ESS is feeding back to the grid and working fine but is still charging the batteries from the grid when there ain't enough solarpower. I want it to charge the batteries only in the night from the grid by scheduled charging and by daytime only with the mppt and not from the grid. When i set the multiplus in invertmode the grid gets lost and the feedin surplus solarpower stops feeding the grid. How can i setup ESS that it does what i want? Thanks in advance
Hi
You need to set up scheduled charging hours to do that. it is under the ESS settings page.
You can set it up to use no power from the grid to charge the batteries only from solar power not the grid and supply the house at night and not use the grid.
Regards
Rob D
NZ
Hello Rob,
Thanks but in my case with the latest updates installed i do not have such options in the ESS Scheduled Charge menu.
What i have is in the picture below and nothing more. 
Also within the scheduled hours the batteries stay charged from the grid when the soc of 95 is reached. It really doesn't matter. The only thing which changes is the title of the MultiPlus from 'Float' to 'Sched charge'
In the daytime when there is enough day/sunlight the feed in of the surplus solar power starts
but when there is not enough sunlight the charging power for the batteries comes from the grid again. I like to stop that and only charge from the grid in the scheduled hours..
Hi
What assistants have you installed in the mulitplus unit? and what are the settings?
You might have storage mode checked in the ESS assistants which keeps battery charged regardless, uncheck and it wont use the grids at all to charge the battery.
Regards
Rob D
NZ
Hi Rob,
Nope no storage mode in the MP. I have the ESS assistant enabled. ESS is working fine though.
In the meantime i have been fiddling with the schedule settings and made a second schedule 
I also changed the grid setpoint to 10 watts. I now see the gridwattage is going down. Not yet 10 watts but steadily going down. I also see the voltage of the batteries drop to the installed 27 volt in de Multiplus via veconfigure. That is what i want but because the grid was always charging it was 27.6 volt.
I think that the new gridpoint settings are actually doing the job and not the new schedule. Or perhaps both. I do not know for sure.
If the voltage of the batteries go under the 27 volt i will set the gridpoint higher in wattage.
For now i will see what happens if the MPPT kicks in. Prolly not today in high yields because it's gonna be cloudy today and the next days also. But it should do something. Let's see :)
Thanks.
The voltage of the batteries did drop below 27 volt so i increased the wattage of the gridpoint to 30 watts. Below my ESS settings.
I seem to get it now. You can manage the desired voltage with the gridpoint setting and you don't need another schedule then the night schedule. If there ain't enough solarpower the gridpoint is there to float the batteries and when there is enough pv power the MPPT takes over and will feed in when there is a surplus. Thanks anyway Rob for pointing me out into the directions.
In fact i do now beleave you don't need a schedule at all. I raised the gridpoint to 50 watts and it brings the battery voltage to the desired 27 volts. If the MPPT has enough pv power it will feed in the surplus. That's all that i wanted. It's not desirable on second thought to let the batteries become lower in voltage if there ain't enough solarpower but a to high gridsetpoint makes the voltage of the batteries also too high. I also think that's strange because the Multiplus value is 27 volt and not higher so why should ess use the grid to increase that voltage?
Hi @THTruck
You have the ESS settings at 'keep battery at 100% SOC', so it does that...try a lower SOC if you want to use your batteries.
Scheduled charge is for just that: scheduled charging, but your batteries are already at 100%...
Hi Daniel,
Yes you're right but it does that with a much higher voltage then i Veconfigured. Why is the gridsetpoint necessary to get the voltage i want and not the preinstalled desired voltage in de multiplus?
I'm sorry @THTruck but I have no idea what you are talking about, I commented about your 'minimum SOC' setpoint (at 100%), not the grid-setpoint.
Hi
The storage mode is in the assistant setup not in the raspi or CCGX settings!
As mine is configuration this and i use no power from grid the to charge the batteries at all.
And the Mulitplus will supply power to the house loads to what ever the loads are doing and if required the grid will supply the rest is the multi can handle it eg when you turn on an oven etc.
I have my grid point set at zero, min SOC to 20% for Lithium for Gel 50% so i have a neutral power balance, not using power from the grid and using the batteries when required
and only charged from the PV.
Zero power bill only credit.
Of course the storage mode is in the veconfigure settings but when ESS is installed it disables the storage mode automatically. Here in the Netherlands in wintertime it's hard enough to get the batteries in float without a load so i can not set a zero gridpoint. But i will try your way when there is a more sunny periode. Thnx.
Hi,
please can i have a read-out of your settings so i can copy your set-up a little bit?
I also want to charge batteries only from solar or if absolutely necessary to charge from grid then only at night with cheaper rate electricity.
I also have (in the daytime) my batteries (around 35% SoC) being charged one minute and supplying power/discharging the next. Not sure what rule that would be under.
Any help would be great for this noobie.
I have realised that what I was aiming at in my message above is really only for the summer and is not what I would want right now. My installation is only 2 days old so I am really just getting to grips with this system. Right now, in winter, I would actually want to charge from grid overnight on cheap rate and use any available solar in the daytime plus battery and then grid as last resort. Followed by overnight charge on cheap rate and solar/batts through the daytime again...
Anyone who has a similar set-up or similar needs, please let me know how you achieve what you achieve.
Much appreciated.
If there is a surplus of solar in the daytime it feeds into the house and grid.
In Summertime with enough surplus of solar i just leave the multiplus on also at night because the feeding in starts earlier because there is no bulk and absortion stage first.
I think it would be nice that there is a schedule possibility to start and switch off the multiplus automatically. That would really solve it for me.
I have read quite a lot of Victron literature but if anyone can point me to a comprehensive manual on how to program the Cerbo or Multiplus to suit one's needs I would very much appreciate the help.
I have found one small problem already: when the sun came out earlier and I realised the battery was going to be completely full quite soon, i switched on some big consumers to use up the solar and some battery power. But the power was drawn exclusively from PV and grid only. Then I remembered that it wouldn't discharge the battery at all when theoretically charging. So I had to cancel the scheduled charge.
Back to the drawing board.
Good Day
I have a similiar issue. My system will start charging from midnight slowly which in my opinion is an absolute waste because by 10am its charged to 80% and no PV energy was used. I have also set a schedule to charge the battery in the afternoon from 1pm for cloudy days. I want the system to charge on PV other than the set schedule, I want only grid power when its cloudy and system cannot charge from PV. This does not seem like an easy thing to set. I also selected Optimized without batterylife. Seems battery life also interferes and wants to charge it whenever it hits the limits. I do not mind the batteries charging to 100% every day, I do not want it charging to 80% off grid at 8am in the morning.
@usernamepasswordbs If you set the stop charge on SOC will that not allow your battery to discharge while you are charging it?
When a SoC limit is set for a scheduled charge window, charging will stop when the batteries reach the requested SoC. The batteries will however not discharge until the scheduled charge window ends. The goal is to be at or near the requested SoC at the end of the scheduled charge window.
https://www.victronenergy.com/media/pg/Energy_Storage_System/en/configuration.html
At the moment (depths of winter) I charge at night (12am until 6am) to 90% on cheap rate electricity so by 9 or 10am when PV charging starts the battery is down to 60 or 70% and then it really depends on the sun. A good clear day and I can put on dishwasher / washing m/c etc and still charge batts to 100%.
Mine seems to have stopped charging randomly from grid in the daytime which was why I wanted to use Scheduled charge in the first place. Maybe the system was 'learning' my habits or balancing the newly-installed batteries or something but it seems (fingers crossed) to be o.k. now.I have it on optimised with battery life and I have recently lowered the minimum SoC from 20% to 10% but I find that the Active SoC limit (which is set automatically) won't let it go below 30% anyway.
