article

Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) posted Mar 5, '24

CLOSED - Dynamic ESS on Beta VRM - part 5 (use new topic please)

Update: 20-3-2024: This article has been closed, please use the article "Dynamic ESS on VRM" instead.

Update: 14-3-2024: Venus firmware 3.30~17 got released today, which fixes several bugs that where reported in the comments below:

Fix issue where battery was always charging at full speed if grid feed-in is set to not allowed for the installation. Now, as was already the case for all other systems, Dynamic ESS calculates the required charge rate to meet the target SOC at the end of the hour
Increase charge rate with 10% to better meet the target SOC. (much better to get there a little earlier rather than not at all)
Fix issue where PV is not used for loads when feed-in is disallowed and SOC target is 100%
Fix bug where in some case loads were powered from the grid when they could be powered from the battery.
And more Dynamic ESS improvements and bug fixes

Check https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/265862/venus-os-v33010-available-for-testing.html for the full changelog.

Welcome to the fifth and possibly final update on the progress of Dynamic ESS on Beta VRM. We anticipate this to be the last update before transitioning from beta VRM to the official release.

All signs indicate that we got the final blocking issues out of the way.

The first being the potential of tripping fuses when there were too many high loads in the system (with the BMS being one of them). This has been resolved by adding peak shaving for ESS systems with an energy meter. This allows you to set an input current as well as an export current for systems having an energy meter. The limit is applied to the whole system. You can read more about this functionality in highlight 1 in the release notes of Venus firmware V3.30~11.

Another improvement in this version is to stop using the grid when the forecast does not match the consumption. This has been resolved by adding a strategy to each schedule, allowing the system to manage these discrepancies more effectively.

Additionally, this version also introduces support for different currencies.

To ensure thorough testing and validation, we will keep it in beta for a brief additional period. Please note that, for these solutions to be effective, it’s necessary to run the latest beta feed of the Venus firmware, currently version v3.30~11, installable via Settings -> Firmware -> Online updates -> Update feed -> Beta release, check for updates, and update.

After go-live, we will continue to improve the system. Some enhancements currently in progress are:

Maximizing battery charge by the end of the day to cover consumption until sunrise.
Periodically fully charge the battery to allow balancing
Adding support for varying service fees based on the time of day
Allowing users to enter a fixed schedule for grid-battery restrictions
Supporting fixed prices that change on the half-hour instead of the whole hour
Introducing (smart) support for high-consumption loads such as EV charging and heat pumps

In case you are unfamiliar with Dynamic ESS: Dynamic ESS is an algorithm that aims to minimise the costs made on the grid and battery. Please check the four previous posts on the subject for further information.

You can get started with it on beta-VRM via Settings → Dynamic ESS. For more information on how to set this up, you can check out the manual.

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 Europe.

For those unfamiliar with beta VRM, you can log in through this link. Additionally, a webinar on this subject was conducted on September 26th, and the recording is available on our YouTube tech channel: YouTube link.

As always, we appreciate your feedback. Feel free to let us know how to improve, and thank you for being part of the development journey. To streamline communication, older posts are closed for comments, and any new feedback can be provided in this post.

When reporting a possible issue, please also mention your VRM id.

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john245 commented · Mar 05 at 05:03 PM

Not a question specific on DESS, but in my opinion the question is related to that.

Competitors are introducing battery systems that can trade on the energy imbalance market. Zonneplan is currently going to the market with this (https://www.zonneplan.nl/thuisbatterij) and Sessy is investigating the possibilities (https://www.sessy.nl/verdienmodellen-van-een-thuisbatterij/).

Is Victron Energy currently also investigation this business model for Victron System owners?

For example the Nexus generated Euro 20,41 on February 27th.

Update 05 March 2024:. Frank Energy will support trading on energy imbalance markets for a lot of Victron’s competitors. (https://www.frankenergie.nl/nl/slimme-diensten/slim-handelen).

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kudos50 john245 commented · Mar 05 at 05:34 PM

Considering the size of part 4 you probably missed the reply from Dirk-Jan:

Dirk-Jan commented

<CUT>

No, afaik we are not investigating that business model. And if we were, I could and would not disclose it here.

<PASTE>

It's an interesting topic for sure !

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john245 kudos50 commented · Mar 05 at 06:04 PM

@kudos50 I did not missed the answer, but did not want to add the update to the closed topic.

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stefan-db kudos50 commented · Mar 05 at 05:53 PM

Anyhow the DESS can easy be adapted with adding the 'onbalans timing' ; in fact this extra you get is aprox the battery cost. Without this extra is charging on low tarif & discharging in high tarif mostly not profitable. I tested this already on historical data. But selling the left over after the night (morning price peak) & what you don't need till the morning in the evening peak is for sure profitable. This what in fact I expect from DESS.

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grua commented · Mar 05 at 05:26 PM

Absolutely great! I'm particularly pleased that these two points are being implemented:

Maximizing battery charge by the end of the day to cover consumption until sunrise.

Periodically fully charge the battery to allow balancing

I will probably use DESS permanently as soon as these two, or at least the first of the two points, have actually been implemented! Thanks a lot!

I only notice two further things:

1. Grid set point is ignored when DESS is acitvated. However, I would always like to adjust slightly into the negative in order to avoid purchasing from the grid as much as possible:

I have tested values up to -150W: When DESS is deactivated, it is regulated to this value, but when DESS is activated, it is always regulated to setpoint 0W.

2. SOC-values are not shown correctly:

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ojack grua commented · Mar 05 at 06:52 PM

But the two mentioned point are not implemented yet as I understood. They are on the list after DESS is live or not beta any more.

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grua ojack commented · Mar 05 at 07:19 PM

correct, both not yet implemented, but in my opinion very important! For me, the first point "Maximizing battery charge by the end of the day to cover consumption until sunrise" in particular is an absolute must have for being able to use DESS.

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ojack grua commented · Mar 07 at 07:27 PM

Yes, for me too. I would want DESS to charge battery to 100% before selling to grid because it's every time better to use then to sell. Charging battery to maximum gives reserves for a unplanned bad day. We had an example on monday this week. Forecast was 45kWh and then the whole day thick dust so at the end Solar was only 4kWh.

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simonyoungtree commented · Mar 05 at 04:01 PM

I still have some weird things in the ESS energy graphs on beta VRM:

fyi: In my settings I have disabled the possibility to charge the battery from the grid.

See the Grid to Battery (Orange) at 10-11h and 15-16h.:

Compare the to the graph below of the same time frame: nothing from the grid going to the battery:

I think the orange part in the DESS Energy graph should have been solar (DC solar in my case, which is forced by me by setting the inverter capacity to 0 - via Node-Red). I hope it is just a visual thing and not something messing-up the calculations

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ simonyoungtree commented · Mar 06 at 01:08 PM

This does indeed look like a graphing issue. We are investigating this.

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simonyoungtree Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 07 at 08:33 AM

Having the inverter set to 0 has nothing to do with it: between 8 and 9 I had the same issue at the time the inverter was not limited.

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ simonyoungtree commented · Mar 07 at 09:06 AM

There is a known misleading assumption with the Energy graph: It assumes if there is more production than consumption, all consumption is met by production and the other way around: if there is more consumption than production, then all the production goes to consumption.This is quite an assumption but this is how DESS considers it internally, so that’s why the visuals reflect it that way. If we do not have that assumption, the energy graph would be even more complicated.

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daniel-feist commented · Mar 05 at 06:21 PM

Great progress. Are there any details on how the alogrithm works within the hours slots to adjust to actual realtime PV and usage? Is it using a set-point? I did try looking in the documentaiton, but didn't see this described.

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Juha Tuomala commented · Mar 05 at 07:55 PM

Do you plan to renew the Dynamic ESS promotion? It would be very welcome!

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marceldb Juha Tuomala commented · Mar 08 at 11:24 AM

The Multiplus prices have been decreased so much that the new price comes very close to the old promotion price.

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grua marceldb commented · Mar 08 at 03:21 PM

Correct, I currently only own one MP and am now buying two more due to the good prices!

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Juha Tuomala marceldb commented · Mar 13 at 12:19 PM

Does this apply to Quattro as well? Put my handle into response, these notifications are broken by design.

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dirks-1 commented · Mar 06 at 07:50 AM

Great progress! I'm really looking forward to the next release.

Do the enhancements also account a heater like MyPV ACthor? Of course it is just a high load for the system but the operation usecase is slightly different than a EV or heat pump.

My understanding for EV or heat pump is that they produce the high load when they need it and the ESS just need to deal with it and bring this load into account.

The MyPV heater just steps in when everything is already served as the last high load to use only PV sureplus when it would flow into the grid. But it can be improved to use it with higher efficiency. When the DESS decides to use the grid to charge the battery because of low grid costs it could also feed the MyPV heater with a settable ratio of load sharing. It could be possible, depending on the gas/oil price, that heating the water is cheaper with grid energy. The gas/oil price is always a static contract fee. So calculating it is not that difficult, i guess.

But could be also possible that selling to grid out of PV makes more sense instead of feeding the MyPV heater.

Connected via Modbus TCP, VenusOS has the possiblity to bring that into account. At the moment it is a very simple thing. Every energy what would sold to the grid is going to the MyPV device. But that could be improved with DESS a lot.

At the moment, always if DESS decides to feed the grid this load will be consumed by the MyPV device. I think this produces problems because it is then counted as internal load. So DESS is not able to sell to the grid (when the water temperature is lower as the target value of the MyPV device). I think this situation is not good for the DESS alogrithm, DESS expect to feed in but internal load happens. But if VenusOS would be aware of the device it can be included.

I'm using it in that way: https://www.victronenergy.com/live/actor_ess

Also i really would like to see the MyPV device in VRM like an EV Charger.

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dirks-1 dirks-1 commented · Mar 07 at 08:31 PM

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) any thoughts about this? I think for customers with Acthor in the system DESS will never work as expected when it does not take the device into account.

I also noticed if DESS decided to feed the grid in the morning (even when the SOC is quite low) then it will never charge the battery because of the internal load of the MyPV device what consume the energy planned to go to grid. Because of the internal load matching the PV sureplus the system thinks there is not enough energy to charge the battery. That is disturbing the algorithm a lot, i guess.

In my case there is a 9kW heater connected. So it is able to consume a lot.

I suggested to include a general heater device in dbus https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/issues/1237 with that we could bring any heating device in consideration.

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ dirks-1 commented · Mar 13 at 01:53 PM

At the moment we don't do the prediction of heavy loads well enough. That is a known limitation, but there are plans on adding better support for those. But that will require some more patience.

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dirks-1 Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 18 at 09:36 PM

Will you consider to have a special prediction for MyPV and simliar devices?

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kudos50 commented · Mar 06 at 09:58 AM

After the beta11 update the system now seems to invert the hysteresis percentage back to grid right after it was charged ?

I have my min soc set to 45% and every single morning my DC PV starts charging the battery to 47% before the inverters kick-in to invert excess DC solar to grid. The 2% gained normally gets inverted at the highest price at the end of the day.

But this morning it seems to charge and invert a bit later. Is this related to the code changes for #2 ? At first glance this result seems highly inefficient due to chemical losses and battery costs.

<edit> it seems to have stopped discharging at 46% when the next schedule started and was set to 46%. will set inverter to 0 and see if forcing additional solar charge to battery will act the same at the end of a schedule.

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kudos50 kudos50 commented · Mar 07 at 06:32 PM

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) same thing happened again today but the impact was a lot less (9:58 so only 2mins of inverting ~4kW to grid).

System first tries to charge from low soc (45%) to low hysteresis (47%) but if that value is exceeded then it starts to invert back to grid before the next full hour.

I tried replicating this during the day but to no avail. When attempted you don't have the low soc scenario and behaviour is different.

1% or 2% incorrect inverting to grid like today and yesterday doesn't seem much but for users with larger batteries and reoccurrence on every sunny DC-PV morning gains in numbers easily.

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dirks-1 commented · Mar 06 at 12:49 PM

I just noticed when i charge my EV from the grid at the time my battery is charged from PV it will show the grid consumption as grid=>battery. But that 6.29kWh was going to EV from the grid. My wallbox is behind the AC Out and i have the ev charger in vrm via dbus-mqtt.

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ dirks-1 commented · Mar 06 at 01:40 PM

This looks related to the graphing issue that simonyoungtree reported. We are investigating the cause.

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dirks-1 Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 06 at 03:54 PM

ok, i had DESS disabled at the moment if this is important information. Because it was not charging the battery. SOC was at 17% in the morning and i collected more than 40kWh today, i guess because of my issue with MyPV ACthor i described beyond at another post.

Additionall information: It was not 6.29kWh to EV as seen here. So there is not only a graph thing but also counting.

Wouldn't it be possible to include grid to evcs and pv to evcs and battery to evcs to energy graph and to the EVCS tab?

Another edit:

My OpenWB counted 6,31 kWh at this charging process. So the EVCS counted less but in the engery graph it is correct.

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ronaldt commented · Mar 06 at 01:24 PM

It seems that Target SOC still has high priority and is not flexible when circumstances change. There is more sun then expected and PV brings 6000+ Watt. But target soc is reached and excess is sold to the grid. But at this moment the grid price is low. So I rather have this excess in my battery (even better my car but my Victron EV charger on auto does not want to start, but that is another challenge).
I presume this is unwanted?

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ ronaldt commented · Mar 06 at 01:38 PM

I am unable to check it on your system, but am I right in assuming that you are running 0.1.14 with and imported the latest flow? I mean the one that looks like this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/victronenergy/dynamic-ess/main/doc/img/dynamic-ess-flow.png

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ronaldt Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 06 at 06:56 PM

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) Thanks for the reply.

I was running on Auto (not node red). Installed 0.1.14 but missed the new flow. I have installed the new flow now and configured the node. Switched to node-red again and will check what happens in the next days when the sun starts shining.

System is: Dynamic ESS - c0619ab2e756 (NL) - Node-RED. Please have a look to see what happens.

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ronaldt ronaldt commented · Mar 07 at 09:31 AM

To better understand what the system decides I would like to understand the graph below. I think it is only showing the buy and sell price, and it is not taking into account the efficiency of the system (90%) and the cycle cost of the battery. The conclusion that you sell at the wrong moment because later you buy for a higher price can not be made solely on the basis of what this graph shows. Is this correct?

My system sells PV at 11:00 for € 0,212 and plans to buy at 22:00 for € 0,24.
But if I would store PV in the battery I have to take into account 10% loss and € 0,01 ct/Kwh cycle cost. And therefore it decides to sell at 11:00 ?????

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simonyoungtree commented · Mar 07 at 08:19 AM

DESS ignoring Active SOC limit (45%) set by Battery Life, causing charging from grid to battery the hour after.

From the DESS Energy graph, you can see the consumption (car charging) being fed from the battery and while doing so going through the bottom limit:

Whether it was smart to dump the battery at that time anyway, given the much higher prices a few hours later is questionable:

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peter-neuhoff commented · Mar 07 at 10:26 AM

Hello,

something I noticed which is strange behaviour that DESS is start charging the battery from the grid if the solar forecast is not met. THis even happens to peak energy pricings. Anyway to stop this behaviour. from my perspective it would be much more beneficial if DESS is simply adjusting the battery usage for upcmoing forecasted demands rather than charing to highest prices just to be able to provide energy later to maybe even lower grid prices...

Best regards

Peter

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ronaldt peter-neuhoff commented · Mar 07 at 02:59 PM

To me it seems that the target soc is like a holy grail. It must be the result. I also see it the other way around. A lot of PV is available (yeah!), but half of it is dumped to the grid at a low price because it is not needed to make the (low) target soc.

And I much rather have my PV energy in my car. But it just doesn't start charging and just makes somebody else happy with my energy. First I have to make the minimum soc for the EV charger to start. But even then it doesn't start. Apperently because the system is steering on target soc and sends my energy to the grid or the battery, but never to my car.

I will keep monitoring. But I am monitoring with a lot of guestimations cause I do not know how it is supposed to work.

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samurai ronaldt commented · Mar 11 at 04:34 PM

This was a concern already posted on https://github.com/victronenergy/dynamic-ess/issues/96

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gloitom commented · Mar 07 at 02:31 PM

v3.30~13

Still loading peak from the grid

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christoph007 commented · Mar 07 at 08:54 PM

DESS is really exciting. Once all the bugs have been fixed, it will be a really great thing.

Today I aborted another test (v3.30-13) because the behavior is inexplicable and illogical to me: instead of charging the battery as fully as possible with the first photovoltaic surplus, the battery should only be filled a little late in the day and discharged to a minimum SOC of 15% around midnight, as planned by DESS. According to the forecast, the charge level should then miraculously jump from 15% to around 50% after midnight and thus cover further demand during the night. Which miracle should fill the battery at midnight?

Why isn't the battery charged as fully as possible as early as possible during the day? The forecast with charging in the afternoon would also not have been possible due to changes in the weather. I canceled the DESS test in the morning and will now probably get through almost the entire night until sunrise and not just until midnight.

Am I doing anything wrong or dont I understand the logic behind DESS or is there a bug?

Kind regards.

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Leon Backbier commented · Mar 08 at 11:02 AM

I am seeking guidance to understand an issue with my Victron energy management system. I've observed that despite the electricity prices being negative, which should ideally lead to my system charging the batteries, it is instead selling the excess solar energy back to the grid. This is puzzling, considering the system should be incentivized to store the energy under these pricing conditions.

Attached are the screenshots from my system's dashboard. As you can see, the grid is showing a negative draw (indicating that energy is being sold back), and the battery state of charge is at 19%, with the system actually discharging instead of charging. The PV inverter is generating 4543W, which seems to be ample for charging.

The second screenshot shows the energy consumption and solar production data, which also suggests that there is enough solar energy being generated that could be stored.

Could this be an issue with my settings, or is there a possible fault in the system that is causing this counterintuitive behavior? Any insights into settings I should check or adjustments I should make would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all in advance for your time and support.

Best,

Leon

Yesterday it sold also amost all my solar energy, for now i switched off DESS and charged my car to get most out of the pricing and solar

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ Leon Backbier commented · Mar 10 at 06:53 PM

Despite of what the provider says, the prices were not negative. Fill out the price in the formula and you still get to pay for grid usage.
The same goes for selling when the provider claims it to be negative. You still get money for it.
The algorithm calculates with the prices that come out of the formula.

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Leon Backbier Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 11 at 06:46 PM

Thanks dirk jan but why selling to earn only the taxes and buying an hour later. Price difference is huge.

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stefan-db commented · Mar 08 at 04:26 PM

During some export testing today I noticed that the target export power wasn't reached. Reason battery temperature was only 15°C so the BMS was limiting the output currect. Maybe it would be idea to have a relay output to start x-time before planned charging/discharging to preheat the battery (like EV's also do). Otherwise big chance planned charging or export shedules will not run complete as planned.

What do you think @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ?

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ stefan-db commented · Mar 10 at 06:56 PM

Nice idea. I'll put it on the wish list.
Do note that you can already do that via Node-RED.

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stefan-db Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 11 at 08:03 AM

Node red is ok but how to get the timing off large planned transfers?

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ stefan-db commented · Mar 11 at 11:19 AM

You should be able to get those via either the victron-dynamic-ess node or the victron-vrm-api node.
But I do admit. It will take some effort to make this working.

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juelo commented · Mar 08 at 07:49 PM

I noticed the following behavior. during the day, buy price were low (~19ct) and during a period of no sun battery was used to drive the loads.
But at evening buy prices will be high (~29ct).
So from my opinion it would be better to feed load from grid during low prices and use battery at high prices in the evening?

I am on beta v3.30~11 and ESS assistent is up to date.

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Andi commented · Mar 10 at 07:48 AM

Hello @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)
Yesterday and today, the electricity price is at 16-17 cents. Rain is forecasted for the next 2-3 days. Why doesn't DESS plan to charge the battery at 16/17 cents?
Andi

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ Andi commented · Mar 11 at 09:13 AM

At the moment the system looks max about 36 hours into the future (if the new day ahead prices get in at 12:00). We also currently only take the solar irradiance forecast into account for the calculations.
The system does not make predictions on day ahead pricing (which is also affected by wind).
Adding that in as a factor will complicate debugging decisions of the system and probably won't add much. But we might investigate it in the future.

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Andi Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 12 at 07:09 PM

Thanks

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Andi Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 16 at 10:29 PM

Hiho
I have now completely disabled DESS and am using a Node-RED flow with a weather forecast to also charge my battery with cheap electricity when bad weather is predicted. I think this is a very important point. That's exactly why I use Tibber. The prices at Tibber are already available today at 1:00 PM for tomorrow.

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ahtih commented · Mar 10 at 12:32 PM

Today DESS almost disabled solar power and charged from grid. This is not normal.

Had to disable charger to use solar. Is it possible to limit SOC % from grid to leave room for solar? Sell to grid is disabled.

About to install EVCS next week and this behaviour would make Auto mode for surplus solar useless.

MP-II charger enabled

MP-II charger disabled

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ojack ahtih commented · Mar 10 at 01:02 PM

Are you sure this is a command from DESS? Did you switch off DESS to check this?

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ahtih ojack commented · Mar 10 at 01:19 PM

To be honest no. But from DESS schedule I saw that DESS planned to charge battery to 100% and for some reason in the end it preferred grid over solar when battery was 99%

Too late to take screenshots from planned schedule.

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ ahtih commented · Mar 14 at 08:42 PM

With the 3.30~17 release we've added a fix that should fix this:

Fix issue where PV is not used for loads when feed-in is disallowed and SOC target is 100%

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ojack commented · Mar 10 at 06:32 PM

Hello @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) , the forecast for the next three days looks pretty optimistic. At Wetteronline.de there are only 3 hours of sunshine and in VRM 100kWh from 20kWp. Something doesn't add up.

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sarowe ojack commented · Mar 11 at 06:04 PM

Ja das ist mir gestern auch aufgefallen und hat sich heute auch bestätigt. 17 kwh prognostiziert und 3,2 kwh Ertrag tatsächlich geerntet.

Ich habe auch manchmal das Gefühl die Wettervorhersage müsste bei der Solarprognose stärker gewichtet werden.

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axel-koning commented · Mar 11 at 11:53 AM

Hello, I have a little alarm sign at the status screen on the Cerbo. Looked into VRM: no active alarms, Looked in the Cerbo: no notificatios. Put the multiplus out and on: it w'ont disappear.

Put the BMS out and on. no change.

Where can I find this errorcode ?

Running version 3.30~13

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ axel-koning commented · Mar 11 at 12:29 PM

That seems to be a bug in Venus. Thanks for noticing it. I'll pass it on to the developer that can fix it.

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axel-koning commented · Mar 11 at 03:16 PM

Hello, I am missing the little button in VRM from DESS (buy, sell, off) in the top right corner of the VRM screen. Tried to claer cache and diffrent browsers but no change. When I put the slider DESS off and again to on then its apears shortly and goes away again.

with regards, Axel

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ axel-koning commented · Mar 11 at 04:10 PM

It looks like your site is having troubles connecting to VRM. You see the "Verbinden..." in the screenshot. It needs two way communication to be active in order to use the controls.

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axel-koning Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 11 at 04:56 PM

Hoi Dirk-Jan, connection is good (every 30 sec) no error in VRM-online menu on the GX.

Still no DESS button and no pop up menu (buy, sell, off, etc). two way communication is also on. with regards, Axel

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axel-koning Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 11 at 05:03 PM

may be to do with the performance issues ?

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ axel-koning commented · Mar 11 at 06:16 PM

It should show that it last updated "realtime". Which is does now. I also get to see the controls now as well when checking your site. Not entirely sure what caused it, but I doubt it had to do with the performance issues.

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axel-koning Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 11 at 06:09 PM

Found it: In VRM (Beta) in settings-general slider realtime set to on. Solved.

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ahtih commented · Mar 13 at 05:56 AM

Solar irradiance forecast for today is 3 times less than yesterday but DESS still thinks that there will be more production (6,0kWh) than yesterday (5,8kWh). It doesn't make sense. Or what am I missing? Forecast for yesterday was almost spot-on. id 48e7da86cd8b

Solar irradiance forecast Solar production forecast for today

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ ahtih commented · Mar 14 at 02:02 PM

This is indeed an issue that we are working on resolving. If you encounter it again, please also include a screenshot of the 6kWh forecast. I think you did try to do that, but for some reason I don't see the forecast.png image.

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ahtih Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 15 at 08:00 AM

I'll try to keep an eye on it and let you know. Didn't take screenshot of whole forecast. forecast.png only shows current total (0,1kWh) and forecasted total (6,0kWh) but not detailed information.

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gloitom commented · Mar 13 at 06:46 AM

v3.30~15

Still the same issue, DESS is throttling production of pv inverter

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/265862/venus-os-v33010-available-for-testing.html?childToView=266052#answer-266052

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ gloitom commented · Mar 14 at 01:35 PM

This seems to be related to https://github.com/victronenergy/venus/issues/1175. Can you add your findings to that issue?

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stefan-db commented · Mar 13 at 08:26 AM

Protocol continues having problem :

Current situation :

SOC = 10% (= minimum)

Forecasted consumption till 24h = 6.1KwH

Forecasted production till 24h = 7.9 KwH

Result till 24h there is a theoretical left over off 1.8KwH

DESS planning = injecting 1.8KwH in grid during production time

BUTT

From 24h till production next day is higher then consumption there is a need for 1.58KwH & this won't be there annymore. We started on min SOC and will end on min SOC at 24h.

Conclusion : grid export should be blocked!

Any export is blocked if (Sum consumption untill next day production is large then consumption) >= (forecast production in the same period + safety margin)

Quiet sure if you add this in 99% off the cases DES will work correct. Weak point stays off course that the predictions must be correct but rechecking the condition every hour will correct a lot.

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ stefan-db commented · Mar 13 at 03:32 PM

Making predictions that always come into fruition is unfortunately impossible. So that is something that we need to live with.
But we've put "Maximizing battery charge by the end of the day to cover consumption until sunrise" high on our todo list to match the reality as much as possible.
The solution of simply blocking grid export might work in your case. For other users the solar production will exceed the battery space (some users have small batteries and large solar arrays), so they won't be happy if we do that.

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grua Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 13 at 06:24 PM

"Maximizing battery charge by the end of the day to cover consumption until sunrise" high on our todo list

Yes!!!

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ojack Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 13 at 06:44 PM

Maybe blocking any export if SoC is under a user defined limit.

Like a feed-in minSoC.

For node red. Is the parameter 'can I sell to grid' editable in NodeRed?

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stefan-db Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 14 at 08:53 AM

Then maybe just put target SOC end off the day simply @90% or more. Then you maximise selfconsumption automatic. In the case there stays to mush energy in the battery when sunrise is there selling can be done in the morning as well (to make space for storing energy when the prices are to low to export). Prices are high in morning 7-8h & in the evening 19-20h.

By the way large solar array & small battery is a hardware configuration that is not ideal configured for these dynamic systems. Battery must minimal be able to cover the day consumption ; if you want to optimise injection price battery must be a lot larger otherwise doesn't make sense.

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ojack stefan-db commented · Mar 14 at 09:14 AM

Just increasing target SoC could lead to uneconomical charging from grid if there is not enough PV to reach the target.

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Jeroen Peters commented · Mar 13 at 05:54 PM

Firstly, great work! Very happy with DESS so far.

A few questions regarding system efficiency:

- Is the current RTE used by DESS still 85%? Looking at the Multiplus 2 efficiency curves for the charger and inverter that seems a bit too high in most cases for energy arbitrage.

- Would it be possible to expose the round trip efficiency in the VRM interface?

- Would it be possible to use the full efficiency curves for the charger and inverter? So taking into account that slow charge/discharge is sometimes more beneficial due to efficiency gains?

- Is AC charging from grid and DC charging from MPPT handled differently efficiency wise by the optimization algorithm?

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ Jeroen Peters commented · Mar 14 at 07:27 AM

At the moment it is indeed set to 85% (it is stored on the dbus under com.victronenergy.settings, path /Settings/DynamicEss/SystemEfficiency (and easiest to read/adjust using the custom Victron nodes in Node-RED).
It is likely to be exposed in VRM at some point in an advanced settings section. But at the moment that is not too high on the list of things to do, so if you don't want to wait for that, I'd go the Node-RED route.
The same goes for using the efficiency curves from the charger and inverter. It would be real nice to use those, but at the moment we are not working on that. Most of the data can probably be retrieved using the https://flows.nodered.org/node/victron-vrm-api node.
And lastly, we handle charging AC and DC charging the same right now. But that is also a point on our (long) todo list.

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ojack Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 14 at 08:07 AM

By the way. The DESS Parameter 'max. charging power' is the base to calculate the timeslots for charging the batterie, correct? So it should be set to for example 5kW at a system of 3xMulti3000 because this is the max. charging power from ac/grid.

But if the system has additional DC mppt Chargers the DESS then limits the charging to 5kW too. Even if AC+DC could give much more PV Power. But setting the parameter for example to 5kW AC + 4kW mppt = 9kW would leed to problems if DESS wants to charge at night and calculates with 9kW and only gets 5kW.

Or did I understand something wrong here?

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ ojack commented · Mar 14 at 02:07 PM

That is correct. And there is definitely room for improvement and adding some more advanced settings here. Though, as the system does recalculate the schedule each hour, it probably won't make too big of a difference. The night time prices tend to not change too much; it still has time to make up for charging less as intended in most cases.

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ojack commented · Mar 14 at 02:24 PM

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) Can I edit this parameter depending on my actual SoC via NodeRed? I would like to try to allow feed in only if SoC > xy %

I could not find it or searched the wrong nodes.

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ ojack commented · Mar 14 at 09:22 PM

This is indeed possible, but not supported. You could use the custom output node to write the restriction to `com.victronenergy.settings`, path `/Settings/DynamicEss/Restrictions`. Valid entries are:

0 = No restrictions
1 = No exporting from battery to grid
2 = No importing from grid to battery

Update: That might not be the one that you circled. Alternative is to write to the currently active schedule. Same service, path: `Settings/DynamicEss/Schedule/0/AllowGridFeedIn`. Valid entries are:

0 = Not allowed to feed into grid
1 = Allowed to feed into grid

If you use the first suggestion, you could also use the `/Settings/DynamicESS/Schedule/0/Restrictions` path for setting the restrictions _only_ during that hour; perhaps that is the safer option.

As mentioned, this is not supported use of the system. The paths with the schedule in it will get overwritten automatically each schedule update (hourly). In order to get it to work, you might want to write the value after it has change. If you set an custom input node that listens to changes on the field, you would be able to change it to your need most quickly.

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ojack Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 14 at 11:57 PM

Thank you very much, I actually meant the second option and will try writing '0' in the schedule until the battery is full enough. I'll let you know, but it could be next week.

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Ants Kosmos commented · Mar 14 at 03:40 PM

Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

Please set in Estonia battery usage one hour earlier. Us day electricity day tariff started at 7:00 and ended 22.00. Weekdays. 7.00 is is a strategically important time. People wake up to go to work, and that's when electricity is used the most in the morning.

The biggest change concerns the night transmission fee. It is undoubtedly positive for the customer that the time of use of the nightly, or cheaper transmission fee, will be extended by one hour on weekdays and will be valid all year round from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Also, in the future, the cheaper transmission fee will apply 24 hours a day, in addition to weekends, on national holidays from Monday to Friday.

https://www.elektrilevi.ee/en/uudised/avaleht/-/newsv2/2022/02/18/1-martsist-pikeneb-elektrilevi-kliendile-soodsama-oohinna-kasutamise-aeg-ja-lisanduvad-uued-vorgupaketid

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ Ants Kosmos commented · Mar 14 at 08:34 PM

Thanks for reporting. Can you tell me the vrm id of your installation so I can check where the cause lies?

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thiemoh commented · Mar 15 at 08:03 AM

Hello team,
I'm curios why my system plans to not charge the battery more with Dynamic ESS Active:
Actually currently he doesn't want to charge the battery and only feeds in.

VRM ID: c0619ab1f6b5
I configured it yesterday evening (Tibber dynamic price for buying and quite low price for feed in). As I have some Server equipment my battery needs a minimum of 45% at 00:00 to be full enough to not use grid during night and in the morning beeing at ca. 15% which is my SoC lower limit.
Lateron I'll update the Multiplus and install ESS 18c and see if that changes anything.

Additionally there might be an issue with the future price, as price for the next day is published roughly at 13:00 for the next day thus maybe tempering with proper calculation.

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gloitom thiemoh commented · Mar 15 at 09:24 AM

v3.30~17

same here, not loading anymore, with activated DESS.

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daniel-feist commented · Mar 15 at 09:19 AM

Thougt I would download latest Cerbo firmware and give DESS another go. It's still making weird decisions though.

Why would it not charge battery from 3-5am @ 7.5p/kWh (for use once cheap rate ends) rather than the 8kWh @ 30p/kWh from the grid between 5-8am?

VRM ID: c0619ab38079

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ daniel-feist commented · Mar 15 at 11:23 AM

Thanks for reporting. That indeed looks wrong. At the moment we haven't been able to find the cause for this. Can you leave DESS on for at least one more day so we can gather some more data? The plan for tomorrow seems to be not to do this.

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daniel-feist Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 16 at 10:56 AM

I think I worked out the reason! I'm pretty certain that consumption is from my car-charger which is on AC-in. In ESS configuration I have "Self-Consumption From Battery: Critical Loads Only" set. Given this, this behaviour does make sense and I would say is correct. If I didn't want this I should change this setting. (this also explains why this wasn't in the plan I guess).

I've been running DESS for just over a day now and it seems to be running much better than before in terms of dealing with the realities of actual usage/consumption. Is there a description somewhere of how it is doing this? Is it using a grid-setpoint and/or import/export limits?

In terms of other feedback:

1) It is not charging battery to 100% once a day, which would be ideal. Maybe it would if I enabled battery-life though?

2) My overnight import is 7.5p/kWh and my export rate (all day) is 15pkWh. Even though my battery cost is set at only 0.01 €/kWh if makes no attempt to make any profit from this difference in tarriff. I know you are considering efficiency, but still, there should be profit.

3) It is great that during the day is does no put all PV production to battery if it knows there is already sufficient SoC for the evening. I wonder though, is it using a buffer above the forcast amount for this? Because what is not ideal is if you use a bit more electicity in the evening than forcast, and then it starts importing.

4) I still need to artifically reduce my charge rate from 11kW -> 5kW to ensure that DESS will gently charge battery over the whole cheap period. If I leave charge rate at 11kW it does this, which is not ideal either for battery or for efficiency:

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daniel-feist daniel-feist commented · Mar 17 at 02:57 PM

I spoke to soon. Doing weird stuff again:

1) Hardly charged battery on overnight cheap rate, then discharged 2.6kWh to grid 5-6am, only to import again from 5-9am.

2) Whe the sun finally came at at 2pm, rather than charge the battery to have cheap power for the evening it was exporting it all and planning to use the grid in the evening.

This is a lot worse that scheduled overnight charge and ESS, the idea is that it should be better. Turned it off at 14.45.

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dirk-s commented · Mar 15 at 12:01 PM

@mvader (Victron Energy)

I more often get the below error message in VRM regarding DSS. What's the reason for this? I often oberserve it after Firmware Update of GX. An additional switch off and on of DESS in VRM seems to clear it. Is it on your side or on my side? ESS assistant of MP is already updated.

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ dirk-s commented · Mar 15 at 12:19 PM

I haven't seen this error often before. I was just searching for the cause when it cleared. I'll keep an eye on it.

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dirk-s Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 15 at 12:35 PM

@mvader (Victron Energy)

thanks. Nearly every time it happens directly after Venus Firmware Update.

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grua Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · Mar 15 at 08:09 PM

Also had this after last Venus OS update

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david-hruska commented · Mar 15 at 10:25 PM

Hello, I noticed that the battery charging schedule is often not fulfilled. In the attached photos, there is a day when DESS was supposed to charge the battery from solar excess all day. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo from the morning. In the end, it hardly charged from solar panels at all, but only from the grid. Yesterday, I upgraded the FW to version 3.30~17, and today DESS behaved very well. Could it be that the issue is already resolved?

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emilleopold commented · Mar 17 at 12:32 PM

DESS do not feed to grid when battery is full.

I am using DESS for several months and in general it works fine.

Now I found a problem and may be it is related to DESS :
- I am from Germany and here it is not allowed to feed battery power into the grid, if you buy batterie power from the grid. But i can feed solar power to the grid. Therefore I have disabled sell to grid in the DESS configuration.
- Now I have seen several times that, if the battery is full and DESS wants to keep it full (DESS final SOC is 100%) the output power of the MPPTs is reduced to a very small value.
- If the battery is not at 100% then the output power of the MPPTs is again maximum and charge the battery.

I have made in NODE-RED a logic to switch to SELL Mode (DESS MODE = 3) when the battery SOC is > 99% and switch back to AUTO Mode (DESS MODE = 1) if the battery SOC is < 98%. Now the MPPTs output power keeps the maximum and I feed into the grid.

Question : Is this the wanted behavior or do I need to change any configuration ?
I do not want to sell battery power to the grid, but I want to sell the maximum solar power to the grid.

Thanks for any information.

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ojack emilleopold commented · Mar 17 at 01:58 PM

You need to check at section system that you can feed into grid. And you should enter your sell price at the section sell price.

And at section battery you need to check 'do not feed from battery to grid'.

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grua ojack commented · Mar 17 at 04:05 PM

No, if I remember correctly, it was the same for me, some days ago:

Sell energy to the grid: activated

Discharge battery to the grid: deactivated

At SOC 100%, the MPPT is regulated down when DESS is activated. As soon as DESS is deactivated, the MPPT regulates up again and feeds into the grid, as it should be.

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) I think, that's a bug

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gloitom commented · Mar 19 at 08:30 AM

v3.30~21: consumption forecast wrong

Since my system went live, I have never had a nighttime consumption of less than 250W, typically 300W.

Nevertheless, the forecast regularly (every day for some time) manages to predict 0 consumption.
There are no large household atypical consumers.

Is it just my system that has this behavior?

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Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy) ♦♦ gloitom commented · Mar 20 at 09:25 AM

Thanks for reporting. We are aware that there still needs some extra work to be done (which is ongoing) on improving the forecasting.

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andrii-podanenko commented · Mar 19 at 08:41 PM

Using DESS since the very beginning.

Seems like working for me. Thank you.

What I have lack of - would be great to have "Keep batteries charged - 0 price" or add ESS modes prices during specific periods during a day.

Example - I have AC in for my DESS from another Solar setup. I'm switching from "Optimized without Battery life" to "Keep batteries charged" when there is a solar excess on AC in 1.

DESS is not showing this timeframe has 0 cost , it calculates based on my DESS fixed prices table data. Which is not correct for the graph.

On above graph - arrows show bars, that must become "economy"

Above in the red square - "Keep batteries charged" mode, forced by me via NodeRed, cause 230V on AC in 1 - excess solar from previous system in cascade.

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

Previous system in cascade just for the reference

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

Technically , I see this as adding column for mode's price in DESS table

This would be helpful.

Thank you @Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)

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ronaldt commented · Mar 20 at 10:29 AM

@Dirk-Jan Faber (Victron Energy)
After updating to release 3.30 (not beta) and installing the v510 on the GX (including New Assistant) I get an error on VRM. "Gateway - Dynamic ESS error code: ESS functionality not available"
After upgrading (two days ago) to 3.30~18 I already got an error "Dynamic ESS error code: No matching schedule available". But after a restart ot the Cerbo this seems to be gone (although I didn't see it in the graph on VRM.
I also updated Node-Red version to 0.1.17.
I am not able to see the dess dashboard anymore via the proxy since about one week. It just doesn't load anymore.
And I am not able to see the node-red directly on Cerbo (venus.local:1880/dess) because I get an error: site can not be reached. Where venus.local is my local ip. Just going to the ip brings me to the console.
So I am going into the blind right now. The first thing I like to fix is the Dess is working again. Thanks for any help.