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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) avatar image
Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) posted

CLOSED - Dynamic ESS on Beta VRM - part 3 (use new topic please)

Update 2024-01-19: This article has been closed for further comments. The follow up article can be found here.

2023-12-6: Important note

  • In case your system setup has heavy loads (EV charger, heat pumps) in front of the Victron system, there is a chance that the total load of the system exceeds what your main fuse can handle, causing it to break. See here for more information on this.


2023-12-06: Restricting charging from grid

  • The system now determines when it makes sense not to charge the battery from the grid. Based on that, it will enforce a restriction on not charging the battery from the grid. This can no longer match all hours of the day and this fixes the bug for systems with a low sell price where the charging from the battery always got blocked.


Dynamic ESS on Beta VRM - part 3

Hereby I present another update considering the current state of Dynamic ESS and VRM.

One of the more common complaints we received was that in cases consumption- and solar-forecasting did not match the actual usage or yield, this resulted in extra grid usage by either charging from or discharging to the grid. This could result in the system to use expensive grid power on moments that the energy prices were high. Our simulations do indicate that penalizing the grid is cheaper than penalizing the battery in the long run, but that does not mean that it should be like that for every hour. Especially when the grid energy is expensive, this is most certainly not the best option.

image.png


In order to mitigate this problem, we decided to re-use the global restrictions that we already implemented to follow the German regulations, but use these at the schedule level. Whenever the buy price is considered high, we set the restriction “disable charging battery from grid” for that hour. Then comes the part of deciding when the price is considered high. At the max buy price of the day, the system enforces never to charge from the grid. The other scheduled restrictions look at more factors to determine if it makes sense to charge from the grid. If it does not make sense, it enforces that by setting the restriction.


This system became effective on Node-RED since yesterday’s v0.1.10 release and effective on beta VRM this afternoon for systems running the latest candidate release of Venus OS (3.20~30). There are still more improvements to be made and we keep working on ways to further improve the system. That being said, we almost feel ready to move the system from beta VRM to VRM. Before we do that, we still need to do a bit more testing and add these restrictions to the release feed of Venus.


For those of you who missed the original posts, and wonder what this is all about. Dynamic ESS is an algorithm that aims to minimise the costs made on the grid and battery. Please check the two previous posts on the subject for further information.

You can get started with it on beta-VRM via Settings → Dynamic ESS.

There is a concept manual. All feedback can be provided below.

Note that Dynamic ESS applies mostly to countries in Europe that work with so-called “day ahead pricing”. For fixed priced contracts, the VRM version can also be used outside these countries.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with beta VRM, you can log in through this link with your normal credentials.

A webinar about this subject has been held on the 26th of September. The recording of the webinar can be found on our YouTube tech channel: https://youtu.be/YU9jXyfM-eI


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ronaldt avatar image ronaldt commented ·

It looks like the system wants to follow the set SOC target all the time. So when I use less energy and it was predicted to be more and the SOC target was therefore lower, the system starts to dump energy to the grid. But the price is not high at the moment and I rather use thid saved energy to load to the grid when the price is higher.

The picture below shows the SOC targets. My current SOC is 47% and it seems to aim for 45%. I am hardly using energy so it ofloads with about 1500W from the battery to the grid now. When you look at the price (top left) it is clear that later in the day the price is higher and it is therefore more beneficial to save it now and use later.

schermafbeelding-2023-12-01-om-140755.png

The impact on charging the car on the prediction iis gigantic. This is the prediction after 4 hours planned charging. It totally invalidates the prediction as near the truth.

schermafbeelding-2023-12-02-om-060543.png

Between 10 and 12 there was solar energy available. The DESS decided to send it to the grid and the target SOC (24%) remained unchanged. Probably because there is not much difference in the price at that moment and later in the day. Therefore is is (with the cost of the battery taken into account) better to offload directly to the grid. But.... it is even better to store it in the battery and use it later for my own consumption. It seems that this scenario is not taken into account?!

schermafbeelding-2023-12-02-om-162351.png

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grua avatar image grua commented ·

Is there a way to parameterize the efficiency of the battery? My 48V battery, which is AC-coupled via Multiplus II, shows approx. 15% .. 20% losses from charging from the grid to being returned to AC, i.e. over all efficiency 85 .. 80%. For example 10% loss at charching from grid and again 10% loss from DC back to AC.

What level of efficiency does DESS calculate or can it be parameterized?

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Henrik Känngård avatar image Henrik Känngård commented ·

I’ve been using DESS since the start a few months now. And for most of the time it has been working fine, with a few exceptions and some behaviours which I would like to be evolved.

But the last few days it has really been working strange. When I look at the consumption forecast for the day early morning it looks like almost no consumption at all, meaning the batteries won’t charge during cheaper periods on the night. But then later in the morning the forecast change and looks normal again. But this then means all power will be taken from the grid during the day, even if the price is much higher than during the night. Is this a known bug or something you perhaps need to check up?

The things I would like to evolve is the possibility to avoid purchasing power during high prices, as it works today the system takes a certain amount of power from the battery, but if consumption is higher than forecast for some time, the system purchase power from the grid. I would rather use this power from the battery and instead use less power from the battery when consumption are lower again. Is this perhaps also something you know about/working on?

It would also be very nice to be able to control the relay(s) on the GX or other devices with the DESS, this to control high consumers like heating to only be in use when price is low.

With all this said, great work to have this function in place!

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ojack avatar image ojack commented ·

"We defined it as the hours where the buy prices exceeds ( the sell price minus the battery cycle costs )."

But this is the case everytime in Germany because my sell price is constant 7ct/kwh and i define my batterycost = 1ct/kwh. It would be the same even if i would make batterycosts to 6ct/kwh.

But i think it would have been a good idea to load the battery from 3 to 5 in the morning because it was the lowest price for today and battery is empty at the moment and very low pv forecast.

1701249013472.png

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dirk-s avatar image dirk-s commented ·

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) Thats a good step forward. Thank you for you effort.

But nevertheless Dynamic ESS doesn't work well with my installation because the consumption forecast doesn't fit well. Below a screenshot of the forecast for tommorrow:

screenshot-2023-11-29-181325.png

Why there is so low consumption forecast? Especially zero forecast for the marked hours.

I never had hours with zero consumption in the last year. Because of this the target SOC is to high and will be reached very fast and afterwards it takes all the needed energy from the Grid (undependent of the price). If the consumptions forecast would simple take the average of the last 4 weeks for each day, the result would be much better.

I have a simple installation with Multiplus 5000 II GX and 8,22 kWp SolarEdge PV on AC in with 21,3kWh Pylontech batteries. I have main consumption on AC In and some small critical loads on AC Out1 with in average 100-150Wh.

Could you be so kind and have a look on this, please? Either something is broken in my VRM installation or it works in a different way than I expect. Portal ID: c0619ab101c5

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ronaldt avatar image ronaldt commented ·

When i chsrge my car the prediction of the power usage for the day is completely wrong. The forecast predicts that my car will be on the charger the whole day. Please completely ignore the car charging into the calculations when the car is on scheduled charge. The schedule is known in Venus when a Victron EVCS is used (is it?) and therefore it is also known when the power consumption stops.
The impact of the car charging is so high that any calculation is wrong when the carcharging is taken into account into the forecast for the rest of the day.

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sarowe avatar image sarowe commented ·

Außerdem möchte ich mich erstmal für die geniale Arbeit bedanken. Ich habe seit 2 Monaten die Beta Version laufen und kaufe seit 2 Wochen über einen dynamischen Tarif Strom ein. Ich bin begeistert um es mal sehr deutlich auszudrücken.

Wie viele hier habe ich immer noch etwas Probleme große unregelmäßige Lasten, wie das E-Auto zu integrieren.

Mein Gedanke oder Anregung wäre jetzt: Eines der frei programmierbaren Relais über das ESS mit einzubinden. Das man im DESS zum Beispiel eine Bedingung formulieren könnte z.b. „Strom besonders günstig“ oder "unterhalb eines gewissen Preises" und das System schaltet dann dieses Relais. Das hätte dann auch den Vorteil, dass das System den Kausale Zusammenhang erkennt, Preis niedrig- Relais geschaltet- höherer Verbrauch.

Ich weiß nicht wie weit das technisch umsetzbar ist und soll nur eine Anregung sein.

Ansonsten macht einfach weiter

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ronaldt avatar image ronaldt commented ·

Tomorrow the energy price is zero (or below) for a long period of time. Good moment to charge the battery. But it does not....

I guess because the time window to sell the energy is limited. So it charges just enough to cover for the expected use and the energy it can feed back to the grid and end up with the same SOC as where it started?!
Having a threshold where the D-ESS always charge the battery would be useful. This can be a fixed limit (not so nice), or a calculated one based on expected energy prices from e.g. https://energie.theoxygent.nl/. This is of course a guess, but better then decide on a time window of one day as it is now.
See below the expected behaviour where the battery only charges a little bit and the price (ex taxes) is near to or below 0 for a big part of the day.
schermafbeelding-2023-12-23-om-202854.png

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ronaldt avatar image ronaldt commented ·

Does DESS save the energy for later use, or sell it to make money and then later buy it back to use it?

Today it sold everything that was left in the batteries (down to 10% SOC) and decided to buy from the grid for higher prices. The sell price was lower than the buy price later in the day.
Is this scenario taken into account?
I rather would have saved some energy from the battery to use it later in the day when the prices are higher.

schermafbeelding-2023-12-27-om-074706.png

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colin-jones avatar image colin-jones commented ·

When you "disable charging from the grid" does that still mean you power consumption from the grid if solar is less than that load, eg cloud passing over, rather than discharging the battery to make up a temporary shortfall?

I still can't enter negative export price on the VRM form.

Regards

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brainbubble avatar image brainbubble commented ·

Hi and thanks for all the effort you put in DESS…

Since approx. 2 days, I encounter that my system is not charging from grid anymore… does this maybe come from your recent changes?

Additionally tonight there was again this „no schedule available“ error…


EDIT: @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) … sorry, just read your comment to ojack‘s above. That explains also my problem.

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ojack avatar image ojack commented ·

I have a question regarding the configuration:

"First thing we need to know is whether or not you can sell back to the grid or not. If you can, you get additional questions on the power limits when selling back. This is the lowest one of either your grid connection or what your system is capable of. So if your grid connection can do 4 kWh and your system 2.5 kWh, fill out 2.5 kWh."

My system can sell to grid but only PV not from battery. The system is equipped with 3xMulti3000 and enough mppts to let them feed in 7.2kW. There are additional AC-PVs at ACin and ACout which could feed in 11.5kW. So together with the Multis the whole system could feed in 18.7kW at ideal conditions. So which value should be inserted for max. export power? The grid fusing is much higher.

1701420138377.png

Grid fusing is 3x63A so max. import power would be 44kW, correct?

In the battery section I have to set max. charge power. Is this the max. power the Multis can charge from grid (my 3xMulti3000 = 3x35A ~ 5kW) or the sum of the multis and mppts?

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jimg avatar image jimg commented ·

We have 2 x Multiplus ll 48 5000 70-50 in parallel with CerboGX. All updated to latest firmware as of 30/11/23. Grid tied system.


Using Beta VRM with Dynamic ESS, when I manually hit the buy button and the system starts to charge our US5000 batteries, VRM is only displaying the power and current of one of the inverters, so half the actual value, so 68A instead of 136A of the combined parallel units output. I think the system is charging at the full combined rate, just showing half the values.


If I hit the sell button to export back to the grid, the correct power and current values are being displayed.


If I disable Dynamic ESS and set a scheduled time to charge the batteries, the correct power and current is displayed for the combined units.

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ojack avatar image ojack commented ·

Hello @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

What do you think of the idea of adding manual correction options for the users to the forecasts?

Today is another day where both forecasts cannot be correct. And it's not the algorithm's fault.

The PV forecast doesn't fit because there is snow on most of the modules and the consumption forecast doesn't fit because there is an extraordinary amount of cooking and baking today. Another case for correcting the forecast could be for example holiday.

Maybe the forecast bars in the diagram could be made movable? Or simply a field in which you can enter something like: 12 p.m. -3 p.m. +4kWh consumption.

Best regards

Olaf

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marceldb avatar image marceldb commented ·

When I increase min SOC from 10 to 20, both on vrm and min dess soc, the battery won't charge and stays on the previous level. Only when I set DESS from Auto to Off, the battery starts charging. I have 2 installations, but only one installation has that behaviour. What goes wrong?

I use vrm dess, dvcc max charge current is 250A. screenshot-20231203-055418-chrome.jpg

screenshot-20231203-055406-chrome.jpg

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david-hruska avatar image david-hruska commented ·

I'm also experiencing an issue where the DESS plans to charge, but it hasn't charged once in the last 2 days. Now, I've initiated a forced charging to increase the SOC a bit, and it takes several minutes before it starts charging. Previously, it would start charging immediately after switching to 'keep batteries charged.' I haven't downgraded yet and I'm still on 3.20 ~ 30.

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ojack avatar image ojack commented ·

Hello,
I just saw that Tibber, for example, has an API that you can use to retrieve the purchase price. This means you don't have to enter a formula and you can use the exact price that's right for exactly that Tibber customer. This would certainly be helpful, especially for Germany where (stupidly) there are different network fees etc. for almost every village.

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ronaldt avatar image ronaldt commented ·

Using node-red.

It seems that the target SOC is leading over more sensible choices. When for some reason (e.g. less usage than expected) the SOC is higher than the target, DESS is dumping the energy to the grid although the price is bad (=low). I would rather save this energy and dump it when it is high.

I don't know how the target SOC is set exactly. But when the SOC is higher than the target SOC and the price is low, then the system should not dump the enrgy but adjust the target SOC in my opinion.

Target SOC is 50%. System SOC is 51%. It dumps the energy until it reached the 50%.

schermafbeelding-2023-12-04-om-205327.png schermafbeelding-2023-12-04-om-205340.png

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marceldb avatar image marceldb commented ·

Tonight, my car was charging at L3 at 24A (car charger is connected to AC IN), but DESS decided to fully charge the batteries from all 3 Multis. The result was that the grid current at L3 exceeded the set current limit of 25A, and increased to 32A. That was a tricky situation, because the main circuit breaker at L3 could have tripped. Usually with ESS the battery will get charged from sun power, so no problem for the main fuse, but DESS will charge from the grid as well, sometimes at full power.

It is very important that in any case the grid current will not exceed the set limit. My request is to limit the charge current so that in any case the grid current stays below the set limit, even when the load is connected at the AC in side.screenshot-20231205-012824-vrm.jpg

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m1kkel avatar image m1kkel commented ·

My data is missing since yesterday.

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ojack avatar image ojack commented ·

Hello @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

In the manual I think you have forgotten to edit this part:

1701952774319.png

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puredroll avatar image puredroll commented ·

A question re: Dynamic ESS and Octopus Savings Sessions. These are a hour or two adhoc where selling energy back to the grid can yield much higher grid price returns. Usually these are notified in advance of a few hours. Is there a way of scheduling discharge for an hour or two or does it have to be done manually using the menu selection to Sell? Thank you.

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freese avatar image freese commented ·


img-0832.pngHey, any recommendations?

What can I do to change that the system use the battery when the price at its lowest point?

Happy to read your comments.

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Fredrik avatar image Fredrik commented ·
I am still unable to get DESS as an available option in the settings menue.


The software version is 3.20~33

I use the Beta VRM

I have the EM540 energy meter that is listed as compatible.

I've scoured the internet for answers but now all the links I find even remotely linked to the problem at hand are purple and I cannot find anything more to read on the subject. It seems so available to the whole community but I still cannot get it to even show up in the system.

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andrii-podanenko avatar image andrii-podanenko commented ·

Checking in betavrm - no menu Settings - Dynamic ESS


Could be no support for multi RS 6000 yet.

Feel free to include my config to beta/alpha testers, @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

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roger-seibel avatar image roger-seibel commented ·

Confusing SoC-Handling since introduction of Dynamic ESS

I am using ESS mode 'Optimized _with_ Battery Life',
Dynamic ESS via VRM Portal _disabled_ and checked via MQTT (mode = 0),
newest beta versions

In the last years i let the Cerbo decide in increasing or decrasing the ./CGwacs/BatteryLife/SocLimit (not the MinimumSocLimit).

I sometimes corrected these values via Node-RED / MQTT in special cases:
When there is a actual high value and the next day(s) will become sunny (via SolarForcast), i reduced to e.g. 10% to get the battery empty for the next day(s). But letting the system running alone worked fine, too.

Since some weeks (i guess after 3.20~17), i cannot manipulate this value anymore, more exactly: i can set and query this value via MQTT but with no effect.

After a short time the system uses always a very high value from 'system/0/Control/ActiveSocLimit'. This value is also displayed in the VRM Portal.

When i try set 'system/0/Control/ActiveSocLimit', it is shown for a short time an then reset to the previous value eg. 75%, same after reboot of the Cerbo. This value is now read only in the Cerbo gui.

I assume the system is always overwriting 'ActiveSocLimit' with the ones from Dynamic ESS (from the ./DynamicEss/Schedule/x/soc) and then starts a forced slow charging to this high limit.

Trying to do it the old way, i disabled battery live, but then i am not able to set 'SocLimit ', only 'MinimumSocLimit '. In this case the system is discharging to this 'MinimumSocLimit' , not to 'SocLimit ', as before.
'ActiveSocLimit' is set to 'MinimumSocLimit' , not to 'SocLimit ', as before.

So my question is: Can you implement the old logic in the case of DynamicESS = off ?

It would be nice to have './CGwacs/BatteryLife/SocLimit' writable in the gui and via MQTT / Node-Red again.

Regards, Roger

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frbuceta avatar image frbuceta commented ·

Hi, I don't know if anyone has talked about this....


Here in Spain there are tariffs where the holiday comes out the price of electricity as the weekend. I have seen that I can not add this setting in the Dynamic ESS.


On the other hand, I have seen that my GX has ordered the inverter to buy electricity at 20 c€ instead of 14 c€ and being the battery at 85% (I attach some photos).


vrmvictronenergycom-installation-211570-advanced.png

vrmvictronenergycom-installation-211570-advanced-1.pngluz-tarifa-noche.png


And finally in the configuration it asks me if I have a different price on weekends and I said yes and then in the summary it says no but the price of the weekend appears.

captura-desde-2023-12-13-17-16-14.png


Greetings and thank you very much for this functionality. It is very necessary to get through the winter.

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meyo084 avatar image meyo084 commented ·

Hi, because of the fan noise during charching at night iam trying to use the "silence fan" assistant in the MP2. This results in very strange behaviour like constantly switching between "external control" and "discharging" wich looks like normal ESS mode.. has anyone else tried using this assistant in combination with DYN ESS?

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achim-gruber avatar image achim-gruber commented ·

Only one question.

is there a timeline to implement/add other options for the grid costs - like awattar/spotty/dynamic energy contracts in austria for example.

or is there any other option to do this manually.... :-)


thx.

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grua avatar image grua commented ·

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) some days ago you wrote:

"As the source for the spot prices we use the API from ENTSO-E. All EU providers base their prices on this source. (https://transparency.entsoe.eu/transmission-domain/r2/dayAheadPrices/show)"

But as far as I can see, slightly different prices are used in different countries:

Germany:
1702739251068.png


Austria:
1702739277679.png


Do you take this into account at DESS by specifying your country here?

1702739378890.png

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smejfi avatar image smejfi commented ·

Hi, Im sorry I didnt have time yet to read through all of the posts here, so Im just going to describe how the system worked for me for the past few weeks with last official version of Venus OS (3.13). Today I have breefly gone through the introduction of this thread and found out that some of the unexpected behaviour of the system might have been already fixed in the release candidate so today I switched to the version 3.20~34 and for that one the notes bellow might differ.

Im running 3 phase system with MP-II 5000VA/48V, Fronius Symo 17.5 (15 kWp installed) and 58 kWh LiFePo4 battery in Czech Republic and I have both buying prices and selling prices variable (spot). Since it is a winter and we have a big house which uses heat pump as a heat source, most of the time the system is used just to overcome the spikes of the electricity price during the day and doesnt do much with the solar power because there is very little of it, but when it does, some unexpected behaviour usually occures.

So here are listed some pluses and minuses of the system functionality that I noticed:

+ It seems that the system works well as for the figuring out when to buy from grid to battery and when to power the house from the battery instead from the grid

- In the begining I noticed that the system was sometimes discharging the battery back to the grid, which didnt seem reasonable to me (I would get it if the selling price at present was higher than the buying price at some point in the past but that wasnt even the case), so I checked the option in Dynamic ESS settings which should restrict discharging the battery to the grid, but that sadly hasnt changed much, so even though this is restricted, the system still sometimes discharges the battery to the grid and I dont know how to prevent it

- Another unexpected behavior is that even though it is pretty clear that the total consumption during the day will be much higher than the solar production and again, the present selling price is still smaller than the lowest buying price in the past e.g. 12 hours, it happens often that system uses all the energy from the battery and feeds all the solar production right into the grid although it is clear that it would be better to use solar to power the loads and if there is any solar left, store it to the battery (and dont sell it for low price to the grid). I get that this has probably something to do with the inaccuracy of the solar prediction, but nevertheless should be solved somehow. For example yesterday it happened that the battery was on 40% and for about half an hour the solar went unexpectedly to about 10 kW. Dynamic ESS sold everything to the grid low cost and used the battery to power the loads. Which wasnt so pleasant to watch, but I endured it for "science purposes" (so I could share it here and hope someone from Victron will fix it :-D ).

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andrii-podanenko avatar image andrii-podanenko commented ·

Installed on my MultiPlus-II @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

Added Standard ESS + Pylontech 5kW

Adde Dynamic ESS via BetaVRM portal

My stats are here

1 issue - no Ukraine in country list

2 issue - adding night/day tariffs slightly glitchy - by default it starts from 00:00, can't be changed
franik-comms-vrm-portal-2023-12-18-16-26-58.png

So I had to add 3 lines, which could be solved only by having 2

3 - The menu name is 'dynamic_ess'. Added comment in poeditor for proper translation and correcting a source string. ( fixed already by Michael Angelo Groeneveld )

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tuxedo0801 avatar image tuxedo0801 commented ·

Just checking the latest changes... Still works bad... Plan ist to use the battery (now), but it consumes from grid... Why?1702914375673.png1702914359249.png

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dirk-s avatar image dirk-s commented ·

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

Since some hours the controls in betavrm doesn't load. Neither on Firefox nor Edge.It shows "Connecting". Have you maintained or changed anything?


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emilleopold avatar image emilleopold commented ·

I am using DESS for app. 1-2 months. In general it works well, but I beleive that the development is not finished.

For me I have seen some strange behaviours at 20.12.2023, 04:00 - 05:40 :

1.) I write Schedule 0.soc in a influxdb database as DESS_SOCscreenshot-2023-12-20-um-174936.png

2.) Additional I have a NODE-RED implementation of DESS but set the DESS-MODE to "1". As I understand in that case the NODE-RED implementation is only for monitoring. The control is from the GX device by BETA VRM.

3.) When I look at the DESS NODE-RED DASHBOARD, the Battery SOC do not change between 0:00 and 10:00.

screenshot-2023-12-20-um-175059.png

4.) When I look at the data in Grafana, then at 04:00 the DESS_SOC change from 30% to 65% and at 04:40 back to 30%. Then at 05:00 to 40% and at 05:40 back to 30%

safari-ntail-tibber-tibber-dashboards-grafana-2023.png

Question 1 : Why is the DESS_SOC in the INFLUX DB different than the battery in the DASHBOARD. I have a 20kWh battery so 5,5kWh is app. 36%.

Question 2 : The charging of the battery starts at 04:00 / 05:00 but is finished 10 min later , even the DESS_SOC is still much higher than the battery soc (EEL_SOC). Why it do not charge the battery all the time. Because the price is at app. 20ct/kWh it should use the low price.

Thanks for any hint.

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some-user avatar image some-user commented ·

It looks like Dynamic ESS doesn't respect absorption time. I'm using 3 Quattro's in a dynamic ESS setup. It's not possible to configure a absorption time less then 1 hour in VEConfigure. I set it to 1 hour in VEConfigure but it doesn't seem to be respected.

Picture from 20 dec:
1703101637471.pngAbsorption was about 12 min then the system went back to bulk. This has various consequences:

- Batteries don't get time to balance.

- Because the tail current is still high after 12 min its impossible to find setting that will reset the Lynx shunt to 100%.

If you wan to check the setup is called "Bereklauw"

Thx for your great work!

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andrii-podanenko avatar image andrii-podanenko commented ·

So far, all seems like working for my multi-ii backup for communications in my home

https://betavrm.victronenergy.com/installation/380883/share/813a14fb

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) I love the idea of having ESS controlling my setup based on prices.


Hovever, this setup is in a cascade after the main production system, based on Multi RS Dual tracker.

https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/370388/share/c0152a83

I understand unique config I have, but would be great to have ability to switch from "Optimized" to "Keep Batteries charged" for this Multi II when there is an excess power from PV on previous Multi RS Dual tracker.

This power is "free" and would work well for savings.

If there is a plan ir solution y leveraging Node-RED for this, happy to hear suggestions

Otherwise, wanting to hear what should I be looking in Dynamic ESS specifically for this test in order to provide you proper feedback


Thank you


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m1kkel avatar image m1kkel commented ·

Hello.


I think its strange that DESS does'nt charge my battey fully up when the electriocity is almost free of charge, or at least really low priced.

Electricity prices tomorrow is free the first 6 hours (plus taxes ofcourse):

1703168873449.png

As you can see below, it plans on charge 8+6 kwh. But i have almost 40 kwh battery.

1703169033937.png

I have set target SOC to 30% because i thought that was a setting which defined how much remaining power i need to power my house loads, but it never discharges below 30%.


1703169130502.png

The forecast for tomorrow is 44Kwh so i think the logic would be to fill the battery when elctricity is so cheap?


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adj avatar image adj commented ·

Nice touch all these Christmast attribures in the portal.

First I'd like to ask if the Dynamic ESS energy energy (twice on purpose) graphic still needs work? The ones from yesterday and before are available. The today graphic keep loading. If you switch from yesterday to today and back with the arrows the yesterday graphic becomes visible today.

Due to the fact that there is no today graphic with predictions I am now looking at the advances page widgets to see the prediction. Widget Gateway - Dynamic ESS scheduled SOC (%). Yesterday evening I've seen a good prediction to load the battery to 100% since the cost was low all night. With good hopes I looked this morning and found the battery at the minimum level. In stead of going to a higher SOC the prediction was changed to the minimum SOC of 15% at 2 AM. The rest of the day the same target 15%.

Any idea how this situation could happen?

Is there a way to see what influences the prediction to make this change?

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mrstackit avatar image mrstackit commented ·

Hello,

for a while the DESS ran very well. Then I deactivated it again for personal reasons and now since I activated it again it wants to be unloaded today at €0.26 even though the purchase price last night was €0.18. The loss is greater than the benefit. Why?

1703325351648.png


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andrii-podanenko avatar image andrii-podanenko commented ·

Annoying bug when using widget on Android desktop to switch from Keep Batteries charged to ESS with Battery life(any to any actually)

It switches but after a minute rises push notification about no MQTT connection

screenshot-20231225-102449-one-ui-home.jpg


screenshot-20231225-102431-vrm.jpg


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andrii-podanenko avatar image andrii-podanenko commented ·

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

Question in this context

As we are adding battery and number of cycles to the formula, can we also add panels and hardware ( PV chargers ) to the formula.

I'm sure there is average time on market how long specific hardware is working until replaced.

Cause if we have cost of a single cycle for the lifepo4 somewhere 0.02-0.05 Euro, then similar could be added for PV chargers, cause they are working 5-10 years and there is a cost associated with using them. Same for Panels - they are loosing 10-20% in 20-30 years, which could be also calculated.

Ideally I'd like to understand from Dynamic ESS what should I invest into next, should this be battery, PV array, or just a diesel generator which has its own cost/value


Overall - looking forward to having Dynamic ESS enabled for Multi RS 6000 Dual traker. Feel free to rely on me on alpha/beta testing. I'm going to purchase 1-5 more if results would be great.

My backup system for communications only where DESS enabled https://betavrm.victronenergy.com/installation/380883/share/813a14fb

Also, I've managed to enable DESS for Multi RS in VRM, but it doesn't have ESS control yet in VRM, so the hope at least to see a graph about what source is used and when until full support added

https://betavrm.victronenergy.com/installation/370388/share/c0152a83

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joeknx avatar image joeknx commented ·

Is the correct use of the DESS dependent on the Venus OS Version?

I'm using OS v3.10 and I'm able to set up the DESS in the Beta VRM.

Are there any differences to v3.20-35?

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grua avatar image grua commented ·

Problems with DESS-Settings:

I enter a fixed the sell price for each day of the week for the hole day from 00:00 till 23:59:

1704131056771.png

But when I confirm it, the summary says from 00:00 till 00:00:
1704131225795.pngand this Warning appears:
1704131257289.png


And also when I try to change the battery costs, I can't confirm them:

1704131340948.png

My VRM Portal-ID: b827eb273733

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meyo084 avatar image meyo084 commented ·

Hello Dirk-Jan, somehow the history of consumption is not working at my site.. c0619ab38e24 could you please check this? Also a question, is my observation right that "predictate consumtion compensation" is now changed in like "normal ESS mode" ?

Thank you and all the best wishes for 2024!

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dirknie avatar image dirknie commented ·

Hi,

is there a fix release date known for the dynamic ESS? Somewhere I have seen the first days this month is timed?

Regards Dirk

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dirk-s avatar image dirk-s commented ·

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) :

In my eyes there is an issue in connection with large batteries and less forcasted consumption. If observe it for a long time now to understand the issue.

In case the battery reached the target SOC e.g. 55% in the previous hour and switched the inverter off (idle) it will not switch on again if the target SOC in the next hour is 1 percent less e.g. 54%. It will be the whole hour in idle mode also if the battery SOC is 55% and the target SOC ist 54%. There must be at least a difference of 2% e.g. 53% to switch on again. It does not sound like a big issue, but if the target SOC will be recalculated every hour and the forcasted consumption will be only 1% of battery SOC during the night, it can happens that for some hours the inverter will not switch on again. It sounds less, but hour for hour it will sum up during the night.

In this example the battery SOC did not decrease to forcasted 54% in this hour, the target SOC for next hour will be recalclulated from prior 53% to 54%. As the result the difference is still 1% and the inverter will not switch on.

Below some screenshots. The issue started in the hour 02:00 because the target SOC was reached (real comsuption was higher than forcasted). You can see the result in the hours 03:00 and 04:00. It does not start to invert again.

screenshot-2024-01-14-132555.png

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freese avatar image freese commented ·

Why?
img-1084.jpeg

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ahtih avatar image ahtih commented ·

Hi


I'm unable to configure Dynamic ESS. Enter all data and at the end I get a message "The value you selected is not a valid choice."


Any idea whats's wrong?


System

Edit

Can you sell energy back to the grid? No
Maximum import power 3 kW

Battery

Edit

Battery capacity 9 kWh
Maximum discharge power 5 kW
Maximum charge power 5 kW
Total estimated battery cycles -
Battery price -
Battery cycle costs per kWh 0.06 €/kWh

Buy prices

Edit

Buy prices type Dynamic
Energy provider country Estonia
Energy provider bidding zone Estonia
Energy provider name Elektrum
Price calculation (p+0.06)*1.22
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kudos50 avatar image kudos50 commented ·

Anyone having this ? I have this in my usage forecast every day. It is supposed to work like this and am I simply misinterpreting ?

The forecast screen and all others are + so this is the only graph this is structurally - and has been for months now.

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asiepel avatar image asiepel commented ·

I am trying to setup the Dynamic ESS but i am getting a message:

'The value you selected is an invalid choice'

I does not say wich value is invalid. I tried with different values but nothing is changing.

Maybe somebody has a solution or I am missing something. Will add a screenshot of settings and fault message.

fault message.pngsettings.png

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dirks-1 avatar image dirks-1 commented ·

Hi, by when is EV consideriation for DESS planned? I already use the latest NodeRed DESS Flow with v3.13 and it mainly meets my expectation. But sometimes it will load my EV out of the batteries, i have another NodeRed Flow which should prevent this situation due to ineffiency. If no PV is available it should always load the EV from the Grid by setting the target grid value dynamically with the load of the EV. I'm using OpenWB and expose this via MQTT as EVcharger to the VenusOS (with dbus mqtt)

But my custom EV flow seems not to fit the DESS flow. So how can i prevent to load the EV from the batteries if DESS decided to not use the grid at all?

Funny (or not) point is that i also use a MyPV ACthor9s with 9kw heater controlled by VenusOS via ModbusTCP. All of my PV surplus should go into the heater before leaving my house to the grid. Mainly this works fine.

But if i notice that the EV is charged from the batteries and stop manually the EV charging then this amount of energy seems to be flagged as PV surplus and the heater is starting to use that amount of energy from the batteries.

I would like to have an option that really NEVER any energy instead of PV surplus is going to the ACthor an never any energy is going from the batteries to the EV.

Would this be possible via DESS in the future?

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bozydarstarzyk avatar image bozydarstarzyk commented ·

Guys,

My DESS still seems not to work. I described my problem below:

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/255617/dess-not-working-at-all.html

Could you please help?

Thanks!

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kudos50 avatar image kudos50 commented ·
I was kind of hoping DESS with efficiency calculations would make a distinction between PV inverter and PV charger.

Found a buy/sell price range that would effectively result in PV inverter going directly to grid because 2 conversions + battery costs would not be beneficial whereas a single conversion + battery would be. But the schedule does not change.

The system has 2x PV inverter with 7.5kWp and 1x PV charger with 2.8kWp. If I observe behaviour I think I don't see any difference in Inverter versus Charger. It seems to treat PV as generic PV except during low SOC conditions where DC PC always charges the battery before it starts inverting. But that's not DESS I guess.

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