Lux ac battery controller

martin2020

PolarSolar said:

Question about LUX Power tek AC3600 settings 
Hi all,
Such a useful / helpful / informative forum,thanks!

I have 6 PV panels on roof (1.4kW) and LUX AC 3600 controller with 2 Greenlinx batteries (6.4kWh).  All good.

So far I've been on Economy 7 and stayed with the same Charge times/ settings for months (apart from an adjustment when the clocks moved forward for BST)

Soon I will be on Octopus Agile and for a while want to explore setting the charge times etc, manually.
I'd like to stop the batteries from discharging for a block of time during the cheaper agile periods so that the residual consumption is imported from grid at cheaper rates.  

Then within that period I want to set the batteries to charge perhaps 2 or 3 slots when prices are especially low (see image below for example).   Not sure how to set this.  Not sure what Charge Priority or Force discharge  are for.

From what I understand the Charge first / priority settings are not anything to do with this.

I have tried setting a time period of several hours for Forced discharge at 0% discharge power rate .  This pretty much prevents the battery from discharging, although it did contniue to discharge at abour 30w - so it wasn't actually 0% !!??!!
Then within that period I set the Charge settings for a several charge periods to charge the battery and I monitored it and it seemed to do what I want but I thought I'd ask on here in case I'm doing something dangerously wrong or in case there's a better way.

I've also sent the same question to the company that installed the batteries but experience tells me I'll get a faster and more detailed response on here.  Any comments / suggestions much appreciated.

sounds like you need octolux and a rasberry pi - look it up, i used it and does exactly what you need.

cm4ever

PolarSolar said:

Question about LUX Power tek AC3600 settings 
Hi all,
Such a useful / helpful / informative forum,thanks!

I have 6 PV panels on roof (1.4kW) and LUX AC 3600 controller with 2 Greenlinx batteries (6.4kWh).  All good.

So far I've been on Economy 7 and stayed with the same Charge times/ settings for months (apart from an adjustment when the clocks moved forward for BST)

Soon I will be on Octopus Agile and for a while want to explore setting the charge times etc, manually.
I'd like to stop the batteries from discharging for a block of time during the cheaper agile periods so that the residual consumption is imported from grid at cheaper rates.  

Then within that period I want to set the batteries to charge perhaps 2 or 3 slots when prices are especially low (see image below for example).   Not sure how to set this.  Not sure what Charge Priority or Force discharge  are for.

From what I understand the Charge first / priority settings are not anything to do with this.

I have tried setting a time period of several hours for Forced discharge at 0% discharge power rate .  This pretty much prevents the battery from discharging, although it did contniue to discharge at abour 30w - so it wasn't actually 0% !!??!!
Then within that period I set the Charge settings for a several charge periods to charge the battery and I monitored it and it seemed to do what I want but I thought I'd ask on here in case I'm doing something dangerously wrong or in case there's a better way.

I've also sent the same question to the company that installed the batteries but experience tells me I'll get a faster and more detailed response on here.  Any comments / suggestions much appreciated.

To set a period of no battery discharge during the night, I use this: -

Charge priority - Enable
Priority charge rate - 100%
Priority charge level - 100%
Charge first start time - hh:mm
Charge first end time - hh:mm

Would be the way I'd set a block period to stop the battery from being used and import power only, but can see your way would also work, just never thought of it that way round.

RE: Octopus Agile - I always thought Lux had an integration as part of the App that they could enable so you could setup your cheap time slots - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPQJ_p2t39M

Inferring that it's something you can ask to be enabled in the application setting...

PolarSolar

cm4ever  - Wow!  You get the prize for most most comprehensive & detailed answer.   Thanks.
I had completely misunderstood the "Charge Priority" function (got to say the Lux manual isn't very clear) and although I'd read about the Lux-Agile integration, I thought initially I'd get my head round it first and the video explained it all perfectly in plain human-speak.   Brilliant, thanks

madswitcher

Hi there,

a quick point - how did you get the version of the app/portal that has the Octopus Agile option.  I am thinking of moving to Octopus now that things seem to be settlting down a bit with prices.

Thanks

cm4ever

madswitcher said:

Hi there,

a quick point - how did you get the version of the app/portal that has the Octopus Agile option.  I am thinking of moving to Octopus now that things seem to be settlting down a bit with prices.

Thanks

..... as far as I'm aware as per my earlier post, I believe you need to ask for that integration to be enabled on your Lux account for the option to appear in the application section of the settings page.

So probably via emailing your installer or directly emailing support at Lux themselves.

PolarSolar

Madswitcher asked:
how did you get the version of the app/portal that has the Octopus Agile option.  I am thinking of moving to Octopus now that things seem to be settlting down a bit with prices.

Switched to Octopus 2 weeks back.  I'm currently  checking the Agile Dashboard and using best time for import / charging, etc.  https://agile.octopushome.net/dashboard

Octopus say you have to wait 30 days on their Flexible tariff before you can go to Agile. They say this is to allow time to set up / install smart meter (SMETS2 is best). On my Octopus Account portal I can see my data & graphs of half hourly imported electricity.

Spoke to battery installers (Senergy) who said they can set up the LUX-Agile integration. Might do this ultimately but thought I'd do it myself for a while first, just so I can claim to be a proper geek.

EricMears

PolarSolar said:

Soon I will be on Octopus Agile and for a while want to explore setting the charge times etc, manually.
I'd like to stop the batteries from discharging for a block of time during the cheaper agile periods so that the residual consumption is imported from grid at cheaper rates.  

I have a similar question and was expecting to have to look through the whole of this thread to see if it had already been asked (& answered).  So thanks PolarSolar for raising it.

Although we've had solar panels for the last twelve years,  I've only recently decided to add batteries.  Now have a Luxpower LXP3600 with Pylontech batteries.  I've never tried to charge car from solar - mainly because I'd rather be driving it than charging if Sun is shining although might start doing so now that the problem of intermittent cloud cover is solved.

In some ways,  my 'problem' is a bit more straightforward in that I just want to prevent any discharge from my batteries for the whole of my 'off-peak' period.  As presently set up,  if I were to decide to charge my EV tonight (or even run the dishwasher on a delayed setting) the system would try to take 3.6kW from the batteries and only 3.8kW from the mains to leave me with an empty battery by dawn.

Ideally,  I’d like to find a setting for Lux that would prevent any discharge during offpeak period but there doesn’t seem to be a setting that does exactly that.  I'd be quite happy to buy all power at offpeak rate but wouldn't want to buy any overnight power at the 'day rate'.

Last night,  I set the “System Discharge Power Rate(%) (?)” to 10 hoping that would limit battery depletion to my background level of 300W (hovering over the question mark on that line brings up a message that rated discharge power is 3000W so 10% should logically be 300W).  In fact that resulted in discharge being capped at 400W – not a major problem as it still meant that when I wasn’t drawing a large load,  battery would still cover my background usage but only having ‘wasted’ 1.6kWh.  If I desperately wanted to make that exactly 300W I expect I could drop the 10 down to 7% or whatever.

An alternative approach might be to tell the battery not to discharge below (say) 40%.  But both these methods would mean that I’d have to set the reduction just before going to bed then cancel it first thing next morning and do that every night I wanted to use significant amounts of off-peak power.   Ideally,  I’d like to find a setting that meant I’d take nothing from battery during off-peak period but have it fully available during peak rate times.

I’m wondering what might happen if I told the system to ‘force charge’ for the whole of the offpeak. period but to do so at a zero or trivial rate.  Would the fact that it was charging inhibit it from discharging at the same time or would it carry out both operations at the same time so effectively deplete battery at almost its max rate whilst I was charging car ?  Even if that had something like the desired effect,  I’d still have to amend it occasionally – though perhaps only a few times a year.

Similarly,  would ‘force discharging’ at a zero or trivial rate mean that total discharge was limited to that rate or would it just mean that batteries would discharge enough to cover consumption plus the force discharge rate ?

Or is there some setting on the inverter itself and not available via the ‘maintenance tab’ that would do exactly what I want ?

Apologies if I've missed some blindingly obvious solution described within the luxpowertek.com webpage.

ianatkin

EricMears said:

PolarSolar said:

Soon I will be on Octopus Agile and for a while want to explore setting the charge times etc, manually.
I'd like to stop the batteries from discharging for a block of time during the cheaper agile periods so that the residual consumption is imported from grid at cheaper rates.  

I have a similar question and was expecting to have to look through the whole of this thread to see if it had already been asked (& answered).  So thanks PolarSolar for raising it.

Although we've had solar panels for the last twelve years,  I've only recently decided to add batteries.  Now have a Luxpower LXP3600 with Pylontech batteries.  I've never tried to charge car from solar - mainly because I'd rather be driving it than charging if Sun is shining although might start doing so now that the problem of intermittent cloud cover is solved.

In some ways,  my 'problem' is a bit more straightforward in that I just want to prevent any discharge from my batteries for the whole of my 'off-peak' period.  As presently set up,  if I were to decide to charge my EV tonight (or even run the dishwasher on a delayed setting) the system would try to take 3.6kW from the batteries and only 3.8kW from the mains to leave me with an empty battery by dawn.

Ideally,  I’d like to find a setting for Lux that would prevent any discharge during offpeak period but there doesn’t seem to be a setting that does exactly that.  I'd be quite happy to buy all power at offpeak rate but wouldn't want to buy any overnight power at the 'day rate'.

Last night,  I set the “System Discharge Power Rate(%) (?)” to 10 hoping that would limit battery depletion to my background level of 300W (hovering over the question mark on that line brings up a message that rated discharge power is 3000W so 10% should logically be 300W).  In fact that resulted in discharge being capped at 400W – not a major problem as it still meant that when I wasn’t drawing a large load,  battery would still cover my background usage but only having ‘wasted’ 1.6kWh.  If I desperately wanted to make that exactly 300W I expect I could drop the 10 down to 7% or whatever.

An alternative approach might be to tell the battery not to discharge below (say) 40%.  But both these methods would mean that I’d have to set the reduction just before going to bed then cancel it first thing next morning and do that every night I wanted to use significant amounts of off-peak power.   Ideally,  I’d like to find a setting that meant I’d take nothing from battery during off-peak period but have it fully available during peak rate times.

I’m wondering what might happen if I told the system to ‘force charge’ for the whole of the offpeak. period but to do so at a zero or trivial rate.  Would the fact that it was charging inhibit it from discharging at the same time or would it carry out both operations at the same time so effectively deplete battery at almost its max rate whilst I was charging car ?  Even if that had something like the desired effect,  I’d still have to amend it occasionally – though perhaps only a few times a year.

Similarly,  would ‘force discharging’ at a zero or trivial rate mean that total discharge was limited to that rate or would it just mean that batteries would discharge enough to cover consumption plus the force discharge rate ?

Or is there some setting on the inverter itself and not available via the ‘maintenance tab’ that would do exactly what I want ?

Apologies if I've missed some blindingly obvious solution described within the luxpowertek.com webpage.

Hi there

You can achieve this by turning on "AC Charge Enable", setting the "AC Battery Charge Level" to say 20% and the AC Charge Start and End Times to your off-peak hours. This should basically turn off the battery and allow you to charge your car during the off peak hours without draining the house battery. 

EricMears

ianatkin said:

You can achieve this by turning on "AC Charge Enable", setting the "AC Battery Charge Level" to say 20% and the AC Charge Start and End Times to your off-peak hours. This should basically turn off the battery and allow you to charge your car during the off peak hours without draining the house battery. 

Thanks.  That was one possibility I had considered though wasn't sure if the Lux would try to charge & discharge the batteries simultaneously.  Presume you've actually tried this and can confirm that won't happen ?

No intention of charging car (or running any other heavy users tonight) so I've set "AC Charge Enable" to put 5% into batteries between 00:31 & 04:29 tomorrow morning when (hopefully) that should result in me buying 4 hours worth of background usage + 4 hours worth of minimal charging rather than 4 hours of free use of stored energy.

EricMears

EricMears said:

ianatkin said:

You can achieve this by turning on "AC Charge Enable", setting the "AC Battery Charge Level" to say 20% and the AC Charge Start and End Times to your off-peak hours. This should basically turn off the battery and allow you to charge your car during the off peak hours without draining the house battery. 

Thanks.  That was one possibility I had considered though wasn't sure if the Lux would try to charge & discharge the batteries simultaneously.  Presume you've actually tried this and can confirm that won't happen ?

No intention of charging car (or running any other heavy users tonight) so I've set "AC Charge Enable" to put 5% into batteries between 00:31 & 04:29 tomorrow morning when (hopefully) that should result in me buying 4 hours worth of background usage + 4 hours worth of minimal charging rather than 4 hours of free use of stored energy.

I may have misunderstood something ? 

With "AC Charge Enable" enabled and "AC Charge Power Rate(%)" set to 5,  my system was only charging at 100W or so when batt SOC was 94   but my 'Bright' app was showing that I was exporting at 600W. Changing the rate back to 100% has restored my charging rate to 800W and restored grid exports to 20W.  It would seem that this route will only work if I set it up immediately before going to bed and restore to normal next morning.

Whilst that would achieve the objective,  I'm really looking for something I could do once and leave alone.   It seems strange if Lux don't actually provide a way of suspending battery output.