Any suggestions on setting battery draw down?

[SolTex]

Enphase doesn't want you to discharge their batteries below 10% SOC. I keep ours set at 30% reserve in case of a grid outage during the night.

Our Encharge 10T storage modules have a ambient temperature operating range from 5 degrees F to 131 degrees F.

I have asked on the Enphase website what would happen if our batteries were to see ambient temps below 5 degrees F (unusual where we live, but it happens occasionally). I have never received any answer other than referring me to to the specs sheet.

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries have a very low risk of fire. I have no problem sleeping at night with two 10kW LFP modules mounted on the exterior brick wall of our house.

[darkskies]

No installer today. Due to the Winter storm last night, they were out on an emergency call today. They are rescheduling for tomorrow afternoon.

[MattSl]

Tesla lets you set discharge to 0%, but it actually cuts it off at 5%. When I pull from the API's, it shows 5%, but the Tesla app shows 0%.

[Calsun]

With a lithium battery it can in theory be discharged to 0% SOC but in actual use there is a minimum SOC for the battery to be recharged which may be 10%. It depends on the battery and on the ambient temperature of its location. The manufacturer is going to specify a minimum SOC for recharging and should also specify at which temperatures it can be recharged.

There is going to be a problem with the need and legal requirement to install such batteries outside and the much lower ambient temperature and change in recharge times. I would guess that charge controller charging profiles need to be modified for use in lower temperture conditions. It may also require warming pads for the batteries to maintain a minimum temperature.

[darkskies]

Did my advice about this not work for your installer? It's very easy.
https://www.solarpaneltalk.com/forum...118#post437118

I've sent that to the guy I've been dealing with at the install company (he's the boss there, does all the estimating, scheduling, etc) and mentioned what you said. Unfortunately, he's been out of the office most of this month, so I've been trying to get a hold of of other people in their office to address these issues, though they are pretty disorganized are mostly minions that are delegated some simple tasks without a lot of authority. The other person that seems to have a lot of authority/decision making is the electrician, who does the actual installs with a small crew, but I've not been able to talk to him.

For the past two weeks, they've said that they would have the electrician come out, when there is a bad weather day, as he is working on an install at a site currently. Well, Friday I harped at them about just getting a fixed date for the electrician to come out, and was told that he'll come tomorrow! Fingers crossed.

The receptionist said that the electrician will complete the LG battery registration (they say they have to do it on-site, and have been unable to complete remotely), update the inverter firmware, hopefully remove the temporary panel with ATS, and connect up the generator as originally designed.

They said he'll answer my questions about configuration, as I mentioned my concern with the release notes showing configurations that use a third party switch for the generator, and not the configuration that was explained to me and alluded to in the SolarEdge documents, with the generator connected to the Back Up Interface and being used to recharge the batteries, during grid outages.

I asked about the battery reserve again, and was told that the electrician will address that too, when he is here tomorrow. I keep telling them that they can do it remotely on their end, but I don't know if the people in the office know what/how to do it, with the main guy not there (or maybe don't feel they have the power to do it).

I'm hoping I can just talk the electrician into have them give me admin privileges for my site so I can address some of these things myself..

[sdold]

Sorry about the unapproved messages Srrndhound, for some reason certain things in messages flag the forum as potential spam and send them to moderation, usually we'll approve them pretty quickly.

[Srrndhound]

Yeah, I talked to SolarEdge support and they said that I can do it from the app, but the 'installer" must enable that feature (I guess SolarEdge cannot). I have been harping for months to my installer to get this done, and they keep saying they can figure out how to enable (and don't want to wait on the phone for hours for SE support). I'm frustrated as hell.

Did my advice about this not work for your installer? It's very easy.
https://www.solarpaneltalk.com/forum...118#post437118

[darkskies]

[QUOTE=darkskies;n437421]Yes, very familiar with net metering in NH. My previous house had 1:1, but they changed the rules many years ago and you no longer get 1:1. Over the past year, I've found that I need to produce (on average) 23% more power to break even (not counting RECs, which in NH are tiny anyway).

Because of the disparity, it is a big incentive to discharge the battery as much as possible - not to export to the grid, but to self consume, as NH has very high rates (last month $0.3217/kW).

Right now, I only get about 3 kWH from the battery (out of 16 possible).

Ugh. That sucks.

Regarding the backup reserve, you should be able to change that from the app depending on what kind of monitoring account you have. They added this slider feature about a year ago but recently they turned it off for SolarEdge installer accounts. If you have a regular SolarEdge customer monitoring account, that slider should be in the battery tab of the app and you will have full control over the backup reserve without installer involvement.
image_15363.png[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I talked to SolarEdge support and they said that I can do it from the app, but the 'installer" must enable that feature (I guess SolarEdge cannot). I have been harping for months to my installer to get this done, and they keep saying they can figure out how to enable (and don't want to wait on the phone for hours for SE support). I'm frustrated as hell.

[MattSl]

I'm in the same boat as darkskies. My utility (JEA) buys back at 'fuel cost', which is, at the moment, about half the sell kwh cost. It makes more sense to fully utilize my batteries rather than send excess power back for 2:1 credits, unless batteries are topped off.

[soby]

Yes, very familiar with net metering in NH. My previous house had 1:1, but they changed the rules many years ago and you no longer get 1:1. Over the past year, I've found that I need to produce (on average) 23% more power to break even (not counting RECs, which in NH are tiny anyway).

Because of the disparity, it is a big incentive to discharge the battery as much as possible - not to export to the grid, but to self consume, as NH has very high rates (last month $0.3217/kW).

Right now, I only get about 3 kWH from the battery (out of 16 possible).

Ugh. That sucks.

Regarding the backup reserve, you should be able to change that from the app depending on what kind of monitoring account you have. They added this slider feature about a year ago but recently they turned it off for SolarEdge installer accounts. If you have a regular SolarEdge customer monitoring account, that slider should be in the battery tab of the app and you will have full control over the backup reserve without installer involvement.
image_15363.png

[darkskies]

You may want to review this regarding NH net metering: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/ne...e-net-metering

Depending on how your utility compensates you for solar power fed to the grid, you have very little incentive to charge/discharge your battery daily. South of your border in MA, we have full 1:1 net metering so the utility acts like a battery for our solar. I only charge/discharge the battery when there is an incentivized demand response event.

Yes, very familiar with net metering in NH. My previous house had 1:1, but they changed the rules many years ago and you no longer get 1:1. Over the past year, I've found that I need to produce (on average) 23% more power to break even (not counting RECs, which in NH are tiny anyway).

Because of the disparity, it is a big incentive to discharge the battery as much as possible - not to export to the grid, but to self consume, as NH has very high rates (last month $0.3217/kW).

Right now, I only get about 3 kWH from the battery (out of 16 possible).

[soby]

Very nice! On average, what is your daily consumption? Is it around 30kWh?

I only have 16kWh battery (though could expand to 32kWh in future). My big issue is getting my installer to enable the ability for me to set the reserve for the battery. Currently it is fixed at 80%, so I only get about 3-4 kWh from the battery each day .

You may want to review this regarding NH net metering: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/ne...e-net-metering

Depending on how your utility compensates you for solar power fed to the grid, you have very little incentive to charge/discharge your battery daily. South of your border in MA, we have full 1:1 net metering so the utility acts like a battery for our solar. I only charge/discharge the battery when there is an incentivized demand response event.

[SolTex]

On average, what is your daily consumption? Is it around 30kWh?

Our average daily consumption over a one year period is about 60 kWh per day.

[MattSl]

My average is around 40% of 53kwh, so around 21kwh-ish. Of course it varies, and I only have about 5 months of statistics, but I'm sure it will be higher in the summer with AC running far longer. It's been a strange winter, where I've only run the heat pump consistently for 1 week. Dehumidifiers - run pretty constantly.

On average, my house consumes about 66kwh per day, so if there was no sun, and I didn't adjust usage, I'd deplete the batteries in a day.

[darkskies]

Very nice! On average, what is your daily consumption? Is it around 30kWh?

I only have 16kWh battery (though could expand to 32kWh in future). My big issue is getting my installer to enable the ability for me to set the reserve for the battery. Currently it is fixed at 80%, so I only get about 3-4 kWh from the battery each day .