battery is ever empty, I can usually afford to wait 3 nights to get back to a full charge. I've assumed that in winter, I could set the house battery to charge up from the grid during the off-peak hours (and if necessary set it to only discharge outside these hours), and then plug the car into the zappi on any evening I need some charge, set to add - say - 30% on any night between 2330 and 0530h. And in the summer, presumably set an export margin on the zappi, so I can keep the car plugged in during the day to capture any excess solar. Does all this make sense?! I don't think I need the Intelligent Flux tariff, as with my levels of use, I think any little I lose to the grid through low value export would be more than offset by the advantages of 7.5p/kWh off peak for house and car use. Many thanks, if you or others do have time to offer any comment/advice!
Thank you for watching! I'm an Octopus Intelligence user (I have a Tesla) and I do pretty much exactly what you describe. At present, I charge my battery to 35% during the off-peak and that will increase as we move into the winter months. For my EV, I use the Zappi schedule to turn it on between 11:30pm to 5:30am. Octopus then control when the car actually charges during that period. Whilst it's a very cheap tariff, it just doesn't play very nicely with the Zappi at the moment. There are two issues: Firstly, when you have set to Eco+ to charge from surplus solar during the day, Octopus will actually tell the car *NOT* to charge, since it's outside the off-peak times! I've lost a lot of kWh of milage because I forgot about that. Secondly, if you get an Intelligence charging schedule that includes times outside the normal window, say 10:00pm to 10:30pm or 6:00am to 6:30am, my Zappi won't be turned to FAST, so the car can't charge during those times. This means you might not hit the charge percentage you've asked for. I find that I have to turn off the Octopus Intelligence control 99% of the time. It just gets in the way. You still benefit from the off-peak pricing. When I know I want to charge the car overnight night, I have to switch the control back on and then just use the normal hours, which is far from ideal! Octopus have been promising Zappi integration since the start of the year, but nothing yet :(
@@tomasmcguinness thank you so much - your comments are really helpful! I wasn't sure whether you could switch off the intelligent control, but if so (and still benefit from the cheap rate), then I'm minded to do as you do and work on 'manual' most of the time. Out of interest, couldn't you leave it set to manual (with the zappi schedule active) when you know you want to charge the EV overnight, rather than switch the intelligent control back on? Cheers
I have a zappi and 2 solar inverters and a battery with inverter. I'm experiencing battery drain when octopus intelligent gives me non standard mid afternoon charging slots . I can fix by manually setting new battery charge times but want a better solution. Any ideas
Hi. Sounds like you have an amazing solar setup. As I understand it, it's all about the location of the CT clamps, but in your situation, you must have at least four clamps on your main live/neutral. To prevent the Zappi from discharging the battery, you would need to do like I did and hide the Zappi from the battery. Open a ticket on the Zappi support forum and post the link here. If you could include a simple diagram with your current arrangement and location of the CT clamps, I can have a look!
So my tails go into a Henley block in the meter cabinet and the zappi is taking power from there into a separate consumer unit for the zappi. I’m having solar and battery next month and wonder if this will prevent my zappi from discharging my battery
Yes, that arrangement sounds like what I ended up. The trick is where the inverter’s CT clamp goes. If the CT clamp doesn’t “see” the load from the Zappi, it won’t discharge the battery to feed the Zappi.
Just run a ct around the battery ac wire at the fusebox and connect to a zappi ct terminal, there are 3. Then you can monitor the battery input and choose "avoid drain" on the zappi options.. If you run a cat 5 data cable you'll have 4 twisted pairs to use,
Yeah I’ve just finished commissioning my Victron system I’ve designed it with a Hager split board so just moved the EV circuit grid side and moved the CT for the Victron after the EV circuit and then the EV CT to the grid so it can load balance and grad the solar before the grid gets it after the batteries have charged. Hardwire over software everyday! Ever want a different charger your in the same boat design the system to incorporate all or most scenarios, rather than relying solely on software.
Bugger! I didn't realised I never added it to the description. I've rectified that now - here is the link myenergi.info/dc-coupled-battery-drain-hybrid-inverter-and-zappi-t3397.html
Im looking at a huawei solution for inverter and batteries and with launch of new huawei 7kw charger am i better off to wait to gain from better potential integrations than using seperate manufacturers and trying to come up with workarounds.
I'm not familar with Huawei's stuff, but I would still say that having an integrated solution would be best as it should give you complete control. Recently myenergi launched their Libbi battery and it gives you full control over its charge and discharge behaviour when working with Zappi and Eddi. I would imagine the Huawei would provide similar control. The app looks great!! Of course, if you enjoy building workarounds, cobble something together :) Have a chat with your installer and they should be able to provide you more details and maybe give you a demo?
So you are constantly drawing from the grid for your Zappi, when random cloud cover etc, to charge up your car at a slower rate. You don't want a 100% renewable energy strategy? Wouldn't it be better to get an additional battery and then use more renewable with a faster charge rate?
@sassasins031 yeah. I get 15p for every unit exported and I pay 7.3p to import during the off peak. As the car is under Octopus control, I’m trusting they charge when electricity is as green as possible.
I solved this by writing some software off a Raspberry PI that controls the Zappi, my Tesla M3 and sets the Zappi to Eco mode to only charge when the Tesla Powerwall reaches 98% and stops charging when it gets to 95%. This deals with any fluctuation in use/generation and ensures that the Powerwall is at least at 95% at the end of the solar day. I can then run it in a different mode that sets the Zappi to 7kw between 11:30 and 5:30 (Octopus cheap tariff) and the Powerwall is set to not discharge during these hours. The Raspberry PI is then controlled using a 'front-end' UI off my phone (the RP is programmed using NodeRED). I was doing all of this manually for a long time but decided to set it up this way so that is was easy for the wife to use. It also ensures that I don't export at all during the year (as long as I keep space in the M3 for charging).
I've had this issue as well, the best solution depends on what you want to achieve. If your main aim is to use as much of your solar electricity without exporting then I don't think you need to do this. If you have your Zappi set on eco+ and the batteries set to only discharge during. the day it shouldn't drain the battery but only export excess. In the evening your batteries power your house and then your car can charge at night draining the battery if you want?
You're right, it shouldn't drain the battery when set to eco+. That wasn't my experience :( I'm told that the v5 firmware version resolves most of the battery drain issues by improving the Export Margin, but this way I don't need to reply on the firmware. At the moment, I'm charging the battery up to 35% on the off-peak tariff. This covers the house until the sun comes up and the panels start producing power. The battery then charges, and we use that power at night. I just don't see the benefit of discharging the battery into the car. Either way I'll be paying for that power, so just charging the car from the grid makes the most sense to me.
@@tomasmcguinness yes I understand My perspective is to use as much of the solar ourselves and not export and so I like to make sure that the battery has enough space each day to absorb the solar together with the water heater and the car when I am parked at home some days We’ve been using 84% of our 8kWP system this way and the rest is from the w grid
I added a CT clamp to my inverter, connected to my Eddi. unfortunately, the problem remained. Once the battery started discharging into the car, it didn’t stop.
Hi Tom, great video, you have come to my rescue after being a bit unconvinced by the myenegi solutions. Had my install for a month and have been having the same issues. Does the solution cause any issues with night time scheduled grid charging of either the EV through the Zappi or home batteries through the inverter. Will it restrict any of the charging capacity through the zappi or inverter. New to all this and still in communication with the instllers so hopefully they will sort. Cheers Craig
Hi Craig, Thanks for watching my video. The rewiring doesn't change anything in terms of capacity or scheduled charging. It simply allows me to put the inverter's CT clamp so it ignores the power being used by the Zappi and Eddi. Since making the changes, my battery hasn't discharged unexpectedly and more of the solar power gets put into my hot water and car. When I was using the grid excess setting of 150W, it meant I could lose almost 1kWh of generated solar over 6 hours. I hope your installer can sort this out for you! Tom
Hi - I have a PV solar array installed with Fox Hybrid AC inverter, Fox battery storage, and a Zappi EV charger (V2). Putting the EV charging aside, the system works fine. My system is set with the following priorities (Self-Use): With PV Power: Load>Battery>Grid, Without PV Power: Battery will discharge local loads first, and battery will supply power when the battery capacity is not enough. I can charge the EV fine during the day with any excess generated if I choose, and I can boost charge it if I need to, but my preference is to charge the vehicle during the night on Intelligent Octopus Go's (IO-G) cheap 7.5p tarrif, and export any surplus generated during the day using Outgoing Octopus at 15p. The problem I'm having is when I plug the EV to charge using IO-G overnight, it is first discharging my battery to the minimum discharge level of 20% before topping up my EV from the grid. This isn't great for the health and longevity of the battery. My system installer has swapped the CT positions around to no avail. In my Inverter manual, there is an option to set the mode to 'Force Time Use' with priority: Load>Battery>Grid (when discharging), but in the actual Fox Ap there isn't this option. I've watched your video (great job btw!) but i'm not sure if adding a Henley block to my system will solve my problem as charging overnight on IO-G was not explicitly mentioned. My system is essentially set up as yours was prior to you solving your problem with the Henley block solution. Can you confirm if the Henley Block solution will allow me to charge my EV overnight on IO-G without first draining my battery, or is there something else that can be done with my set-up? Note that my set-up always exports a small nominal amount to the grid even when i'm not generating any excess. Thanks in advance!
Hi, Thanks for getting in touch. I have started working on an updated version of that video, with an animation to try and make it clearer. Essentially, the Henley block stops the Inverter seeing the load from EV charger, so it will never discharge the battery to meet that demand since it never knows about. Since I made this change, my battery has never discharged into the car. It's quite strange to see the excess solar charging the battery, whilst the car is charging from the grid. I use IO-G myself and it works like you describe but remember that IO-G decides when to charge the car. I no longer charge my car using solar excess as it's more financially beneficial to sell at 15p and buy at 7.5p. I have to do my best to avoid plugging the car in when it's really sunny out just to make sure it doesn't charge using excess!! Of course, it plays havoc with any numbers you use get from the inverter e.g. what the inverter thinks it's exporting might actually be going directly into the car (if you're charging from excess for example). I hope that helps. If anything isn't clear, let me know!
Hi, I think the same as you and had the same problem which I overcame by doing the following: I'm sure your inverter app will have something similar, somewhere. ENABLED (within my LUXPOWER phone app) Set the AC Charge Enable to ON Set the Grid Charge Power Rate (%) to 15 Set the AC Charge Start Time 1 to 23:30pm Set the AC Charge End Time 1 to 05:30am This stopped the battery drain for me and the system is now working as I want. I hope this will help you as it has me.
The simplest solution (no software of hardware changes) is to ensure your home battery charges throughout your car charging session. In the summer I set mine to charge at a nominal 200w for six hours. My car is always charged in less than six hours, so no home battery drain.
High Thomas.. sorry Fella but you are to guiet….see how Rosie Barns comes over in you tube, here’s hoping we will see you again with better audio…..Brian
Yeah, I know! I was using my phone microphone and was stood too far away. I’ve since picked up a better microphone and my later videos are much better!
Solax Batteries, when charging the car overnight on GO reduce Solax battery charge to less than 50% if you do not need a battery charge, good for summer in winter battery system charged to 100% works for me as I do have solax master and slave 11.6kwh charge times same for EV on Go Off Peak.
