Expected behavior?

[PistolaPeteUK]

Hi All.

Been running Batpred for a while now with a 4.2KWp solar array, 10KWh of batteries and on Octopus Agile / Outgoing Octopus.

I have not needed to touch it since initial install with the exception of needing to occasionally restart the add on and its worked well. Most of the time its topped up the batteries (where required) with the cheapest power of the day and it mostly gets me through the night. Also, when power is super cheap it does a goid job of cycling the batteries to make money where the export rate is above the import rate.

However, now we are in the depths of winter Ive noticed its not managing things as much as it was when solar was plentiful. I thought that it would simply carry on trying to make the most of the cheapest power of the day and keeping the batteries topped up with cheaper power in lieu of solar but it seems to run the batteries to 10% and then grid import but will often go through the cheapest slots in the evening/night without putting anything into the batteries and maybe charges a bit here and there but at higher rates.

As I pretty much left it (config wise) from when I got it going early last spring is there anything I should be changing/tweaking to get it working better in the winter or is there anything I should be checking? My aim is to use the cheapest power I can within the confines of my fairly regular usage and my battery capacity.

Ive also noticed that my plan sometimes shows 2 actions for a slot on import, such as import and hold, that id not noticed before. Is this new or a sign Batpred is getting confused somewhere with bad data and contributing to it not charging the batteries as much?

Thanks in advance

Pete

[gcoan]

there isn't any specific configuration you need to make when your solar forecast is lower for predbat to continue to optimise your battery and grid charging.

With a debug file and your plan its hard to say anything more definitive as to what predbat is doing, but predbat won't generally charge the batteries and will instead let you run off grid import if there isn't enough rate differential between the low and high rate slots to overcome your battery losses. e.g. if grid import rate is fairly flat then there's no financial benefit to charging and discharging the battery.
I'd suggest you do check your solar forecast and load forecast, that they are reasonably accurate in the predbat plan to what actually occurs because if these are off then the whole plan will be wrong.

But if after checking you think the plan is wrong, please log an issue with details as per the github issue template

[PistolaPeteUK]

Thanks for the fast response.

Ill check those out and see if the data is good, and if it all looks OK ill raise an issue.

Ironically, since posting this the plan is now showing 4 charging slots between 22:30 and 04:30.