DIY ESS - First Full Night of Forced Charge Mode and the next day

After moving the ESS, now in the living room, we were ready to use the Forced Charge Mode all night long for the first time

Right after a good movie with the kids



Nikita: Always good to watch a good Luc Besson movie

At 10:30PM, when the low rate period starts, I just pushed the Control Board pushbutton for 4 seconds and the ESS went into Forced Charge Mode, switching all the Chargers on 

As you can see on the graph, after the water heater is done, only the ESS is on and using around 500W and was shut down at 6:30AM, end of the low rate period, using a regular AC timer, as the battery pack was almost full, its voltage showing 26.7V

Sunday morning, with a full pack the ESS helped a lot with the heating (Daikin heat pump),  breakfast, etc all along the morning and some lunch

This is the overview at the end of the day: We covered quite a bit of our Usage with the ESS and the Solar (sunny day for once)

And tonight, I will switch the ESS to Forced Charge Mode again ... in one hour exactly, before going to bed 

DIY ESS - We're moving !

Like I was writing few days ago, we are going deeper into fall and the temperature is decreasing rapidly here in Paris; It is the perfect time to go ahead and move the ESS upstairs, from our bedroom to the living/dining room, to be able to use the Forced Charge Mode at night, when electricity from the grid is cheaper thanks to our TOU (Time Of Use) plan. 

I had planned this move several weeks before, and yesterday was the right time to do this because we started using the heating again (Daikin heat pump) after several months of no use at all: The only very heaving stuff is the battery pack, and it is easy to break it into several pieces

First thing: Switch everything off: the Main Control Board Switch, then the AC breakers and the Battery Pack DC Breaker 

So here I started unscrewing the battery pack terminals and removing the cells two by two

The modified Wattson is also unplugged from the Control Board and removed from the top of the metal cabinet 

All the CALB CA180FI cells have been removed from the cabinet and moved two by two upstairs

Then, the biggest part: the cabinet is moved with all the rest in it: Chargers, Control Board, Grid Tie Inverters and Cables; the ESS is installed in the living/dining room here on top of the stairs

I left the cells in the exact same configuration and asked the kids to stay away from them (!!)

During the moving some items moved a bit and I had to rearrange them 

Now I am putting the batteries back where they were ...

Et voila !

The modified Wattson has been plugged back into the Control Board, and the second one is still displaying the Generated Power

After switching back to on the Battery Pack DC Breaker, the Control Board is now energized again, and I switch on its Main switch: The Arduino board is powered and goes through its initializing sequence, the ESS is now fully on and in Charge Mode

Everything works as usual, and the first charger is switched on by the first AC relay, controlled by the Arduino board 

A little view from the back, and the modified Wattson displays a blue Color Code, meaning the NEt Usage is Low ... perfect ! 

Keep it blue :-)

All the AC lines have been plugged back: GTI side going the Solar junction box like before, and Charger side going to any outlet of the house 

Working well: Solar + ESS = 777W  /  Net Usage = 115W

Another shot to see the kitchen in the background

Solar + ESS = 895W  /  Net Usage = 34W

Solar + ESS = 907W  /  Net Usage = 5W

Graphs for the day:
Power


Energy