"Consumption Issues" with Solis Hybrid + Plytontech batteries + Eastron monitoring

[AvengerUK]

Hi All,

We've recently had storage fitted to our array - and for the last few nights we've enabled grid charging in off-peak hours.

During non-grid charging hours, everything seems fine (as far as we can tell) - nothing abnormal when it comes to usage.

However during charging hours (and exactly mirroring them from what I can see - not an expert at using the dashboard yet!) - Grid consumption is a lot higher than the battery charging usage, which is because the home consumption is reporting high also. Nothing is in use during this time - EV was also un-plugged.

Example from the 27th below -

From the report itself - it states 6.5kw was imported from the grid during this charge - of which 3.7kw was reported to be to the battery, with house consumption at 3.1kw

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The same pattern was observed on the 28th - where house consumption increases with the charge only.

Looking at my suppliers dashboard for electricity for the 27th - its reporting 2kw being used in total for the day.

(readings for today 28th not yet available, although the Solis dashboard states I've imported 5.3kw so far and used 4.8kw - which I suspect will again be a lot higher than what is reported to the supplier)

--

I have had a firmware update done since the above test, which has reduced the amount the "phantom usage" (approx. ~600w during charge), and the installers have also checked a few other solis users (different setups, but with batteries/off-grid charging) - and see the same pattern.


Has anyone experience the same issue?

[Rade]

A bitter story about this stuff. Sorry.

We had gone that route at first with the "Generac Incentive Program" where our batteries would feed back to the grid "off peak". Supposedly, it was to happen no more than 60 times in a given "season", in our case, a season was from May 1 to Sept 30. We did the math, that came out to one night in 3 that they would "control" our system and pump the stored energy back to the grid. We COULD have lived with that. Also, during that time, Generac graciously (read: sarcasm) lowered out low-end battery depletion range (when the inverter kicks back from battery to grid) from 30% to 20%, and then discovered they would begin sucking the life out of our batteries right after sunset. They did this FOUR NIGHTS IN A ROW, two of the nights were during BAD STORMS in our region (BTW, their "Outage Guard" never kicked on to "protect" our house). Overnight, our house would then have to draw power from the grid, and then we would have to wait 2-3 hours for the panels to recharge the batteries, all while the house was pulling power from the grid during morning peak. .

I blew a gasket, seriously, after raising the issue with Generac. Their response was "You clicked the OKAY button when you signed up. We can do this WHENEVER WE WANT WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. We consider batteries depleted to 20% to be sufficient to power your home during an outage. Your only option is to withdraw from the program. Oh, and you have NO LEGAL RECOURSE." I unsubscribed from the "Generac Incentive Program" - I felt scammed. When I signed up for the program, we were of the impression it was like a rebate program for buying all their stuff. It was not. I also did the math on the amount of power they sent back to the grid with what the house used, we would have come out still paying an electric bill for $4 a day of power. I was SO livid that I almost got to the point of suing the local installer to come and get all the Generac stuff out of our house. But I did not. After I withdrew from the program, their nightly dibbling into our system stopped immediately and I was able to regain control of the inverter, and able to watch our energy credits go back up. I got a real fast education on inverter control management and learned when to swap from "Self Supply" to "Clean Backup".

It left me with a VERY bad impression of Generac as a company. But the PRODUCT is superb and the local service teams are excellent. THAT was the saving grace.

So after all of that said - what you are going through sounds about right. Your batteries are being deplete back the grid, your home then can't pull from the batteries again until you recharge them, and hey, your house will be using power during peak until either you solar can kick in or your batteries can subsidize the power used in the house.