Power Control Functions

[WillCodeForCats]

This discussion is for general stuff about power control related functions: storage (battery) control and site limits.

You may also want to read issues #136 and #137 which were part of the development process.

[paulorrockgit]

Hi,

I'm sorry if this is a newbie question. I can change the storage control mode and issue remote commands like charge or discharge though the overview page and thats great, thank you for doing this work. How do I find those entities (?) to be able to access them in a trigger ? I've looked through all the trigger options and I cant find the right 'action' for my 23:30 'trigger' e.g. change storage remote command mode to "charge from PV and AC"

Any advice or pointers please ?

Paul

[mpredfearn]

If you're trying to make an automation to automatically charge from AC at 11:30, then you would set your trigger to time at 11:30, and action to "call service", the service to "select.select_option", the entity "select.solaredge_i1_storage_default_mode" or "select.solaredge_i1_storage_command_mode" and "Charge from Solar Power and Grid" as the value for "option".

[WillCodeForCats]

Device-based actions looks OK on my dev system:

Device based triggers look the same for me as well.

[paulorrockgit]

The device actions in the manual drop downs all work perfectly. However I've never done any automations before and this bit ' the service to "select.select_option" ' is the key thing I didn't know and couldn't see in the docs .

Literally just installed the whole home automation setup just to be able to charge my battery overnight because Solaredge wont give us owners who have paid thousands for a battery the access to do it. Rant over ;-) . Thank you for your help and for being nice to a newbie .

[Peterjohnwood]

So we should use storage default mode rather than storage command mode?

[paulorrockgit]

Also does anyone know for certain if setting the storage control mode to "remote control" overrides any time of use policies that have been set up by solaredge or the installer ? They've set one up on my system to charge from midnight to 2am but I want to completely override that and control it all myself. I think it does but don't want to break stuff and create a clash.

[tonywheeler60]

I've certainly found no issues at all. I have access to create and apply Time of Use profiles on the SE portal (in admin) and have found that setting my system to "Remote Control" over-rides any ToU. The control offered by this integration work very well indeed - although I have found that the system will revert to the Storage Default Mode even with very high values set in "Solaredge I1 Storage Command Timeout". It's as though the system ignores what you set (values in seconds) after a period. I have got around this by adding additional automations to force it to reset the required settings every 2 hours - or as required. Others seem to experience this too.

[Ashpork]

My installer lets me contact them to ask them to put a charge profile into the solaredge inverter. But that’s a pain in the rear by design, and I don’t want to. Id rather be in control, as I can see the next days forecast and decide if I want to charge or not.Might be worth seeing if your installer can help, but I enjoy the control. Seth, didn’t realise the device had a service, I had been controlling the entities directly.Sent from my iPhoneOn 2 Dec 2022, at 17:53, paulorrockgit ***@***.***> wrote: Also does anyone know if setting the storage control mode to "remote control" overrides any time of use policies that have been set up by solaredge or the installer ? They've set one up on my system to charge from midnight to 2am but I want to completely override that and control it all myself. —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[anselmhuewe]

Hi @WillCodeForCats,
I would like to use the settings you present here, but I struggle finding them in HA. I have successfully set up the integration and enabled power control options and storage control, but I do not know how to set it to "Remote". Is it done via this integration (if yes, how?) or do I have to do it in the monitoring interface of solar edge (I can select options MSC / storage profiles etc. there, but 'remote' is not offered as an option)?
As a result (I guess!?), my HA interface looks like this, missing the actions and entities you describe:

Your help would be much appreciated!

[WillCodeForCats]

It will be option "Speichersteuerung aktivieren" has to be enabled on the second screen.

[anselmhuewe]

Yes, it is enabled. That's why I don't understand it.

[dfein38347g]

I'm having the same issue. I did find the remote setting under the battery settings when connected to the inverter's AP. I set it to remote but I still do not see any power options in HA. I do have the problem of illegal address with the battery and so it does not show up in HA. Is that a requirement to see the power options?

[WillCodeForCats]

IllegalAddress means your inverter does not support batteries (or their control options) over modbus.

https://github.com/WillCodeForCats/solaredge-modbus-multi/wiki/Known-Issues#not-all-inverters-support-battery-data

[anselmhuewe]

My battery is showing up and all the b1 sensors are providing data.
I disabled and enabled the power control options. Enabling it shows up in the log (but still, according to the sensor state, the option remains disabled. Also note that the log reports some other (relevant???) errors.

I also noticed in the logs that the sensor if often unavailable, and is disabled after each of these events.

Do these infos help to debug it, @WillCodeForCats? Thanks a lot!

[ianfriend]

Hi all,

Apologies if i'm just being blind, but i'm looking to get some clarity on what the AC Charge Policy settings do in the power control options:

there doesn't seem to be any mention of these in the documentation.

TIA

[mpredfearn]

These just map directly to the Solaredge settings, so you'd be best off consulting the Solaredge documentation for the full description https://github.com/WillCodeForCats/solaredge-modbus-multi/blob/main/doc/Power-Control-Open-Protocol-for-SolarEdge-Inverters.pdf page 17.

[ianfriend]

ok thanks for the reply, that makes sense.
What i'm looking to do is to set a maximum charge % so my baterry wont charge past 90%. I know i could do this with an automation, but was hoping the fixed energy limit policy with the AC charge limit would help achieve this, but turns out these are yearly limits, not dailiy limits.

[ianfriend]

Hi Guys,

So for ages now I keep getting continuous "unavailable" of sensors. There doesnt seem to be a regular time when it does it, from this screenshot alone you can see its ranges from 4 mins to 49 mins. What am i doing wrong? My polling frequancy is 30 seconds and my interver delay 3 seconds. i've played about a bit with these but doesnt seem to help.

TIA

[ianfriend]

The 2.3.0 pre-releases adds internal retry attempts to the HA update cycle that's worth a try.

Thanks, thats good to know, i'll give that a try

[ianfriend]

If you have an SSH terminal on your HA instance, what's it like when performing a ping to your inverter, if you want to try stressing it a little more, with the '-A' argument? Is there any loss? It might be the connection is resilient enough for a more modern protocol, making it seem like it's OK.

On paper, the advice is "go wired", which takes out most of the variance in the network.

In reality, I am also using a WIFI repeater and dropping it back down to eth. and have great success with it, But I've had to set up the repeater to be located fairly close to my router (8m with one thick wall in the way), if i didn't do this, then I'd get lots of intermittent issues ranging from just one polling interval of being unavailable, through to 2 hours of the devices showing as unavailable. This for me is a stop gap, whilst I wait for a new broadband connection (FTTP) to be installed which would let me know which wall to put the eth through and ultimately remove the wifi repeater.

Just to add - i've run the ping from HA. No fails but now and again it really slows down. this could be the issue. If its taking 14 seconds ro respond then HA might time out (and therefore sensor become unavailable). Its there a way of increasing the timeout?

[mpredfearn]

At the start of that high latency period, you lost ping sequence 1211, so your network is definitely lossy as well as suffering occasional high latency.

[ianfriend]

good spot, having now stopped the ping i can see that 16 of the 1482 pings were lost. I'll see if i can figure out a way of getting ethernet to the inverter to run the same test. Maybe the retry in the pre-release will serve as a workaround for now.

thanks all for your help here.

[ianfriend]

I've also jsut run this ping test with other devices in the garage, both connected to the powerline hotspot and the house wifi directly, and none of them suffer the same packet loss or latency slowdown. I think this might be an issue with the inverter itself.

[davidecorradini]

Hello! Can you please tell me what is the difference between these two modes for Storage Control? Thanks

Discharge to Minimize Import:
If PV production < consumption, discharge battery only for self-consumption, not for grid export. Requires an external consumption/export meter.

Maximize self consumption:
Use PV production for self-consumption, then charge/discharge battery as needed to maximize self-consumption. Requires an external consumption/export meter.

[Ashpork]

Discharge to Minimize Import, will not charge your battery if you have
excess PV power not used by your load(home).

Maximize self consumption will prioritise meeting the needs of your
load(home) using PV, the excess PV will then go to the battery, and any excess after
that will go to the grid.

[davidecorradini]

Got it! Thank you for the prompt reply!

[mpredfearn]

The Solaredge documentation is quite good (https://github.com/WillCodeForCats/solaredge-modbus-multi/blob/main/doc/Power-Control-Open-Protocol-for-SolarEdge-Inverters.pdf page 17) but "Discharge to Minimize Import" will only discharge i.e. not charge the battery from excess solar, where "Maximize self consumption" will balance house load with solar generation, charging from excess and discharging to cover shortfall.

[petehhhhh]

Hi,

I am trying to use the power control to limit solar production during negative feed in tariffs. When I change the active power limit, it works for about 10 seconds then resets itself to 100%. Same thing happens when I change storage control modes. Suspect the Solaredge cloud is overriding my commands? I contacted my installer to ask if I could control locally. They contacted Solaredge support who said they do not support this function ? Any ideas as to how I can get this sorted ?

[deqw]

Did your installer add you already as a user with full access to your installation? Other option: send an e-mail to mysolaredgeapp@solaredge.com and request to join the beta program and ask for full access. I'm not sure if you need to have a home battery to be able to joint the beta. Be patient to watch your mailbox for what happens next (make take some time for them to react). When you suspect the SolarEdge cloud is overriding your commands maybe try what happens when you disable the internet to your inverter.

[petehhhhh]

Not sure. What will I see in portal if I do have it ? I did ask for admin access and they did something but didn’t seem to give me much more in terms of access. Its just the monitoring site and there is no ability to change time of use etc. The portal is https://monitoring.solaredge.com right - there is not some other admin site I am missing ?

To get full access what exactly should I ask them i? The support lady knows less than I do technically so unless I spell it out I tend to go around in circles…

yes tried blocking internet access but same thing happens?!

[deqw]

To join the beta just send the e-mail like I said. Provide them with your site ID and inverter serial number and they will pick it up someday. But for me the beta did not add useful features (screenshot Battery Mode). Better use this modbus integration and go the Remote Control way.

[souhl]

I am using power control settings to switch off battery usage when I charge my EV. Unfortunately from time to time I cannot switch back to Max Self Consumption. Combination is SE 7K RWS with BYD.