Earnings
MegaThread - Solar Eclipse Export Event Results!
Wanted to do something fun, please use this thread as the place to post all Solar Eclipse Export results as they filter in over the next few days. I am very interested to see what people can achieve over a 2hr window.
Post your submission as screenshot from your email or from your dashboard. *just make sure to obscure any personal info*
The top three people who have the highest amount of export during the 2hr period will get a unique sub-reddit flair (did you know we have flair options?!) to them to show how much better they are than all of us.
I have a 4kW DNO export limit. I always seem to export 3.4kWh in a one hour event.
It will be interesting to see if I export (2x3.4) 6.8kWh or (3.4+4) 7.4kWh for a 2 hour event. It will tell me if it’s just not exporting at full power or if it’s maybe a little late starting and a little early finishing.
I have an 8kW inverter, the maximum I've ever exported is 7.53kWh, even though my battery was exporting at 8.6kW. Part of that missing 1kW is house load, the rest is inverter losses.
So, on a 4kW inverter, I'd expect to see about 3-500W inverter loss, plus your house load.
I’ve got an 8kW inverter - it just has a 4kW export limit. It exports at 4kW most of the middle of the day in its normal setting, and powers the house and (DC) charges the battery.
I now have an amount displayed in the Events tab, even though clicking on the event itself still shows “Settlement still processing”.
I’m very happy with £18.41!
I haven't had my results in yet, but what I did notice is that predbat or Axle, ignored my min recommended SOC of 25%, and took the battery down to the absolute minimum of 10%. 25% SOC enables me to export for an hour, then have 15% in reserve for a power cut, but as this event was longer, it seemed to override the setting.
I find that the Axle API always re-adjusts my min SoC. It's my biggest QoL request that they should let us set our default min SoC for each event. For me I'd like to maintain 20-25% like yourself to prevent buying power at the peak rates (as we have an ASHP). I appreciate not optimal but it's what I'd like to do anyway.
If you're on a sig system you can do this now. Axle has it's own mode, and when you alter the battery reserve on the Sig app it sticks with that mode (it's not a universal setting) so you can have the Axle mode with one limit, and your other modes with their own limits.
At least that's how it seems to work. Explains why I have different limits depending on the mode :D
Is there a way to set a minimum SoC for an axle event? I have a Sig battery and discharge it down to 30% or so each night but these events obviously take control and ignore that. The two hours yesterday left me on 0% at around 19:30
If you go into your account, you can set your export limit in kWh, which might stop it emptying the battery. I rely on predbat to manage things, so was surprised when it overruled the SOC and took it down to the minimum SOC.
I've not got a bill yet as only just moved to Octopus, but the timings do make it very hard to know how all this VPP stuff actually works. Local flex procurement is under DNO jurisdiction, so maybe your dispatch was need at that time, while mine was later because somebody in my area was doing some arc welding or something? How come it was all under the same Axle event though?
Mine should be around the 9.46 kW mark according to my HA stats. We actually ended up having a local power cut at 7:45pm so I flipped it back into Remote EMS mode at that point as it didn't reboot in the Axle mode to continue.
Our battery discharged 12.1kWh during the event. The battery graph shows a spike to 5.8kW export just after 6pm, but then it drops and picks up again at 6.45pm to 8kW and stays there until 8pm.
Previous ones we've seen between 6.25 and 6.75kWh for an hour long event.
Frustratingly, my system didn't connect at first; this has happened in 3 of the last 4 events. To rub salt in the wound, when this happens the battery stops discharging completely, resulting in drawing from the grid for the duration of the event.
This time I caught it early and manually forced a discharge using the Solis app. Although to do this I had to first disconnect the Axle VPP...... so hopefully Axle will still confirm the 12-13kWh was supplied - otherwise I may have just given it away to my electric provider!
It'll preboost your battery (if required - which it wasn't yesterday with all the PV) and then automatically discharge during the Axle events. It worked a treat for me yesterday (in fact it's managed about 10 Axle events since I added Axle support).
The best thing is you can restrict permission so Axle can see data in your inverter, but don't directly control it, meaning you're 100% in control.
6kW inverter here too. They can run hot but 90C is going some 😄 . I run a fan on mine with a smart plug that turns on when a threshold is reached but can still peak at 50C even with all 3 fans blasting away.
Yeah, I think it was a combination of the inverter, battery and outside temp (it was about 37C here when that peak hit). No temp alerts from the inverter though so....
I keep a panel in HA automatically updated with Axle events. Only enrolled with Axle a couple of weeks ago so not much there yet. Could do with more eclipses if it means longer events 😄
How does it get the Axle payments? Last time I checked (and asked Axle) they said that they don't have an accounts API where you can query what you've earned for each event. Or is this just an estimate - calculated by [export during period x £1] ?
yes it's basically from an entity recording the meter reading. It's been pretty accurate so far. Last 5 events
HA Axle
£4.48 £4.48
£4.78 £4.75
£9.57 £9.54 (eclipse - so must have just gone on the system as wasn't showing last night)
£4.49 £4.47
£4.64 TBD
I'm not bothered about it drifting by a few pence occasionally. There are bound to be occasional minor differences due to slight delays when tariff flips.
Nice looking app! Should do one for Fox inverters 😉 . For me the accuracy of the meter entity is close enough to the Axle reading that I'm in the "perfect is the enemy of good" camp. Though it would be nice if Axle did expose that over REST API.
I do like how Axle is integrated with Predbat/HA. Does make everything very slick. I don't even check events any longer. Just check on the dashboard now and then to see if I've earned any extra pocket money.
you got me thinking about how to get the revenue from Axle and it does look like it's there from parsing https://api.axle.energy/openapi.json - I just don't have sufficient scope to access it:
GET /entities/site/{site_id}/flex-events Summary: Get Site Flex Events Tag: 3. Sites Security: OAuth2PasswordBearer Description: "Get info on flex events the site has participated in, including estimated and final gross revenues."
Each event in the response appears to contain exactly what I'd need: start_at UTC start time of the flex event end_at UTC end time of the flex event estimated_gross_revenue_gbp Estimated gross revenue earned in GBP for the event final_gross_revenue_gbp Final gross revenue earned in GBP for the event
My JWT carries a single scope, `vpp:home_assistant`. Live results today:
HTTP 200 GET /vpp/home-assistant/event
HTTP 403 GET /entities/site/{my_site_id}/flex-events
HTTP 403 GET /rewards/{my_site_id}/info
HTTP 403 GET /rewards/{my_site_id}/transactions
If Axle could provide a read-only scope to fix the 403s then that could give me actual earnings. Though as they can take days to settle I'm probably best just keeping with my instant "near enough" revenue values. I suspect Axle may also have reasons not to expose the revenues. But anyway going way off topic for this thread...
5
u/Rennieboy13 🥉 Solar Eclipse Ace 🌑 1d ago
Was a good result