Company
Date Published
Author
Ben Tasker
Word count
3047
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

This blog post discusses the author's efforts to optimize their solar-powered battery savings by adjusting its charging schedule. The author initially found that the battery was not being sufficiently charged, leading to lower daily savings rates. To address this, they configured the Solis inverter to charge from the grid during periods of low energy prices (known as "power-ups") and let it discharge at night when prices were higher. This approach allowed them to avoid negative savings days and increase their average daily savings by 21%. The author also discovered that using the battery more, especially on cloudy days, helped increase savings by about 20%. Future improvements include automating the charging schedule to avoid negative savings and ensure a sensible charge level on cloudy days. Despite still being far from breaking even, the author believes there is potential for additional savings with the current setup.