We just installed a 50 kW alpha ESS battery. The most logical usage would be to charge the battery during the daytime so that we are capturing our solar energy into the battery and then to feed any excess power that we are not using back into the grid in the evening from 6 pm to 9 pm when there are bonus rates for exporting. Here’s the problem. There is no way to set your home battery to export manually during these peak times.

I was assuming that I could just set my battery to export for example from 6 pm to 9 pm at night and this would allow me to boost the grid when it’s most needed and recharge the battery the next day using my solar. I was quite surprised when there was no way to export from the battery. I rang the installation company and they said this is due to NSW or Australian regulations that do not allow you to control when you manually export from your battery.

The real cost of electricity in New South Wales is that it’s cheaper in the daytime and much expensive at peak times like breakfast and dinner. So you want to EXPORT in peak times and IMPORT or charge form solar during off-peak times.

I found three possible solutions. None of them are perfect but they are all a step in the right direction.

Step one is the simplest.

1. Regular electricity provider with a VPP.

You can sign up for something called a VPP, a virtual power plant. You use electricity as normal, charging your battery from solar and using your battery to power your home. At times that the provider chooses, they can take electricity from your battery to charge the grid. This is turning complete control of your battery over to the electricity provider. AGL have a VPP plan. Origin have a VPP plan. This allows them to charge your battery when they want and discharge your battery when they want. They generally pay you a good fee (e.g $1 per kWh exported).  They control your battery 100%. You have no control over the VPP exports. And they pay you a set rate, lower than the actual electricity prices. So it’s basically a way for them to make money by using your battery, and give you a percentage of that. Very clever for them.

2. Amber ‘wholesale’ prices

There’s a company called Amber who offer you wholesale rates on electricity prices. They also give you an app that allows you some control over your battery. (You can choose to import and export in 1/2 hr blocks. And they also have some automation to charge and discharge your battery at the times they think is best to make you money. It’s very complex, because for most of the daylight hours in the day electricity prices to export are negative (yes it COSTS you to put electricity into the grid!) It’s hard to manage this because if your solar panels are generating and your battery is full you will lose money. It’s enlightening to see the actual electricity prices in real time. (I’ve seen them as high as $21.10/kWh (you make $21.10 per kWh to sell to the grid) and as low as -$0.95 (they pay you 95c per kWh to import! That’s right – they pay you to use electricity!

Being paid to use electricity.

Good export price.

3. Hack your Battery/inverter to override the inbuilt settings

If you are an engineer you can use Home Assistant to control your battery via Modbus. I found these instructions to be easy to follow and they work for an Alpha ESS battery system.

Alpha ESS Control via Modbus

Very nice installation by green.com.au and I’d recommend a solar install from them. We got 4x 13kW Alpha ESS battery modules. Ring ‭0485 977 502‬ and talk to Jack.

No affiliate links or commissions, I just love their work.

It’s very hard today to find contractors who take pride in their work and do the best job they can. These installers went above and beyond. I’m very happy with the professionalism of their install.

Problem with the NSW regulations

It’s the second day of my battery and I tried to set it up to charge during the day, then discharge back into the grid at night so as to boost the grid in the evening. It would not work. A quick search revealed this is the same case for everyone. From what I can work out, this feature is disabled in Australia so that you cannot set your battery to discharge during certain hours. It will only discharge when you are using it, you cannot set it to discharge into the grid. Very disappointing.

A kind of Solution: VPP

Today I signed up to Amber Energy, they supposedly allow you to discharge into the grid under a VPP (Virtual Power Plant) system. I’d prefer to retain control and charge and discharge when I want, but this seems to be the only way to do it You sign up to a VPP and they take control of your battery. I’ll post here as to whether it works or not.

In case it’s good, here’s a code I got to make $10 if I refer other people and they also get $10 off a month. If you use Amber feel free to use it.
HD3JGM7T
Give me a few days and I’ll let you know if it’s worth it.

Firstly I set up one of these, the cheapest I could find with the newer SX1302 chipset.

Worked fine with the devices, and the things network, but I could not get it to talk ot the MQQT server in Home Assistant.

Then 2nd try was one of these, RAK7268V2

It played more nicely with Home Assistant.

Setting up

1. Put in the IP address etc to get it set up in your network so you can see it’s home page.
2. I just selected Australia AU915 and left all the other settings to the default.
3. I plugged it in and it starts noting end devices even before I even told it about them:

Set up MQQT server to forward to Lorawan. Under configuration, Integration Interface, as follows:

Make an application

Add end device into that applications.

Now wait for it to show up here:

Here’s how I wired a factory Toyota towbar that I got from a wrecker. It needed to interface to the brown connector in the photos below,  plus it needed to be connected to earth and power and it needed to be connected to the right indicator which was across the other side of the car. There were two wires I left disconnected (see below).

I could not find a good description of this anywhere on the web and it took me a while to work it out so here it is in case anyone else is having the same problem!

TIME TAKEN:

Diagnose leaky pump: 15 min

Find and order part: 30 min.

Time for part to arrive: 4 days.

Undo old pump and install new pump:  5 min.

Thanks Fisher and Paykel.

http://regex.info/exif.cgi

allows you to extract information from a photo such as what camera took it, what time and so on.

It’s a great crystal radio, we bought it from here:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/usefulcomponents

http://www.fordmods.com/gearbox-suspension-brake-driveline-f4/torque-converter-lock-up-override-circuit-t36733.html

http://cdn.sfgate.com/chronicle/acrobat/2007/08/01/printer_es063049z.pdf