Full optimisation and automation would be wonderful. But rather complicated (but perhaps not for someone as talented as Wonder Watt!)
Initially we need something that looks at expected domestic demand to met, plus export opportunities, to be matched with solar production and agile import costs, using the battery to balance time differences in supply and demand.
This would be an excellent enhancement, and very useful in itself.
Then advanced features could be added to account for:
1 round-trip inefficiencies in batteries and inverters
2 gradual degradation of panels over time
3 improved forecasting based on historical data. By this I mean comparison between solar forecast, actual sunshine, predicted production and actual production which would enable Wonder Watt to calculate corrections to the current production forecasts. E.g. Sunny mornings average 10% higher than predicted, but sunny afternoons 3% less.
4 Battery usage strategy. Users might want to work their batteries to the max to get the absolute maximum ROI, or they might prefer to choose a less aggressive strategy where they try to avoid battery usage if there are only slight gains in ROI. For example, if the gain from using the battery versus the grid is only 0.5p/kWh is it really worth the wear and tear on the batteries?
5 Battery usage strategy2. I've heard that batteries tend to last longer if they are used at 80 or 90% of the maximum rate of charge or discharge, so there might be an advanced setting for users wishing to reduce the maximum charge and discharge rates.
6 EVs Some way of adding the needs of EV's for those users with home chargers, to add the cars' needs to the domestic demand, the time the car needs to be charged by. Additionally some people might prefer to find the cheapest electricity for charging their cars even if they have to wait for a couple of days. So they might want, for example, to charge to 60% no matter the cost, and then top up whenever is best in the next 3 days. In due course I'm sure we will see V2G Vehicle to Grid introduced.
7 Hot Water. Some people have solar diverters able to take advantage of very cheap electricity.
8 Avoidance of clipping, where the solar panel power production exceeds the capacity of the inverter to convert it to AC.
So once we have a working optimisation there are plenty of opportunities for future enhancement, and those are just what I can think of.
As a complete aside I think the government should mandate that all new houses should be covered with at least 50% solar panels, and have at least 13kWh of battery, and mandatory optimisation, so that these houses are not "net-zero" but "net-positive" energy producers (to make up for the many hard-to-upgrade houses), and also able to soak up and benefit from the variability of solar and wind.
