I have a SolarEdge/LG battery setup that discharges each evening based on a tariff-based (Time of Use) schedule. Although ChargeHQ seems to have some understanding of the batteries’ diagnostics in the configuraiton section, it doesn’t seem to react to the battery discharge/output and never charges from that power. I’m guessing this has to do with my configuration in the app, but I haven’t figured out which setting would allow the car to charge from the battery’s scheduled discharge? Is it the solar vs. solar + grid setting?
Well, good news, bad news on this one. I disconnected and reconnected my home equipment from the app. Not sure if rescanned the equipment (SunRun has put some fixes on my batteries since the last time it was discovered), so now my battery shows up! Very excited about this.
Unfortunately, chargeHQ seems to think that my battery is providing all my power, and no longer seems to accurately report what’s coming in thru the grid anymore.
At 6 pm yesterday, I tried charging ‘via my battery’. I was thrilled to see the app show that my battery was discharging to match my car’s input, but suspicious about the constant 5 kW output ot the ‘house’.
Later, I checked the stats and saw that all the charging that my car did was attributed to the battery:
The green charging that occurred mid-day would’ve absolutely been provided by the grid, as my battery is scheduled to be charging (and not discharging) during those hours.
However, when I checked Edison the next day, it turns out all that power was actually provided by the grid:
Now, in ChargeHQ, it looks like the grid is ‘never’ providing power to my system (all additional supplied power says it comes from the battery), which clearly isn’t the case either.
Hi @kevin . Looking at your data (attached) it appears there is something wrong with the setup of your SolarEdge system or the monitoring data. For many hours the data shows zero power flows, ie no consumption, no battery charge or discharge. Flows only appear during solar production hours. There is also a period each evening which shows a constant battery discharge of 5 kW with matching consumption of exactly 5 kW, which can’t be correct.
How does the data look in your SolarEdge monitoring? Could you post some screenshots of a day or two?
HI @jay - thanks so much for taking a look into it. I’m inclined to agree with you, that the data being gathered makes no sense.
Sadly I’m with SunRun and have no direct access to the solar edge portal, so I think the only way I’ll be able to inspect the data would be to query the API directly and try to figure out what it’s telling me. The SunRun version of the monitoring is even less helpful, but it roughtly reflects what you showed above.
The charts look pretty enough, but the CSV data downloads just don’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t see how 5.0 kW of discharge for 2 hours would get my batteries down to exactly 40% each night. I’d like to ask SunRun about this … but I’m just not sure what direction to point them in.
The SolarEdge API data suggest that your SolarEdge system does not have an energy meter, as it’s only providing solar generation and battery charge / discharge. The grid and load elements are always INACTIVE. Example:
{
"siteCurrentPowerFlow":{
"updateRefreshRate":5,
"unit":"kW",
"connections":[
{
"from":"PV",
"to":"Load"
},
{
"from":"PV",
"to":"Storage"
}
],
"GRID":{
"status":"Inactive"
},
"LOAD":{
"status":"Inactive"
},
"PV":{
"status":"Active",
"currentPower":0.68
},
"STORAGE":{
"status":"Charging",
"currentPower":0.63,
"chargeLevel":38,
"critical":false
}
}
}
Perhaps your setup is unusual and it not designed for self-consumption? Can you explain a bit more about your setup and how the billing works?
@jay - thanks again for taking a look. I would tend to agree with you that something isn’t right. I reached out to customer service last night, which is akin to speaking to a brick wall, and the asnwers were:
- The discharge schedule that you have was set based on your utility company. The battery charges when energy is the least expensive and discharges when it’s the most expensive. The battery will always discharge to 40% or 35%. 20% is reserved for protection in the event of an outage. and
- Your house will run on battery power during the discharge schedule and in the event of a power outage when there is still energy left from your battery.
That definitely wasn’t the case when I charged the car during discharge on Monday, and the discharge ran unaffected (went exactly the same speed and took the exact same amount of time).
What I can’t get my head around is how this all changed this week. Admittedly, in my attempt to get this working better, I removed my solaredge equipment from the configuration and readded it - which was when my battery appeared for the first time ever. (SunRun spent 2 years trying to get my batteries hooked up properly, which might explain why it finally just showed up). But I haven’t had anyone physically touching the system in about 3 months, and after the reconfiguration, you can see that my normal (and expected) nightly “Grid” usage just started logging as “battery” usage.
Hi @kevin . Your stats look different from 19th Nov due to a change in Charge HQ. There is actually no difference in your real power flows - it’s just a reporting thing. Both the old stats and the new stats are not correct for your site, because it’s not possible to know where the charging energy came from when there is no energy meter.
Previously, Charge HQ reported your EV charging energy that was above the solar production as “from grid”, regardless of whether the battery was discharging.
Since Nov 19, Charge HQ now reports your EV charging that was above the solar production as “from battery”, even if the battery is not discharging or is not discharging enough to cover the EV charging. This is because Charge HQ is now assuming your grid import/export is zero, and is calculating consumption. This logic is to handle a recent bug in the SolarEdge API but it doesn’t make sense for your site.
Since the change on Nov 19 Charge HQ thinks that your site has an energy meter, and is showing settings that apply to sites with energy meters, but they won’t work in your case since there isn’t actually an energy meter present.
Your SolarEdge setup, which has a battery but no energy meter, is unusual and isn’t really supported by Charge HQ. Without an energy meter, the solar tracking feature can only track the solar generation - it can not respond to your battery or your household power use.
If you want to use the solar tracking feature, you should change Solar Tracking Reference to Solar Generation instead of Excess Solar, because Charge HQ is calculating your excess solar incorrectly as there is no energy meter. This setting is under Settings → Solar Tracking → Advanced. However, since your battery also appears to charge from (all of) the solar production, this would lead to charging the EV from the grid when the battery is charging, at a rate equal to the solar production.
Unfortunately the solar tracking feature is not really useful for your site, as it relies on data from an energy meter.
Hi @jay . Thanks so much for your detailed response. I’ve made the changes as you suggested, so we’ll see how that helps.
I did reach out to SunRun about the lack of an energy meter, and unsurprisingly, they weren’t much help.
I was curious if you had any idea if one could be added? I see some SolarEdge energy meters online, not sure if they can be ‘bolted’ on like that, or if I’d be better off working outside of the inverter entirly to monitor the system? (Seems like this would all work better if the inverter would just do everything it’s supposed to do).
Hi Kevin. I can’t be certain about adding a meter because I don’t know the details of your setup. However in general, yes, you should be able to add a SolarEdge meter to any SolarEdge system. I have a SolarEdge system with a battery and a meter myself. Yours is the first I’ve seen that has a battery and no meter - I don’t understand why it would be setup that way.
In Australia at least, battery systems are setup to maximise self-consumption, which means that the battery discharges to meet the household load only (not to the grid), and charges from excess solar only (not from the grid). A schedule is not required.
There are exceptions to this eg if the electricity plan has a period with free electricity then a batter may be programmed to charge from the grid during that time. But outside that time it will revert to maximising self-consumption.
If you wanted to use your battery to maximise self consumption then you’d need a SolarEdge meter, not a different brand, as the SolarEdge inverter and battery need to know about the grid flows.
But perhaps your situation is different and there is a good reason why your system has been installed differently?
