I understand this issue because I had it myself. All I did was to relocate the inverter CT clamp to be upstream of the charger so that it only sees the home load or net export, the charger load is effectively invisible to it and therefore doesn’t impact the batteries. This took literally 1 min to move from one cable in the meter box to another. Yes it means that I have to get the data on charge energy used from either the Ohme, TRONITY or Octopus app, but my charger is now free to use any intelligent slots without impacting anything else.

Out of interest, are you able to tell me how long it would take to feel warm in a room from the IR panels if you didn;t bother heating the rooms at all until somebody was in them? So say a room had dropped to 9 degrees celcius, would you start to feel warm again in that room 5 mins after the panels kicked in like you would with sunlight do you know?

I have a similar leak, front offside bottom of the radiator, was it a pipe or was a new radiator needed

Here's my take on IR heating...wish we were paying what you pay with Octopus, wow!!!!! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o9t0gamEy6ncm6M.htmlsi=_VsLUiRCjfXLE9TG

This is really interesting for me as I am looking to use my MG5 EV for V2H, but mine doesn't have V2L functionality. Does your MG5ev have V2L like the MG ZS. If not how do you do V2H? Thanks, Nick

Can I ask what inverter you have. Mine is the MP II, I was thinking about charging the batteries with a 48v changer, using the V2L function, then stumbled across your video

I'm in the process of getting solar and batteries. My plan at the moment is a bit more "industrial" - plug car in at 1130pm or close to (I'm almost never in bed by then) , car set to 80% charge limit, battery set to import only (I believe from reading that this is easy to set up) between 1130pm to 530am. So, should OI try and charge my car in an additional session at say 630am before Ive unplugged, it wont be able to. My car is almost never plugged in until late evening anyway and then only once or twice a week and Id generally unplug at 9-10am, so this will mean little change to my routine. On the odd occasion I'm doing a trip and want a 100% charge the next morning (as this morning) I'll take the odd hit, but even thats unlikely because if i need 100% then plugging in at at or above 40% will fully charge my car in the 6 hour OI off peak gap since it charges at exactly 10% / hour. Do you see any reason this wont work? Most of the vids Ive seen on this problem seem to work on the assumption that you plug your EV in every day and therefore need some complexity to avoid this problem but Id have though that was rare for most, if you arent plugged in its not a problem, and AIUI, OI only requires you to plug in once a month? Certainly not every day anyway..

Just moved to Intelligent Octopus, and just ran into this issue. The way I managing this is today, using Homey, detect if Zappi starts charging outside of the cheap rate, tell Victron to either set max discharge to 100w forcing 99% of the Zappi charging to the grid, or might use the way suggested here and hike up the minimum Soc to 100%, I am just getting Home Assistant up and I have the Zappi and Victron HACs installed and working so look to doing it with Home Assistant going forward. Update 14 Jan 24, using Node Red in HASS, detecting state of Zappi Charger, sensor.myenergi_zappi_17353504_plug_status, EV Connected, Waiting for EV, Charging, and when Charging set Victron in its MQTT broker, minimumSOC to 100, then when no longer Charging set back to 20 (%). For tracking added Pushover messages to my phone so I can keep an eye on it.

Hi thanks for video, very interesting, what do you use to measure you external temperature with the high and low figure?

Looking forward to your heat pump installation and performance dara. Brian

Some ideas to improve on the panel usage. 1. Their efficiency improves with size. Minimum i use is 800w to heat bedrooms and such and 1100 panels for north facing rooms or lounge. 2. Use on outside or coldest wall if you can. They create a better temp gradient. 3. Radiant heat is slow acting and temp sensors do not measure it correctly. With home assistant you can use timers to turn panels on and off every few minutes to allow for the time delay for heat absorption. You can use the climate entity to control the plugs and measure the temp increase per hour to modify their usage so that they maintain the temperature rate you want. This combination works like a very smart thermostat and can all be done from inside home assistant. The result is you never use them at their rated power continuously but get the desired result and COP is above 1.

If I understood your numbers, during the coldest month you used an average of under 2kW for heating. How about a small air-to-air heat pump to provide about that much in the middle of your house, and keep the IR heaters to warm any cold spots and as a boost for really cold days. I've just had a 3kW unit (that's the output) installed for about £2,000 and it claims a COP of nearly 5. It's not eligible for a grant though, and it can't do hot water.

IR heaters work really well in new buildings especially with the insulation you need .They can be installed with solar panels and batteries on a cheap tariff Flexible octopus 14.70p / kWh from 12.30 am to 7.30 am all other times 34.34p .IR heaters work better on the ceiling than walls

Thanks for the update Chris. Good to hear about your heat pump plans.

Hi, Just installed Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4B and installed the Tesla Powerwall integration. The problem is that the integration does not seem to support changing the backup reserve. How did you do this? Could you do a more detailed video on your method. Thanks in advance. ......................John

where to get in the USA?

How many months are these costs for? Sorry, if I've missed the answer to this already

Pity about the spelling!

Looks like I need to bit the bullet and set up Home Assistant for just this issue on my system. I've never used HA before so what hardware would you recommend for someone implementing it for the first time?

Thanks for the video, I'm looking of a solution to this myself as my car charger and solar are on the same fuze box and can't just move the CT clamp without connecting the solar via the house fuze box.

Thanks Chris good to hear and see how you approach this.

Good video, home assistant opens a whole new world of possibilities. You might like to check out the generic thermostat configuration, with it you can provide a sensor and switch entity and then have something which automatically handles maintaining a target temperature. With that, you could then have a simple automation (triggered by time) which uses climate.set_temperature to handle your setback overnight etc.

Thanks Chris. You may be able to reduce the number of automations you are using by merging them into a single automation per room. If you use the 'If Then Else' action. This will allow you to meet a condition on the 'If' statement and perform an action at 'Then'. If that's not met then it triggers the 'Else' section. This will streamline your automations. Just a thought.

Very interesting video Chris. Am I correct in assuming that the 3M sticky stuff is to allow for thermal expansion? All those cells, I hope you mapped out their serial numbers in case of potential future warranty issues. Top work mate

VERY interesting. Was this from frogstar by any chance? I have been looking to upgrade my home storage capacity as I have upped my Solar PV (does this sound familiar..lol). I looked at an additional PW.. but even with the price reduction and current 350GBP rebate it's still a lot of money.. and even less worth it now since they stopped the Tesla Tariff!

Looks like a super upgrade Chris. Be interesting to see how it performs over the winter.

Good idea to use emojis to recognise them easier

'Promo SM' ❣️

affecting

Unlucky with the powerwall failure, icdo hope that it is resolved quickly for you. Fast efficient after sales support is the test of a good company, so i will be intetested in the outcone. Impressive and comprehensive stats! I wiuld be interested to know what you are using to measure all the various services to obtain the stats.

Powerwall failure, that's really bad luck mate , fingers crossed it's replaced/ fixed soon

Sorry to hear about the failure of the Tesla Powerwall. What's the latest on this?

647 kWh for hot water is wrong , mistake from me

Very detailed data. Are the IR panel sizes working well in each room? Or under or over spec'd anywhere? Pondering trying IR in couple of rooms as a starter

So funny that the xbox is almost same as the cooking 🤣 Nice info I really like the graph with all the appliances.

Thanks for the update Chris.

my fits for this current quarter is nudging towards £400 so far with 10 days until reading :)

Hey Chris, this seemed like as good a video as any... The KZfaq algorithm has done it's thing and provided me a link to your channel. Re the solar array on (I assume) the lower rear of your house, to form a canopy. Can you give me some details (point me to the correct video/playlist perhaps) of where and when you got it? I've got an area a little over 5m wide and 3m deep that I'd like to consider for solar panels

Just one downside, lots of storage but no way to run whole house. Like having a reservoir with a 15mm outlet.

Amazed you only used 5000kwh per year.. I have a 1930 semi which uses 19000kwh of gas!! What standard of house insulation do you have?

In US, we are paying 5c/kwh off peak and 11c/kwh peak. Glad you have solar.

I thought I was the only one anal enough to calculate the average price per kWh but you have taken it to another level, interestingly I'm getting the same 4p /kWh cost for the month of May and you got it in April.

Thanks for your update Chris. Good unit rate for the month. Good to see usage and costs dropping.

No offense, but I think there is seriously something dodgy going on with your electricity and solar system and Octopus energy, for sure is taking the hand out of it. I mean that is wild expensive charges and your usage seems off the charts. Solar is supposed to help you, not tip you off.

A sound conclusion Chris and agree with your thoughts. You would benefit from the £5K BUS scheme if you had a heat pump, I think £10K for a good installation would be the figure you were looking at. I guess the longterm factor we cannot control is the unit cost of electricity and how that plays into the pricing / cost benefit model. A topic for a regular review I guess.

Hard to say if you should add HP. We did opposite order of experiments. Had HP, then added IR panels to some rooms, ran whole house hotter. If I could JUST use IR, maybe would've but the HP is really nice too, just uses much more energy as our primary heat.

Thanks for posting , It would be interesting to hear what a Heat Loss survey predicts for heat energy needed to keep your home at that temperature. Also factor the HP & radiators materials & their foot print . The refrigerant especially R290 has a Global Warming Potential of 3 & R32 CWP 675 & R410A 2088 . So a multi split system running R32 or R410A can wipe out CO2 saving if the gas leaks. but a R290 monoblock is less intense. Also Riddle this : One 15Mw offshore wind turbine , costs ( all figures approx) £25M can run 10,000 homes with heat pumps. , The £5,000 grant for those 10,000 heat pumps is £50M which would buy 2 more off shore wind turbines, which is enough to heat those same homes on resistive heating . Is the Rare Earth metals & copper windings in 10,000 heat pumps more or less than 2 large windturbines? The Maintenance, & eventual replacement of the extra 2 windturbines is less than the maint of the 10,000 heat pumps too. AND there is more Spare electricity all summer . ( hydrogen/efuel for planes?) . Spend the £50m grant on the heat pumps , with another £50M from the home owners & you have expensive stuff sitting around doing very little all summer. So I'm not even sure Heat Pumps are greener that "more wind turbines". -- Unless we run out of wind turbine spaces. The cost of electricity at the Windturbine is less than 5p/Kwh & once the wire is there it delivers is self (unlike Pumping gas or coal / oil lorries) . So is it more the electricity pricing model , rather than science & ecology that is necessitating heat pumps? Alot of folk quote £250 for a heat pump service, which is high compared to , more dangerous, gas boiler. Heat pump service , like car service, should be a DIY activity.

Very interesting

Excellent summary Chris.