New option for IOG dispatches - V1.0.778

[Catnip2007]

I upgraded to 778 but can't find the option to select whether the battery charges or not.
Also, can you clarify if this version still ignores IOG dispatches during the fixed low-rate period 11.30-5.30? If it does, is there any chance that another option could be included to allow this feature to be toggled on/off?

[Webreaper]

Sorry, unsure what you're referring to.

1. When you say "the option to select whether the battery charges or not", what are you referring to? Is this relating to another discussion that's been had elsewhere?

2. There is no logic to ignore IOG dispaches during the fixed low-rate period. Why would you want this? It doesn't make any sense to me, but I may be missing something.

[Webreaper]

Thinking about this and reading between the lines of your question, are you asking where this option is? Because it should be there.

[Webreaper]

Okay. There was a merge problem and a couple of controls were removed, I reinstated them but haven't done a release yet.

If you pick up the Docker dev tag it'll appear.

I'll try and do a proper release later today if I get time.

[Catnip2007]

Thanks Mark.

[abrasive-blueberry]

Yes, that's what I was looking for, but it's not shown in my Settings screen.

I'm using Docker if that makes any difference.

The ignoring of IOG dispatches was a feature that was added in 759, here's the text from the release: "Also includes a fix for IOG dispatches to ensure they're ignored if they're sent during the cheapest IOG price period. This avoids SolisManager from updating the inverter unnecessarily, and so reduces EEPROM writes."

Hi Catnip,

It was me who suggested this fix.

My reasoning was that you get cheap rate 23:30-05:30 so surely you would be charging your house battery for this whole cheap period every day?

It wouldn’t make sense to only charge during IOG dispatches that occur during this period, particularly if you don’t charge the car every night.

I’m just curious to hear your reasons really!

[Webreaper]

Yes, I can't see any reason why anyone would want to turn that off. It would make no difference to charging, but would just result in potentially more eeprom writes.

[Catnip2007]

Thanks for the feedback.

Here's my use case: I set a minimum target charge each night to ensure that I have sufficient battery for the next day and let SAM allocate the charging slots. On the occasions that I charge the car and Octopus allocate slots within the cheap rate period, I wanted SAM to detect the IOG dispatches and charge the home battery at the same time to prevent it dumping into the car.

Prior to the change being implemented SAM worked perfectly and did exactly what was needed, so I remained on that version, but I now note that the API is changing in January, so I'll need to update to keep the system working.
I could try setting up a Scheduled Action to charge the home battery when the cost is below 8p and this would probably do what I need, but hoped that the previous behaviour could be added back in as an option.

I'd be interested to hear how others use the system.

[abrasive-blueberry]

I must admit, I just set the inverter to charge for the entire cheap period as there seems to be no reason not to.

I do it through scheduled action, but setting it to charge below 8p also works.

I guess if you didn’t want to charge to 100% then you may want to limit it, but at this time of year even 100% doesn’t last me that long and in summer I export any surplus solar so it makes sense to me to just charge to 100% every night as a matter of course.