Multiple Pause Function Request (Giv)

JayC

Please consider enabling the setting of the three pause functions on multiple occasions in the Schedules section of the Wonder Watt.
Use case include but are not limited to
Pause Battery Charge 11:00 to 16:00 (forces the selling of solar)
Pause Battery Discharge 23:30 to 02:00 (forces EV to charge from grid not battery when not using IOG in app)
Pause Charge and Discharge 13:00 to 14:00 (Use Octopus free energy slot on sunny day when using a lot of power and want to preserve full battery)

duplada

JayC Please consider enabling the setting of the three pause functions on multiple occasions in the Schedules section of the Wonder Watt.

Yes I would like to add my vote to a choice of different pauses in the standard schedules section of the website. There are two reasons I am forced to use the GE Portal which I hate.

The first reason to use the portal is to pause charge and export on sunny days. The thing is though with the portal you then have to go back in there and turn it off again, which I often forget to do. WW could automate this quite easily. It could by a new type of schedule or an option in the existing schedules.

My second and last reason to have to use the GE Portal is because I have A Dual AIO's with Gateway setup, this configuration does not support the Inverter Power command so if I want to charge my EV I have to go into the GE Portal and use the Inverter "Charge Power Percentage command" and set it @ 45% ish As otherwise left unchecked my system imports @12kWh and a 7kWh EV charge on top of this and you have exceeded the Gateway limit. Though once again I have to remember to go back into the portal and turn it off again WW could again automate this and reset the values.

@admin could you not implement this pause feature at the same time as you find the time to implement my feature request in July? https://community.wonderwatt.com/d/972-separate-charge-discharge-settings-for-both-inverter-and-battery-schedules

miffy

I use the battery pause functionality on my GE Gen 2 inverter a lot, and would find this proposal useful.

We are on Octopus Flux. During winter, I use Pause Discharge 0500-1550 to ensure enough charge in the battery during the expensive Flux session 1600-1900. The rest of the time, I use pause discharge for similar reasons and times if the generation forecast is poor. It would be handy to have WW do the maths on whether to Pause or not based on the forecast, instead of me doing that manually every evening.

I might use the other two options in WW in specific circumstances if they were available.

Pourl

As per @JayC above, could you add a ‘pause battery’ button, a simple on/off would work. Today we have negative Agile prices so I would rather use that than default battery, thanks @admin.

JayC

Today provides another use case for this request which I'll be running manually:
Between 09:30 and 12:40 pause my Giv AIO charging to export/sell the solar @15p
Between 12:45 and 13:45 I'll discharge (sell) 6kW from my battery @15p
Between 13:00 and 14:00 I'll charge 6kW free (Octopus Free Energy)
Between 14:05 and 17:00 I would like to pause my Giv AIO charging to export/sell the solar @15p
... then in the evening @MrMessy 's staggered export system will export the excess and the battery will begin charging again at 23:30.
On weeks like these where Octopus announce more than one free slot ideally I'd log into WW, set it all up once and leave to run without further intervention.

amackayj

JayC are you on Agile? I use the discharge planner to ensure I have space in my AIO to soak up cheap electricity.

JayC

amackayj hi, no i’m on Intel’.
As I never want to use solar I pause my battery’s ability to charge during the day. The exception to this pause being when I want to fill it with free grid power (having sold its content in the hour previous).

kiwinobby

I would also use a "scheduled pause" for the IOG section for when my OHME is charging ( on Intelligent Octopus Go) between 23:30 to 02:00 which is when my Givenergy battery is exporting. At the moment I have to manually pause as close to 23:30 time as I can and un-pause at 05:30 ( I have my battery to charge from 02:05 to 05:30) otherwise any IOG 23:30 to 05:30 fixed schedule charges my battery during the export schedule.

duplada

I also forgot to mention that this pause the battery feature if implemented correctly could be your next biggest driver for new customers. I have been spending significant time on the Myenergi and the 2 Givenergy forums of late and the number one question from EV charger owners who have been sold batteries with and EV charger is?

How do I stop my EV charger taking charge from my house batteries?

There are a number of ways to stop this happening, Altering, the wiring after the fact cost £500. Use HA expensive, more hassle, not for everyone and costs I guess near to the rewire say £400 with new kit. A new EV charger like a Zappi V2.1 can charge from the solar etc but not on a fast charge, it will take from the house batteries the same as the GE EV charger does for me (dual AIO Issue.)

A feature that pauses your battery discharging so you can charge your EV from the grid at a cost of £54 per annum with flexible scheduling is going to be a winner IMHO

admin

duplada How do I stop my EV charger taking charge from my house batteries?

Yeah, and within the context of IOG we offer a solution for this by holding the battery or charging at the same time.

Whilst most inverter systems do not have such a Pause feature for the battery (unlike Giv), we could simply set the charge target SOC at the current percentage for the battery, which effectively achieves the same, and call it a 'Hold battery' schedule.

johalareewi

duplada How do I stop my EV charger taking charge from my house batteries?

That is why I started to use WW.
Once here, I was able to suggest new features many of which have been implemented.

duplada

admin Yeah, and within the context of IOG we offer a solution for this by holding the battery or charging at the same time.

Sorry for the delay in replying have had meetings all day today.

True but your current IOG solution hasn't got a way to Pause the battery for IOG registration (onboarding). The user must find a way to do that themselves beforehand. Your way into expanding your user base IOG even further (IMHO) is to provide a complete IOG solution end to end, including the onboarding. The more help you can give potential users to easily achieve this, the more clients you will attract. If you can achieve that within the WW system, users will not end up on the Give/Myenergi forums moaning about their EV charge being counted as house load, and discharging the house batteries. Instead users will all be happy WW/IOG clients, who can spend their free time checking how much they are saving whilst sat in their Hot Tubs sipping Cocktails or other appropriate beverage.

I realise you are trying to implement new features that are not particularly manufacturer make specific, which makes a lot of sense. However, there are times when one make in this case Givenergy has a specific feature that users use particularly often and that is "Pause Charge". To my GE knowledge (which isn't that extensive) is that most GE inverters have Pause Charge registers in the portal, though early generations don't have a From / To time option (due to memory space), therefore, a schedule option would not work in all cases. However, what makes "Pause Charge" (PC) extremely useful on my system is that it actually still trickle charges the house batteries at about 200w when activated, always meets the house load, and at the same time exports all excess generation straight to the grid.

I use this a lot in fact so much I would like to see PC on the WW Home Page next to Quick Schedule which I use quite often also. After all, WW knows the inverter type of the current user which is recorded in settings. That way you could pause/ Un pause your inverter at will. If that is a step too far? how about a "Tools" / Utilities Menu option in WW where you could put Manufacturer / Inverter Specific features like this, as there are bound to be other requests in the future that are as equally useful.

admin Whilst most inverter systems do not have such a Pause feature for the battery (unlike Giv), we could simply set the charge target SOC at the current percentage for the battery, which effectively achieves the same, and call it a 'Hold battery' schedule.

Yes that could work, I say there is a strong case for having both options.

However, on a personal note I cannot use any of the WW IOG features or any other automatic charging options that involve my EV and house battery charging at the same time. WW (currently) cannot throttle the house battery charging of my Dual AIO system, until the Inverter Power command is substituted with the Charge Power Percentage command. At the moment when I need to charge my EV, I use the standard schedules in the IOG cheap period, but have to visit the GE portal prior to the schedule executing, and reduce the Charge power percentage to around 45% ( having to remember to reset it the next day) otherwise12k of house battery charging plus 7kw EV charge will overload the GE Gateway if someone flips a kettle on. I am also constantly having to mess with the Inverter and Battery charge / Discharge rates which I won't go into again here but the system really needs separate Charge and Discharge Rates for BOTH Inverter and for the Battery. My Battery is 12kWh in and 12kWh out however my inverter is 12kWh in but is DNO limited to 9.5kWh out. For the WW system to work correctly and perform automatic adjustments all four values need recording. I know you said you would look to implement this, and I have not chased it up because you spent so much time troubleshooting the Give API Null value API issue for me. Though I would really appreciate it if you could look into implementing it as soon as possible please.

Separate Charge / Discharge Settings for both Inverter and Battery + Schedules

admin Don't worry - think we've located you, we will look at implementing this

duplada

johalareewi That is why I started to use WW.
Once here, I was able to suggest new features many of which have been implemented.

Software design and consultancy was what I did for a living for about 35 years before I retired. I am really really trying not to suggest things here and keep my nose out of other peoples systems, and to get on with my retirement. Though old habits die hard and all that. The thing is we could command over £1,500 a day for our consultancy advice, and had some pretty big customers whose names you would recognise on our books.

admin

duplada thanks for your in-depth reply. We will implement a Pause for Giv users. Give us a week or so. 😜

In terms of the charge/discharge for AIO dual setups, we are now sending percentages.

johalareewi

duplada users will not end up on the Giv forums moaning about their EV charge being counted as house load, and discharging the house batteries

They might if they have Ohme Pro chargers with IOG 🙁

duplada

admin duplada thanks for your in-depth reply. We will implement a Pause for Giv users. Give us a week or so. 😜

In terms of the charge/discharge for AIO dual setups, we are now sending percentages.

Thank you I can confirm it has set the power percentage for the last two schedules. I am glad you told me as I quickly had to alter my battery and Inverter discharge settings for tonight's schedules to execute correctly. Do you think you could look at recording the Both the Battery and Inverter Rates In and Out as described above? If you can I will hold off reworking my schedules until then.

duplada

admin thanks for your in-depth reply. We will implement a Pause for Giv users. Give us a week or so.

Yes that's great you are going to make a lot of GE users very happy thank you again.

duplada

johalareewi They might if they have Ohme Pro chargers with IOG 🙁

See here on the GE forum,

https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/6328-ev-charging-draining-givenergy-battery-instead-of-using-grid-any-advice

@admin see post 4 in the thread above.

admin

duplada Thanks for that, but I do think that the Ohme integration doesn't work via the IOG smart dispatch slot allocation. In other words, the greener slots are managed by Ohme. We do not get these via the Octopus API.

I believe that's the main issue with Ohme. @johalareewi

johalareewi

admin That is my understanding too. With Ohme, it is their app that does the scheduling and extra slots and Octopus know nothing which means when WW query the Octopus API to see if extra slots are available, there are none so WW can't stop Ohme using the GE battery for the extra slots.

There is an FAQ or two about Ohme and IOG.
https://octopus.energy/blog/intelligent-ohme-faqs/
https://ohme-ev.com/support/how-do-i-set-up-intelligent-octopus-go-2/

Ohme also say
How to charge with Intelligent Octopus Go and Solar Batteries
At this time, Ohme cannot distinguish between power from solar power and power from your home battery. Therefore, if your battery is set to release energy when you plug in your car, the charger might use that instead of solar energy.
To keep your battery full for when you need it, here’s what you can do:
Change the battery settings so it isn’t set to discharge while you’re charging your car.
Schedule the battery (if it has this feature) to hold onto its charge during your usual car charging times.
Switch off the battery manually when you plug in your car, and turn it back on after you unplug.
This way, you can save the stored energy for later and keep dynamically charging your car with the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff.

duplada

admin Sorry, I hope that I haven't caused you any trouble I apologise, but at least it gets the word out to the Give users who will read about WW in action, and may become interested. Every week the same EV discharge from house battery questions are asked along with, how do I save my Octo Free period schedules, well now they know, choose WW baby.

Note to self don't talk about stuff in the future that you don't have hands on experience of, lesson learned.

When you get the Pause Charge operational, let me know I will test first and talk later 🤐

duplada

johalareewi Ohme also say

I see what you mean how many hoops do they want you to jump through basically its a half baked solution.

My GE EV charger is similar has so many features you would not believe it, it is such a capable device on paper. The thing is they forgot to mention in the blurb that none of these features work with their flagship Dual AIO setup that I have.