Second, does the battery balancing have memory of when the battery was last charged? I sent it yesterday and it charged up, but now it’s done it again today.
The last one is that the methodology for forced discharged looks strange. I put it into trade mode as the rates are going very low tomorrow. It therefore planned a forced discharge. However it did this early and then left me with very little battery for a few hours. During this period the import price is still higher than the export rate. Surely I it makes more sense to do the discharge nearer to the planned charge, or at least when the import rate is less than export rate.
Overall though, DESS is a great addition to Victron
@JimG If all goes as planned, the system should pick that up automatically. As Ton mentioned, it is the same for mainland Europe. But it is always a bit exciting to see if everything works as intended.
We have just started a “free hour” 13:00-14:00 of electric. I believe all Octopus Energy customers who have smart a smart meter on any tariff are eligible.
I waited 3 minutes after 13:00 hoping that Dynamic ESS would pick this up and automatically charge our batteries (They were @ 60% SOC, due to very overcast weather today so far)
Nothing happened, so I have manually hit the Buy button to force charge the battery.
This is the 4th “Free hour” session in the last few weeks since they started. They have all been between 13-14:00 so far. We get notified by email the day before. The previous 3 sessions I’ve manually discharged our battery down to around 50%, just before 13:00, then manually set the battery to charge again @ 13:00
Am I expecting too much that Dynamic ESS should be able to do this automatically?
As most of us Victron folks have solar and battery systems, our normal use between 13-14:00 from the grid is zero as we are running off solar and battery at this time of day, so all our usage during this free hour is 100% free to us.
It’s a bit more complicated than just setting a schedule charge because our battery mostly gets charged through the morning via our solar and is often @100% SOC by noon.
So far I have had to manually discharge the battery down to around 50% just before 13:00.
A challenge on a sunny day when we’ve had, can’t believe I’m saying this - too much solar!
I’ve tried switching to inverter only mid morning to divert the solar to the grid, so as to not charge the battery in the first place, but we have 2 separate solar arrays, one inside the Victron system so if we get a power cut, half of our solar still works. So on inverter only we are still charging the battery at half rate, which is a little help.
Well, we have had a full battery since around 15:00, I have Dynamic ESS turned on to Auto and we are now 1h 15m into the high Flux export rate starting @ 16:00, where I have been manually discharging our battery.
I was expecting Dynamic ESS to start a discharge, but nothing has happened. The battery is still sitting at 100% SOC, with just the excess solar being exported to the grid.
Thanks for adding support for Octopus dynamic pricing!
I have set my Octopus account number and API key on betavrm. However, I am not seeing any dynamic price data being loaded. After a few hours I also see the error “Gateway - DESS error code: No matching schedule available”.
I can query the Octopus accounts API using the same details and get data back. I have only recently switched to the Agile tariff and I see two “agreements” returned: the old fixed price tariff (with valid_from & valid_to in the past) and the new agile tariff with code E-1R-AGILE-24-04-03-E.
My VRM Portal ID is c061xxxxxx25.
Please let me know if any other information would help.
UPDATE
At around 10:40BST today the “no matching schedule” error cleared and I am now seeing the price graph
Morning all. A huge thank you to you guys at Victron for working on the Octopus energy integration with our Victron stuff. Since installing my modest system I’ve followed a nightly ritual of checking the following day’s prices and programming charging slots as necessary. Not having to do this manually, and the expectation that your automated system will be smarter than me will make the system much more efficient, I hope. Now I’m only on Day 2 of it taking control I’ve already noticed it’s far more relaxed about running the battery down. In the context of likely low prices tomorrow this is fine, but the margin of error is pretty low. If anyone needs to use any amount of power this evening, for example, there will be very little left in the battery. Is there an over-ride? A button perhaps to tell the system in advance we may need to do the washing/cooking/drying for example?
I’ve experienced the same tbh. I’m not expecting it to be as good me at guessing my energy requirements but had a few days when it’s had barely 40% charge coming into the 4pm - 7pm zone when DESS has been in control of the charge times.
Just providing some feedback on my experience with DESS,
The grid setpoint seems to be ignored, I’ve configured the maximum import to 17kW but noticed the system would happily sustain over 21kW, luckily didn’t blow the fuse this time
Also noticing energy being imported at the peak rates normally after the energy prices are being published I suspect some last minute changes to optimise the schedule but not absolutely necessary as enough energy was available in the battery to last until next cheaper slot
@George Thanks for being one of the early UK adopters.
Note that in the dynamic ESS settings, you are setting the capabilities, not actually setting limits for the system to use. See here for info on setting limits for the system.
I’ll dig deeper into why the system did that extra charge at the peak rate. That shouldn’t happen.
I guess there is one thing the system needs to know with the Octopus Agile tariff: it is always expensive from 4pm, and usually up until 22.30, sometimes 23.30. So the system needs to plan and make sure it has imported enough to never buy power during those times. Today it’s been an ‘expensive’ day, with the lowest prices not dropping below 15p/kW. My system decided it’d be fine to let the battery run down to 38% before I over-rode it and insisted it bought in power in advance of the expensive time coming in a hour. I’m sure this is something the system will learn, but at the moment when it miscalculates, it ends up costing more than it saves.
