My VRM hasn’t shown the “cost and planning graphs” since last night. Now it turns out I have to enable DESS to see the graphs again…
In the winter months, I don’t want to use Dynamic ESS anyway, because I control my Victron Multiplus with Homey then, as my solar panels don’t generate enough energy for DESS to work effectively. The “cost and planning” graph gave me a useful insight into how Homey was doing its job, and I could still intervene manually in charging my home battery if I wanted to run “high-consumption appliances” (washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer) on cheap electricity from the home battery.
How can I get the graphs and/or insights in VRM back without enabling DESS?
This is really bad, the energy flow bar graph should be shown regardless whether DESS is enabled or not. I use Node Red and now I cannot check, whether everything worked as intended unless temporarily switching DESS on. Really annoying and stupid. At the same time it is showing electricity price graph although DESS is disabled!! Like for what??? Should be other way round.
I would also like to use DESS during the winter months, but they need to hurry up with the points mentioned in this topic:
Especially the first point
Known limitations
After this launch, we will continue to improve Dynamic ESS.
A few items on our to-do list:
Fully charge the battery by the end of the day to cover consumption until sunrise
Fully charge the battery periodically to improve its lifespan
Add support for variable service charges depending on the time of day
Allow users to enter a fixed schedule for limits between the grid and the battery
Support fixed prices that change every half hour instead of every hour
Introduce (smart) support for high-consumption devices such as EV chargers and heat pumps
Because that’s why I intervene using Homey.
That’s the main advantage of a home battery: fill it up during the cheap hours of the day, then run your house on the battery. I understand that predicting usage (washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer) is difficult for Victron, but I’ve now made a button for that in Homey. My girlfriend looks at the battery percentage and the energy flows graph in the Victron app, and can then give the home battery an extra load as needed.
I have a simple 12-8p peak / rest of day off peak rate schedule, where there’s a HUGE penalty if I consume any power during peak (hundreds in demand costs)
I currently “trick” the DESS green mode algo to smartly target 100% — to maximize battery buffer during the peak period — by injecting a fake load at 7pm.
If it’s a sunny day, DESS will incorporate afternoon solar in its plan so less power is charged from grid ahead of the peak period.
Thanks, we’ll test it. In the meantime, DESS is switched back on for me now, and feed-in in green mode is switched off. If this works, it’ll save me a lot of intervention with Homey.
So your end of solar SoC is the target SOC by the time PV yield is expected to be 0, and the consumption buffer allows some part of your battery not be available to DESS for trading.
Note that this will need the latest Venus OS beta (on Monday).
Thank you! Just selfishly thinking of my own scenario and how I might use it:
set the solar parameter to 100%
set the consumption parameter to 0%
Does that sound right? Will this cause DESS to target 100% right before / during peak hours? Or will it also prevent self consumption during the peak period once 100% SOC is reached during solar hours?
Just selfishly thinking of my own scenario and how I might use it: