Opportunity loads - turned on with no solar!

DIY
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1

Hey.

I’m utilising Opportunity Loads to maximise our off-grid solar and turn on a Shelly switch(water heater) after batteries get up to 90%.

However, the switch (only controlled via opportunity loads) is turning on a various times (even at night) when generator is on, and batteries are above 90%.

I understood there needed to be excess solar first, but it seems to be skipping this condition and just using battery SOC to manage the loads.

Assume as it’s still in beta, this may get ironed out in future upgrades.

Anyone, have this issue also?

E

2

These are no longer beta, V3.80 has been released.

Highlight: Introducing GX Opportunity Loads

New algorithm in Venus OS which can control (switch on/off/regulate aka dim) loads to maximise the solar self-consumption. Loads are prioritised according to user preference.

Supported loads:

Victron EV Charging Stations in Auto mode. Requires EVCS firmware v2.09 or newer and configured to use the new secure pairing and communication.

Shelly devices with energy metering (Function set to “Opportunity Load”)

Virtual devices from Node-RED

Configuration: Settings → Integrations → Opportunity Loads. New UI only.

Metrics are logged to VRM.

Limitation: Opportunity Loads cannot be combined with Dynamic ESS.

3

Where are you finding the “function” options ?

Perhaps you mean “role” ?

All i’m seeing as options are AC load, PV inverter and heat pump ?

The same applies to a number of apparently compatable Shelly devices :confused:

4

I have just copied and pasted the V3.80 changelog showing it is now official release.

5

Load control turns off at night when there is no solar, the mechanism is disabled until there is solar again.

6

Hi,

As Nick said, OL will go into a sleep modus, when there is no solar detected.

Chance your generator is either appearing as pvinverter or solarcharger in the system?

Is it an AC or DC Generator?

7

Thanks for replies.

Screen grab below showing example of AC load (Shelly Switch) kicking in during night-time generator running.

Generator is a standard Lister Petter Diesel AC 8kw set. Feeds directly into MP2 input.

The amount of energy consumed during these instances is relatively small.

I’ll keep an eye on it, and see how much more it happens coming into winter hours with more genny/less solar.

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8

Alright, I looked at the mentioned Example and that in deed is a bug in OL:

Offgrid or Zero-Feedin there is the behaviour that - once the system reaches 99% soc - additional loads OVER budget will be turned on down to 97% to ensure solarchargers and pvinverters stay unthrottled.

This is not supposed to kick in during nightly sleep time, but did.

So, a momentary workaround to prevent this from happening is: Don’t charge the battery to 99% from the generator.

We’ll add a fix for this asap. Solar-Keep-Alive should only take place if there is “some” solar at least.

So, this affects offgrid and zero feedin systems reaching 99% SoC from “other sources”.

9

Thanks very much for looking into that. Glad to be of help finding the bugs!

Changing setting as you suggest won’t be a problem, however until next March, it rare to get sufficient solar to do a full battery charge.

My plan to install additional solar has just got closer!

10

Thank you for reporting this.

We already announced the Solar-Sense-Integration to be available during 3.90. That will allow to get rid of the “3% Soc-Burn” for Solar-Keep-Alive even during the day.

The pure software-based mechanic then ofc. stays available for systems not (yet) having a solar sense.

12

This now fixed in 3.90-beta7.