Octopus Go. How to avoid early discharge.

[dannyoneill]

I’m on octopus go with a cheap rate from 00:30-05:30 and a GE 13.5 AIO.

Everyday predbat will discharge to my 10% reserve_min just before the 00:30 cheap rate but given day variances it sometimes gets to 10% too soon and I spend the last 30-60 mins on peak rate. I also have best_soc_keep set to 1.5.

Goal: to have the forced discharge overlap with the cheap rate. Say by about 30 mins so when it does get to the 10% reserve it’s well within the cheap rate for charging and feeding the house. Also for export to not take place during the window so as to avoid unnecessary cycling and brown exports.

I found the overrides in the documentation and I would like a sanity check that what I’ve set is correct an is the best way to achieve this.

In apps.yaml I have;

# Bump up import to make it think this is a bad time to empty and draw from grid. My overlap?
rates_import_override:
    - start: "00:00:00"
      end: "01:00:00"
      rate_increment: 20

# Tell it this is a the best time to dump the battery. 
  rates_export_override:
    - start: '00:30:00'
      end: '01:00:00'
      rate_increment: 10

# Stop cheap rate constant cycling and brown exports. 
    - start: '01:00:00'
      end: '05:30:00'
      rate: 0

does this achieve my goal (plan appears so) or is there a better way. During the remaining charge window I have low_power on for an easier charge.

[gcoan]

Predbat should do this all automatically for you, and if your problem only occurs when you've had heavy load, maybe increasing the metric 10 weighting or turning on dynamic load adjustment will give you the adjustments to the plan without you having to change the rates.

Changing the rates is perfectly viable way of doing this, but bear in mind that predbat will then use those rates in the 'today cost' figures, so they won't be as accurate. Which you might or might not care about.

Do check the alignment of your YAML, everything should be two spaces left indented (the first line currently isn't, but that could be copy/paste)

Turning on set export freeze only can prevent brown exports, but that would probably prevent any export before the cheap rate which isn't what you want, so the other strategy is to turn on combine charge slots so you get a single long charge slot and it doesn't intersperse charging with discharging to maximise profit.

I'd try this first, but otherwise the rate overrides are fine.

[dannyoneill]

Thanks, the combine charging slots also fixed the low_power mode not working as exptected. as predbat appears to want cost savings above most other options. That said. My initial apps.yaml seemed to achieve the best results without neuturing the other wonderful features.

Looking back over my logs most days predbat is spot on with getting the battery to the 10% at 00:30 but its razor thin and some days overshoots the discharge by a few mins. My approach gives me that window the best for me.