Charge slot failure due to command sequence

WindyMiller

Interesting case this one.

WW_id elaborate-routine

I have been using the smart charging for a few days and am very pleased with the way it works when the Agile prices are too high to be worth considering - well done.

However last nights schedule didn't stop charging at 5am with the battery stuck at 100% until I manually disabled the charging at 7am.

I had set up a smart charge schedule for 2am to 5am as usual. But the WW log showed a timeout error on setting this up. The GivEnergy log showed it had accepted the enable charging command and the set start time to 2am command but had timed out on the stop time command of 5am. Consequently the battery inverter was quite happy charging from 2am to 0am (its previous setting) hence was still charging at 7am. I presume that WW didn't attempt to reset the charge schedule at 5am (there is nothing in the GE log at that time) as it believed it hadn't been successful in setting it up at 2am?

It is possible to tweak the command sequence so that WW only sets the charge enable when it knows the start and stop times have been accepted? Similarly at the end of the slot write the charge enable false command and verify it before setting the start and stop times back to 0am? Plus can it still write the end of schedule commands if the schedule is still enabled even if it timed out on the start of schedule commands? This way I think it would avoid the inverter attempting to charge a full battery all day and using lots of expensive grid power for the house.

admin

WindyMiller Yeah that's an issue with these several API calls for multiple settings, they're not an atomic operation.

Your suggestion seems sensible, to enable the charge at the end of the settings commands. And when disabling the schedule, do it at the beginning. Am I understanding that correctly?

With the way these commands are set, there will inevitably be other scenarios if one of the calls times out, and it's pretty much impossible to do the right thing for every instance.

WindyMiller

admin Yes that is correct. Then you will only enable a charge schedule that you believe has been set up correctly and always disable any current charging schedule when you believe it should have already finished. Whatever the timer settings are after this point is pretty much irrelevant but setting them both to 0am allows them to be inert should the charge still be enabled due to a timeout.

(Setting them both to 0am with charging enabled actually causes a 1 minute charge at midnight due to the way the Givenergy uses these values so it is always best to disable charging at the end of a charge slot if possible.)

I do find that network access to the Givenergy Inverter is one of the worst Wifi implementations of all my household devices. My emporia smart switches (I have many) always seem to do as instructed on their schedule and correctly notify if they are offline (usually because they have been mistakenly turned off at the switch).