Setting up and tuning Solar Assistant Automations

[klondike]

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Octopus

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Aims of the Automations

My aim was to produce simple Solar Assistant automations that will make use of the Solar forecast (currently only in the Beta software) to top up the battery during the overnight cheap slot such that the power imported along with energy from the solar panels leaves the battery fully charged to maximise the high return export starting a 4pm through to 7pm. That requires some knowledge of your system. If you have not read  Precursor to setting up Solar Assistant automations for SunSynk inverters already I suggest that you start with that.

Adding an Automation

In the Solar Assistant GUI click the Power tab



At the bottom of the page there is a Button named + Add Automation



Clicking that brings up



Clicking Rule Table results in a dropdown list of automations and with each permitting up to two selections for when the selected action takes place.




The Work Mode timer

This is the set of time slots and options present on the SunSynk LCD screen. Missing from this is the Solar export when battery full which I assume everyone would want once their DNO is issued. I have included it in my set of automations to ensure it is always set on.





Use timer is checked and I never alter that although it can be changed in an automation.

Each of those timeslots has a number from 1 to 6 which will be needed in some automations in addition to the Time of Day specified in the automation.

Line 1 - this is simply there because I have seen in many reports that you should start with 00:00 as running through from line 6 to line 1 may lead to problems. So I just started with 00:00

Line 2 - this is the Octopus Flux cheap import period

Line 3 - just a filler to...

Line 4 - Octopus have started offering free use hours usually from 2 til 3

Line 5 - Filler

Line 6 - Filler

SunSynk has no forced export through its GUI and the Workmode Automation which achieves that has no need of specific slots.

Should you choose you can edit this as if you were using the inverter GUI

Power I left to default.

State of Charge are all set to the maximum discharge value of 20%.
You could scrape a little extra usable capacity from the battery by lowering this in the Inverter Configuration but at the risk of shortening the battery working life which I don't consider a good idea.

None of the charge boxes are ticked.

Later amendments
I have had a number of occasions where an inverter command has not been actioned -
Example from log -
[Fri Oct 17 02:00:01] Failed to set Capacity point 2 to 95: No response
I tried issuing commands twice but that caused this annoying error -
Example from log -
[Tue Oct 21 02:04:06] Active table row changed twice in 15m00s. Suspending rule table automation for 10m00s. Consider adding a gap between table row end and next row start.

As overnight charging is pretty much essential I have for now decided to scrap the overnight charge automations and use the inverter Workmode Timer instead. I have set the capacity for my 2:00 to 5:00 slot to 100 and ticked Grid Charge.

I have queried this problem and other issues with Solar Assistant support and will update this page should there be a software update.

Cheap Rate overnight import    (now removed see above)

The automation has to be done in two individual automations and mirrors how it would be achieved through the inverter LCD screen GUI.

I kept this simple at straight 2 through 5 regardless of how long the charge will take. House load will be satisfied for the whole of that period from the grid. This is no bad thing. It is all at the cheap rate. By not taking energy from the battery this saves the unavoidable double conversion loss and marginally extends the battery lifetime.

Note that this uses Slot 2. You will need to adjust this if not using Slot 2.

Grid  Charge  (now removed see above)



Set Charge Capacity (this automation has now been modified)

This is based on the minimum import needed to avoid grid import before Solar energy starts providing for daytime load and to reach as close as possible  to 100% by the 4:00pm export slot. As solar forecasts can be inaccurate and home load can vary this will be a compromise. There will be some tweaking needed for sure initially.

There was. This is my current version. It tries to avoid the shortcomings mentioned above. It leaves charge set to 99% not 100% at the end so I can see changes in the log.




Forced Export at  high export rate (modified - latest version shown)





Some notes.
I removed some forced export code for Octopus free energy days as they seem to be changing the time regularly now.

I set Selling First three times hopefully far enough apart to not fall fail of the "row changed too often" problem and close enough together for all potential export to be completed;

The automation potentially runs for the entire slot. The solar export rate needs setting to ensure the inverter can export from full down to the desired endpoint designed to last through to 2:00am.  This is setting is covered in  https://letschat.club/index.php?topic=6087.0

Zero Export gets set at the end of the high rate export period even if it didn't complete in time.


Octopus free energy days

These two automations charge the battery on free energy days. Note they use Slot 4 in the Workmode timer



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