In addition to this it seems that with battery life setting you are able to set when you want your batteries to discharge. How would I go about setting them to discharge between 12am and 6am for x% and then fall back to grid?
asked
What is the difference between ESS mode - Optomized (with BatteryLife) and Optomized (without BatteryLife)
BatteryLife is a longer term monitoring of the state of charge of your battery pack. You set a minimum discharge limit of your pack - useful for allowing a grid failure, and the algorithm adjusts the active state of charge based on the previous days.
If the state of charge does not reach 85% in a day, the active limit will increase by 5%. If the state of charge exceeds 95% in a day, the active limit will decrease by 5%. This will make sure your battery pack is not left in a discharged state for long periods of low solar output.
To discharge your battery to a certain percentage at a certain time is possible by using the Generator Start Stop feature, but why do you need to do that? For most use cases, setting ESS with BatteryLife will get the most out of the system with the least fuss.
Thanks for the information, is it as simple as just changing it in the menu or are there additional settings that needs to be changed within the submenu or when this gets turned on. Currently my setup (that was not set by me) is optimized without battery life.
In addition to the 5% adjustment, there is a more important side effect of turning on battery life, in the morning when you have discharged the battery to either the desired minimum SoC or whatever it is at when solar charging commences, BatteryLife has a major effect on how battery recharge takes place.
TRUE ESS systems with a PV Charger and a PV Inverter:
When BatteryLife is on, the PV Charger will charge the battery and the PV Inverter will provide AC power, the PV Charger power is not inverted to AC to power the loads, until the battery SoC has reached ...??...
So if you are using 600W load first thing in the morning and the PV charger is generating 200W and the PV Inverter is generating 250W, only 250W will go to power the loads, the 200W goes straight into the battery when battery life is on.
If you select optimised without battery life, the PV Charger power is added to the PV Inverter power and inverted to AC making the system self sufficient earlier in the morning, so you would get 450W generation and 150W from the battery (if it has any power left) or the Grid, this may factor into your decision
The rationale (or at least the victron justification) behind using battery life goes away if you use scheduled charging to ensure that the battery gets fully charged at the end of each day. using scheduled charging is a much better approach
The decision to use battery life then rests entirely on how you want the PV Charger power output to be used in the morning, to invert its power, or use it to charge the battery (which means taking more grid power)
This starts to become important if you are delaying hot water reheat with a timer until there is sufficient solar power to at least share the load, most people don't want to take 4.5kW from the grid every morning
To make the choice easier between "Optimized (with BatteryLife)" and "Optimized (without BatteryLife)":
- if you have a lead-acid battery (including gel, AGM, etc.), then use "Optimized (with BatteryLife)" and set the Minimum SOC to 50% (or higher);
- if you have a LiFePO4 battery, then use "Optimized (without BatteryLife)" and set the Minimum SOC to 10% or higher.
In both cases, make sure you properly set the Dynamic Cut-off voltages in the inverter ESS setings.
