My growatt shine phone app screen has very recently changed in appearance after a year of use
(see attached) and no longer listens to my instructions to charge during timed periods nor does it listen to holding its charge.
...
Is your app reporting your inverter's current situation? Energy coming from PV, energy being consumed, imported/exported from grid, into/out of battery? If so, the inverter is definitely talking to the Growatt API.
To be frank, I have never found either the Growatt app or the server.growatt.com portal to be particularly reliable in controlling the inverter. The actual installed kit is fine but the software's not great and I've always been concerned that if I changed a setting temporarily and then the wifi module lost Internet connectivity (it is Wifi, after all....) then I would have no easy way of changing the setting back until the connection was resumed.
For the longer term, if you are regularly actively managing the timed periods for various modes and so forth, the only recommendation I can give is to start controlling the inverter locally. We have a couple of threads already about this, but the short answer is that the result is immeasurably more dependable.
For the shorter term, I have to guess that the answer will be buried in the settings you currently have and I'm not sure about your level of familiarity with how the various Growatt parameters relate to the inverter's operation - let's face it, they're not the most intuitively named. That said, from what you've said in your original post, I have to assume you're not a novice. Are you able to share which combination of settings changes you tried to make that used to work and don't now?
105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and inverter
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs
It is odd that for the last 13 months that I have used the app and web browser, everything worked well, apart from occasional off day......
I am on Octopus Agile so the settings that have worked are not rigid. They can vary immeasurably., from day to day.
Is there a 'manual' available for me to learn how to change the inverter locally?
Where can I read then previous threads on the forums?
Please and thank you!
I’m not sure I’d be quite that quick to thank me, @aldegat; what I’m talking about is quite a rabbit hole to dive down.
I’m sure it’s possible to change all the settings using the buttons on the front of the inverter but that’s a hell of a faff akin, I suspect, to texting Shakespeare’s complete works on an old Nokia numeric keypad. The alternative is attaching a cable to the inverter and a computer to the other end (either directly or over a network) and then using a protocol called modbus to change the settings you want changed. It’s one of those things that feels like a steep learning curve the first time and really straightforward with hindsight.
The thing is that people don’t often just talk with their inverter in isolation. It’s usually done as part of a wider plan of automating several things together such as reading the Octopus prices and the weather forecast and then automatically changing settings on the inverter accordingly. That then brings us into the world of home automation either using some installable software or getting up close and personal with Python scripts. @cathoderay took the latter approach, whilst I took the former. Rather than influence you unduly I’ll just suggest you search the forums for “modbus” and “automation” and you’ll find a wealth of info.
A word of caution, though. It’s very easy to get flummoxed early on and then put off. Bear with it for a bit and allow yourself to become a bit more familiar with the concepts before you make a decision. The reward is what I saw this weekend past where I saw plenty of plunge price half-hours and my system got the battery charging from grid when prices were negative then changed back to normal operation when prices went positive again, all without me having to do a thing. And yes, my inverter is a Growatt too, so it can be done.
105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and inverter
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs
@editor & @majordennisbloodnok- thank you, I have found the manual (SPA 1000TL BL and GBLI6532) and unfortunately it does not help fix this particular error.
The Growatt service support are now on the case (service.uk@growatt.com). Fingers crossed they can fix this.
