Dear Anita,
Yes, it is sad that these system problems with the DESS economy have to be solved by customers themselves.
The system is sufficiently equipped and could work properly. All that would be needed is to incorporate feedback into the software control and Victron could have a great advertisement.
Petr
It is indeed. I mean.. Got someone at home, telling me how much money you can earn with the batteries. And yes, Ofcourse itâs able to let it trade a bit Ă nd let it fulfil your own house usage.
Meanwhile the system completely ignores the prices, doesnât load at the correct hour (which made me think, is there a time zone issue?) when it comes up the cheapest prices.. Trades for 4 cent which is more or less the total of the losses.
It would be good to have a extra mode where you can fill in some parameters where the system should look at. E. G %losses, or a fixed amount between but and sell or use from the grid or the battery. Also, the fact that it balances at the most expensive time, really, this all can be much better.
Iâve been software tester and responsable for optimising processes but victron really needs to put attention to this. And have people test who know the requirements from the end customer. Not a programmer doing the testing. Since often programmers.. WellâŚthey live more or less on a other planet 
I concur with this but from experience I stopped holding my breath waiting on Victron for solutions. Just a search on DESS on this forum will keep you occupied for days on row, so let me give you my (IMHO, me not perfect not) management summary of the state of DESS affairs:
- DESS is the responsibility of the marketing department, not of the developers department.
- DESS customers are only a small subset of the Victronâs addressable market.
- Early DESS development was fully focused on SOLAR installations ADDING batteries.
- DESS GREEN (which implies solar) gets much more attention than DESS TRADE.
- DESS TRADE is BROKEN due to misaligned assumptions based on early developments.
That said, DESS (TRADE) is NOT DEAD (yet). Many customers, me incluis, have developed their own hacks, workarounds and solutions for their own specific use-cases. What is dearly missing at the moment is a centralized effort to consolidate those developments in a truly open source friendly manner. Unfortunately Victron doesnât show any sign of being interested in that either, and that has resulted in many customers, again me incluis, loosing motivation to support other customers in this matter, on this Victron forum.
Thatâs it, hope it clarifies things.
May I file this to my list under the last point " misaligned assumptions based on early developments". That margin was not expected at buy time because DESS isnât programmed to buy speculatively. But that topic is for another day, we have bigger fish to fry first.
No offense Dognose, I hope you know I do appreciate your efforts to help people out with real use cases. What might be helpful here is to start making very clear distinctions between DESS Green and DESS Trade systems, they are very different beasts from a schedulers perspective. And between predominantly Solar versus predominantly Battery use cases, they need a distinctively different scheduling approach to function well autonomously.
Worst case scenario still being DESS Trade without Solar that needs constant interventions, manipulating MinimumSoC or other settings to behave rationally.
Interventions to make DESS Trade behave are hard to automate away without suitable tools (b_goalâŚ). The level of expertise required equals that of developing a private trade engine, which defeats the purpose of having it as an option on VRM DESS IMHO.
That said, today and tomorrow are good money making days, hopefully the flatline price winter slump has finally come to an end, long live price volatility.
May I kindly ask you to stop âhijackingâ every DESS topic with your favorite DESS Issue?
You have created yours, give other people the chance to have a focused thread on their questions as well.
No. Because âmyâ favorite DESS topic is not âmyâ favorite DESS topic to begin with. Instead it is, admittedly according to âmyâ investigations, âtheâ most pressing DESS topic (1) affecting âeveryâ customer that bought in to the promises and expectations of the DESS Trade solution. Donât get me wrong here, I do not try to kick against âheilige huisjesâ (dogmas) just for the sake of being controversial. I actually care about the quality of the solutions Victronâs DESS could provide.
And by the way, I have developed a plethora of hacks and workarounds to make âmyâ DESS Trade system perform very well on the day ahead pricing market, it took an immense amount of engineering hours to get there but I succeeded. The reality of that is that âIâ do not need Victron anymore to make DESS Trade work for âmeâ.
But that does not mean I am not sad and disappointed that Victron is showing a consistent negative attitude to cooperate with itâs "frontierâ customers (like myself, nevermind me saying so), to provide a platform friendly that is actually helpful and supportive, for us to help each other on this matter.
(1) And you know I am serious because we have been here before, when I flagged the previous most pressing issue: the TargetSoc Integer precision issue, that encountered the exact same pushback and ad hominem attacks at first, until it got ĂĄnd admitted to be a real issue, ĂĄnd fixed!
Okay, then iâm not âkindly askingâ but requesting you to do so in accordance with the community guidelines:
One Question per post
This community is intended to become a knowledge base. We want people to be able to quickly search for their question, and find the answer. Ideally the answer is a link or reference to the precise Victron documentation.
To help with this, please keep your posts focused clearly on a single question, issue or problem.
is there a chance for me to share your solution for the dess?
Itâs really sad to see how peopleâs feedback and urgent request for changes are handled like this. Why is victron and their sellers so convinced their system is 100% functioning? Because it isnât. But what I see here is what I also experience with the person that came to my house to sell the Victron system. Nice story, but at the end there is not much of a discussion possible with the same person. Spreading the word on Facebook how much you can earn. Not mentioning the losses caused by warmth. And then there is the issue of the system selling with loss. I am really curious what parameters are behind all this.
Also, I really donât understand why it doesnât keep track of the value in the battery. If I can simply have that in home assistent, (I am no technician, just a hobbyist that likes playing with systems, and testing software in the past for work) why cant be this included in Dess?
Why does the system change plans during the night?
In stead of silencing people, it would be better to involve them in improving Dess. And make it a system worth recommending to others. Cause right now, I definitly wonât. The hardware, I guess that is all fine, but the software.. Nah.
Jan, Anita,
even though Victron handles customer feedback poorly, itâs no reason to clutter up threads with altercation.
It doesnât solve anything, youâre just hurting other customers.
If you want to solve it, write to the owners of Victron, buy shares and become an owner, or join forces with the competition and make a better system that will give Victron a lesson, etc.
Dognose,
no, Iâm not saying that youâre doing your job well.
Youâre supposed to deflect/explain bad arguments (youâre doing that well), but youâre supposed to accept good ones and pass them on to process and improve the system (youâre not doing that well).
You are right. But.. Itâs frustrating. My installer (who came with all these beautiful stories, how smart Dess is, et etc). And now when I am asking critical questions to them, itâs suddenly, ask the community. Where I donât get answers either. Once, from dognose. At the end partly an incorrect answer also. Placed a new topic, different questions/comments : no reaction at all. So the only conclusion is, victron and their dealers deliver a very poor customer service. Saying that doesnât hurt other customers. It warns new ones 
. So they know what to expect, or even better, what not to expect.
Sorry for butting in. Iâve only skimmed some things. But let me address a few fundamental points. This is a community, not customer service. Please read the community rules. Iâve been a member for three years now and have generally always received answers. Sometimes, itâs the tone you use that matters. I find it particularly pleasant that you often (though not always) get answers from the development team. Another fundamental point⌠who says DESS is perfect? ââHow could it be? Itâs still new and is constantly being developed because the framework conditions are constantly changing. Besides, take a look at competitors and see how much they struggle with similar projects. Some of them are still working with manually set schedules. Now, regarding your question⌠âAnitaâ: DESS adjusts its schedules at least every hour. This allows it to react to new weather reports, and to situations where the solar or consumption forecasts havenât turned out as expected. Decisions are always made based on the most sensible approach given the current state of knowledge. Furthermore, you asked whether battery costs are taken into account, or did I misunderstand the question? Battery usage costs can be configured in the DESS configuration. Additionally, DESS considers a certain efficiency for battery-powered turnarounds.
Thanks for your reply. And no need to put âAnitaâ in between ââ (why??). Thatâs just my name.
Prices : I tried it. Took 20% losses into account (something Dess should do tooâŚnow it trades for 5 cents difference which is aprox what you loose in the complete cycle from solar to battery or net to battery) ) and put that into the prices. But it still traded as before, even if it would mean that itâs giving a loss. You say it looks every hour if things have changed. In my opinion it does not.
Same for balancing. Why would it do that at the most expensive time of the day? I really donât see the logic of that.