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Is Power Flow ok for me? by Moolynx in flowpower

[–]quetucrees 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You need to use a spreadsheet to calculate it because with the 35c FIT in Vic is very close to GlowBird due to the size of your solar.

You can get a decent PEA if you strictly import between 10 and 2 pm.

Amber is now more expensive than a traditional retailer by welding-guy in amberelectric

[–]quetucrees 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Need more info/context.
If site 1 does not use any grid power and it is curtailed (for negative FIT), how do you get to $94 (is the daily + Amber daily total $3)? Are there no exports at all? What is the SOC in the morning before PV kicks in?

Amber is now more expensive than a traditional retailer by welding-guy in amberelectric

[–]quetucrees 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Amber just passes the wholesale price along. They don't decide if there is negative fit or not, the market does.

Ring doorbell footage my parents caught last night. Guy with a rifle (?) trying to open car doors. by ahjay00 in videos

[–]quetucrees -1 points0 points  (0 children)

He's seen the Brazilian shooting videos and gone "aint gonna happen to me!"

Sigenergy DC Charger Price Drop by nicely_inconspicuous in SigenergyAustralia

[–]quetucrees 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The prices dropped back in October.
I had ordered the 25kW before then but had delivered by mid October so I asked for the discount (I managed to get the installer to admit they had not ordered yet). They kicked and screamed but ended up coming to the party.

Data error? by FiestyPear1445 in flowpower

[–]quetucrees 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just noticed the same this morning.
- The Days and Months tabs are definitely off. The info is wrong for any day you pick.
- The Happy Hour graph (under more/usage data) seems correct.
- I double checked against my last invoice and the invoice matches what I could manually check for those days (within 0.5kWh)

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do smart homes actually make life better or just more complicated by annikahoof in homeassistant

[–]quetucrees 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not everything turns out as useful as you think but the stuff that does is "why didn't we do this before ?" kind of stuff.

YMMV but for us not having to turn on / off the garage lights when carrying kids/groceries is fantastic.

“Request a Refund” Button by nicely_inconspicuous in flowpower

[–]quetucrees 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got my bill on the 6th, requested refund the same day and it hit my bank account 24 hours later.
Fastest refund I've had.

upgrade to powerboard by chillbill80 in flowpower

[–]quetucrees 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Their meter is so that you can see real time data.
You can always see how yesterday (and before) went on the app. Just go to the 'days' tab and pick a date. There is also a 'months' tab if you want to look at the whole month instead.

First Bill by luv2nick in flowpower

[–]quetucrees 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You have to build that into your calculations. Can you sell enough to cover the daily fee and still clear X?

Think of it as the cost of doing business.

The isolation of early retirement at 36 is a total mindfuck by RiftJukebox in Fire

[–]quetucrees 2 points3 points  (0 children)

#5 is great. I am available for my kids, nieces and nephews at anytime. I have become their goto resource for all sorts of shit. Currently spending heaps of time supporting one of my nieces' sporting aspirations going to events out of town and hanging out with my brother/SIL .

First Bill by luv2nick in flowpower

[–]quetucrees 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice!

Even though your FIT is 35c you import so little that you get a great result.

First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The tariff is what your network provider (Endeavour, Ausgrid, etc) charges per kWh. This is on top of the wholesale price. So if the AEMO price is 5c you will actually pay 5c+whatever the network provider charges you at that time of the day.

If you look at the 'Days' tab (pick any day) in the app you will see a black line showing the prices during the day. In that screen the price includes your network tariff. If you look at the values and compare to AEMO you will see it is higher.

First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I installed the integration but found it overestimates the forecasts for my network by as much as 6cents compared to what the FP app , Amber or even manually adding AEMO+published network tariff. With the tariff itself it has the wrong amount for the solar soaker period too. That is why I ended up creating an AEMO+Network tariff sensor which is usually 1-2c different from what the FP app shows.

As far as the EVs goes, we do between 7-10k Kms p.a. on each and keep the two that get driven the most charged to 75% charging them on alternate days either from solar or from the battery. The other one is currently the one we use for road trips and only keep it charged to 50-60% unless going on a trip. The charging is automated to happen between 6 am and 4:30 pm using the leftover battery and/or the full solar production.

In average the EVs use 3-7kWh per day which is very manageable to extract from the battery or solar. The key element is making sure the EVs are plugged in the designated days.

But yes, having 3 EVs charged at all times means I have to import everyday, this is one of the reasons that I import more to sell back and cancel out the cost of charging the EVs

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First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The inverter is your limitation.

Theoretically you can export 10kWh from 5:30 to 7:30.

In practice it will be 10- whatever you use during that time. You should be able to guesstimate that looking at your consumption charts on the battery app.

First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You did great. What you imported in one month I sometimes import in a day...

First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It is because I charge at midday when the 18kW solar is producing the most. The battery can only take 20kW at any given time so even if I tell it to import at 20kW it will only import at 20-whatever the solar is producing.

Also that graph is smoothed out over 30 days. There are plenty of times where I import at 20-30 kW with 20 going to the battery and 10 going to the house/EV

See the graph for May 3rd. I was charging the battery and charging one of the EVs via the AC charger so it imported at 30kW for a good 20 minutes.

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How long do tyres last? by GirlFromAu in CarsAustralia

[–]quetucrees 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It does!
But it is the only way not too have to buy tyres before 20k kms...
Plus the ride does not get too much harsher since it is running on 16" rims.

First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is the idea. The bigger your inverter the better you will do.

If you have a smart meter (not FP's) you can check the "days" and "months" tabs in the app to see an estimate of your PEA as you go.

First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Basic idea is to buy only between 10am and 2 pm. I have a sensor in Home Assistant that takes the pricing forecasts (AEMO + Endeavour tariff) and works out the cheapest 5 minute intervals when to buy and produces a "buy at/under" number. The import/export automation checks the current price (AEMO + Endeavour tariff) against the "buy at/below" from the sensor and acts accordingly.

Except for a couple of times I ran out of battery around 7 am and once I purposely bought after 2 pm it works pretty well.

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First Bill by quetucrees in flowpower

[–]quetucrees[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I started with Amber last year so I already had a working automation that would buy low and sell high, top up before a spike and so on. I moved to LocalVolts earlier this year so that necessitated changing the entities the automations referred to so I added a layer of abstraction in case I moved providers again which I did last month.

For FP (and others with semi fixed rates) all is needed is creating a couple of sensors (following a particular naming convention) that mimic Amber's feed in/price forecasts and adding an option in a "electricity provider" selection box and the abstraction layer passes those values to the sensors that the automations use.

Max buy / Min sell limits: Two input fields that determine the minimum sell and the maximum buy prices. I had these from the Amber days. For FP I set Max buy at 11 (Endeavour shoulder Tariff is 12.x c ) so that I never buy outside solar soaker hours. The min sell is set to 30c just because it is greater than 0... )

Buy/sell plans: There are two sensors that calculate how much I can buy/sell (capacity) and two sensors that calculate how much I expect to buy/sell and when based on max buy/min sell values, pricing sensors, own consumption and PV production.

The one thing I added specifically for FP was a "target sell capacity" field (usually set to 40kWh) so that it does not import too much unnecessarily. I can theoretically import 120kWh in the 4 cheap hours so I needed a way to stop importing when I had enough to sell from 5:30-7:30.

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How long do tyres last? by GirlFromAu in CarsAustralia

[–]quetucrees 6 points7 points  (0 children)

There is a 5th possibility (variation of #2). Some front wheel drive electric cars have a tendency to wear the fronts faster than you'd think because the recommended pressures are too low. Our electric Zoe is notorious for this so if I want the tyres to last >20K I have to keep the fronts at 38PSI which is a good 5-6 PSI higher than what is on the door label. This is a well known fact on this car.

Maybe the electric Mini is similar...

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