Solis RHI-3K-48ES-5G Battery Charge / discharge modes

[casbury67]

Solis RHI-3K-48ES-5G Battery Charge / discharge modes

Right now this one is driving me nuts,
I want this inverter to work in self use mode but in a particular way.

1. When PV is producing to first feed home load, then charge battery, then any extra back to the grid. Ok this bit I have working sort of. If I DON'T set a charge time.

This does work apart from the fact if the PV is not producing it will then discharge the battery, this I don't want it to do yet, especially in the winter when its slow to charge the battery at the best of times.

2. Discharge battery at night only and NOT charge from the grid.

Again this works mostly if I set a discharge time.

But now here is the problem, I want it to work so that I maximize PV use in the home, to charge the battery and only send to grid if extra produced between say 6am and 7pm.
Then from 7pm until 6am I want it to use a set load amount say 500w discharge until battery is depleted to set SOC.

I have been on to Solis support which to be fair have been helpful in the most part, having upgraded my inverter to Version 470044-010000 which has got some more settings and seems more stable, but still the working more is not what I was expecting.

Has anyone got any suggestions or point me at a thread that may already answer this.

My thinking is if this can't be done as a standard setting then maybe a 3rd party control option is needed.

Thanks
Chris

 

[SeaGal]

Solis RHI-3K-48ES-5G Battery Charge / discharge modes

Right now this one is driving me nuts,
I want this inverter to work in self use mode but in a particular way.

1. When PV is producing to first feed home load, then charge battery, then any extra back to the grid. Ok this bit I have working sort of.

That is normal self-use mode..

This does work apart from the fact if the PV is not producing it will then discharge the battery, this I don't want it to do yet, especially in the winter when its slow to charge the battery at the best of times.

Why don't you want that? The battery will 'fill in' any shortfall of PV production to power the house. It will prioritise this before grid use to avoid incurring grid use costs.

2. Discharge battery at night only and NOT charge from the grid.
Again this works mostly if I set a discharge time.

I suspect terminology confusion here. Self use mode will _use_ the battery at night. _Discharging_ will force the battery to discharge at a fixed rate - including to grid! This is generally only useful if you are being paid £££ to export energy.

But now here is the problem, I want it to work so that I maximize PV use in the home, to charge the battery and only send to grid if extra produced between say 6am and 7pm.

That is normal self-use mode.

Then from 7pm until 6am I want it to use a set load amount say 500w discharge until battery is depleted to set SOC.

Are you being paid to export? If not, self use will just use the battery to power the house until it is depleted.

Additional info:
When set to self-use mode, any times that are not defined as being charge-from or discharge-to the grid will operate as follows:-

a) Any PV power will be used to supply the house load, if there is no PV power, battery power will be used to provide house load.
b) If the PV power is less than house load and there is remaining battery power, PV and battery will be used to provide house load.
c) If the PV power is greater than the house load, any surplus power will be used to charge batteries at the rate the batteries allow/request.
d) If the batteries are full, excess PV will be exported to grid, up to any limit defined in the export power (backflow) settings.

Only use charge from grid if you want to charge batteries at cheap rate.
In most cases, never set a discharge - that will dump your battery to grid.

The only other use of discharge is to set a discharge time, with a discharge current of 0.00A. That will stop the battery from discharging between those times. Hence, if you are charging up at night (for say 2 hours) you may want to set a discharge current to 0.00A and set a discharge timing to be the remainder of your night rate time. That way, during your night rate the house will draw from the grid, rather than the batteries. It makes no sense to charge batteries up and then let them power the house during cheap night rate as you will just waste money due to the efficiency of charging and discharging.

HTH

 

[SeaGal]

And here's an external guide that explains some of what I said above...

Solis Hybrid Inverter: charging from the grid

How to configure your Solis Hybrid Inverter to charge from the grid on schedule.

blog.jonsdocs.org.uk

 

[casbury67]

@SeaGal
Thanks for your responses again, you have basically confirmed what I thought was going on.

I do get a fair rate for export, but obviously its better to use what I produce as it works out cheaper.

The main reasoning for wanting to save the battery for evenings was to make sure I have battery remaining if I need to switch for backup in a power fail, but guessing I really need to increase my battery size for that to work.

Also thanks for the link I will give it a read.

Thanks Chris

 

[SeaGal]

but guessing I really need to increase my battery size for that to work

Yep! What size do you have? My DIY battery is 14.3kWh, which works well for our usage.

But the question also is how often do you get power outtages? It's maybe once every 2 years where we are (DNO= UK Power Networks) and often that is for pre-planned maintenance work.

 

[casbury67]

Yep! What size do you have? My DIY battery is 14.3kWh, which works well for our usage.

But the question also is how often do you get power outtages? It's maybe once every 2 years where we are (DNO= UK Power Networks) and often that is for pre-planned maintenance work.

Its only a 3kw battery at the moment until I can sort out something better.

Yep I'm UK also but in the past 12 months we have had at least 4 outages, I had less when I lived in a small village, its really a just in case, as I work from home and keeping some routers , lights and other low energy equipment that I need to keep power on.
Going to experiment using some smart tech and the Modbus connection see what i can come up with