Thanks for the screenshot. Thats pretty useless (no criticism of you!) because it doesnt tell us the flow temperatures (ie the temperature of the hot water from the heat pump) at those OATs. ) is an odd low end, it may mean that below 0 the FT flatlines, which means that in the weather we are currently having you are likely to be too cold if its properly adjusted at more mild weather.
Is there any kind of explanation to this screen in a help menu? What on earth does 'auto compensation when' mean?
@jamespa The app seems to cut off the text 🙁 But on the unit it is "Auto compensation value when heating". There is zero help within the app that explains what these values are.
@jamespa The app seems to cut off the text 🙁 But on the unit it is "Auto compensation value when heating". There is zero help within the app that explains what these values are.
Hmm. There maybe some more controls on the control panel itself. Manual (of sorts) here The manual is very light indeed on detail, they either didnt bother to write it or have deliberately hidden it. You could try asking the installer? The fundamental here is getting the WC settings right for all temps including - ones. Its presumably possible b ut the app and manual are of no help at all!
It appears that the controls for this heat pump are different to almost all others on the market and, from what you have shown me, they do not expose in any obvious way the most important parameters. Unfortunately they do not publish a manual that is of any real value. It may be that a combination of adjustments to the parameters they do expose can achieve what you need to achieve, but without an description of how they relate to the actual flow temperature its impossible to tell.
I think that, in this case, you will need to ask your installer or their tech support line if they have one. All you are trying to do is to adjust the weather compensation flow temperatures which is about the most basic configuration possible with a heat pump!
I am sorry I cant be more helpful but if you do ask your installer or contact the manufacturer please do let me know what they say
@editor this appears to be an case of a heat pump manufacturer that provides a manual that is near useless and a UI that doesn't expose the parameters you need to adjust it, or if it does so the presentation is cryptic to say the least! Any suggestions, have you come across 'Peak Energy'
@jamespa Thank you James for taking the time to help. I will try the installer, I have emailed the manufacturer but did not get any kind of response. I am currently manually setting the flow temp via the app to emulate set back and weather compensation which is getting tiresome. Thanks Again.
I have just registered with the forum today to ask for advice with our Peak ASHP, also not reaching flow temperatures and the weather compensation setting not functioning, with not seeing any online information of the Peak equipment before and then seeing this thread show up! Also being located in Lancashire we may have used the same installer.
We currently have the 11kw external unit since the end of November as we were upgraded from the 7kw unit due to it not being able to perform when the external temp dropped below 5 degrees external in November. Again the 'fix' was to turn on the 3kw backup immersion heater and a (then) record of 91kWh used in a day and the house didn't reach anywhere near our set internal temp of 18 degrees.
Heat loss calculations by the installer at install were 7kw, so really on the limit for the 7kw unit.
Now this 11kw unit can't reach or maintain flow temps at 2 degrees or below, the manufacturer has again just switched on the 3kw backup immersion heater as the 'fix'.
Reaching a new record of electricity usage of 134kWh in a day (Monday 5th Jan).
The only time we felt warm and the house at temperature was Wednesday 7th Jan this week when the external temps warmed up to 4 degrees, even then it consumed 65kWh (without immersion heater switched on).
We were given a mobile number for one of the Peak engineers who we spoke to a few time before Christmas over the performance and raised the issue of the weather compensation not working. The fix for that was to add a temperature display offset of -3 degrees so the flow temp on the home screen appeared lower than it actually was...
So we have also been manually altering the flow temp to emulate the weather compensation.
We have been back to the installer multiple times and they have contacted Peak directly and 'some' changes were made to the controller yesterday remotely by Peak.
This involved increasing the compressor max frequency from 70 to 76 and upping the max fan speed from 900rpm to 1000rpm, and switching both immersion heaters on for the heating and DHW.
The installer has struggled to get much of anything back from the manufacturer and was waiting for a response to an email sent in on Friday and was going to let us know if there were any further developments.
We have currently consumed 61kWh so far today (10th Jan@15:20) and the highest internal temp we have had is 17.9 degrees, with an external temp of between 1 and 2 degrees.
Recent usage below, figures taken from our Sunsync inverter for whole house usage (no EV charging included), remove ~8kWh for normal house usage leaving the rest as the ASHP consumption;
30th Dec - 57kWh 31st Dec - 61kWh 1st Jan - 54kWh 2nd Jan - 69kWh 3rd Jan - 63kWh - -6 degrees overnight - max flow temp 34 degrees 4th Jan - 115kWh - immersion switched on 5th Jan - 134kWh 6th Jan - 118kWh 7th Jan - 65kWh - 4 degrees external - immersion switched off - house actually at 18 degrees internal 8th Jan - 85kWh 9th Jan - 69kWh 10th Jan - 61kWh - 1 to 2 degrees external - immersion switched back on
We have been back to the installer multiple times and they have contacted Peak directly and 'some' changes were made to the controller yesterday remotely by Peak.
This involved increasing the compressor max frequency from 70 to 76 and upping the max fan speed from 900rpm to 1000rpm, and switching both immersion heaters on for the heating and DHW.
Firstly welcome to the forum.
From the preceding posts on this thread you may have gathered that this unit appears not to 'expose' the key parameters in the weather compensation curve. Without that, and in the absence of meaningful documentation, its essentially impossible to set it up to work properly. The part of your post I reproduced above suggests that the design of the unit may be 'work in progress'. The workarounds they have imposed are an expensive way to get more power out, so not something that should remain in place other than when its extremely cold.
One thing which I should check is - are you running 24*7? If you aren't then switching to doing that may help. I say 'may' because, whilst with any other heat pump it definitely will, without access to the WC parameters its really difficult to be certain. However if your problem is not getting warm enough then doing this is definitely the starting point.
I have tagged @editor in the hope that he has some knowledge of or a way to get Peak Energy to give up some more information about their product than is available from their (frankly pathetic) manual. Frankly I have never seen anything so utterly useless, heat pump manuals normally are so full of information that you are overwhelmed, or as a minimum have a UI where the most important parameters are obvious to anyone who has any idea about heat pumps.
This post was modified 11 hours ago 2 times by JamesPa
4kW peak of solar PV since 2011; EV and a 1930s house which has been partially renovated to improve its efficiency. 7kW Vaillant heat pump.
Yes we are running the heating 24x7, outside of 2x 1 hour intervals to do the DHW set 12 hours apart to try and reduce heat loss in the house.
The internal temperature monitoring approach of the Peak ASHP doesn't exist, instead relies on a third party EPH thermostat to either switch on or off the heating, so getting the correct flow temp to not hit the max temp set on the thermostat (without weather comp) has been tricky.
Although much easier now that it is colder and it barely scrapes 18 degrees into the house!
The compressor just runs at max frequency almost constantly to achieve and hopefully maintain our set flow temp, so we haven't manged to see much if any efficiency of the ASHP.
The Peak controller is also unable to calculate it's COP as it has no idea what the flow rate is, as it merely switches the 2x pumps on or off.
The pumps have a manual speed setting button on them and was just set to max from installation.
So I would agree, it looks to be a very work in progress system.
@jamespa there are a couple of parameter menu levels, only accessible if you know the correct access codes to get to them; level 1, level 2 and factory. (which we do)
I can throw up screenshots of each of the pages if you think it would be helpful?
@davec Sounds like we are in the same boat. Did the installer extend the defrost intervals (default is 45 mins according to the installer)? This seems to have made a big difference, instead of looping it now maintains a constant temperature for much longer. I have started running the ASHP constantly since the defrost fix, 34 degrees at night then 38-40 in the day on a cold day like today. This maintains a comfortable 18 degrees inside and so far as of 17:12pm has used approx. 50 KWH of electricity for hot water (46 degrees for 90 mins once a day, 300 litre tank) and heating. The usage whilst the backup heater being used was huge, but we haven't had to use this since the defrost cycle interval changes where made.
@davec This is interesting, I only have the 223344 code, I assumed was full access. Are you able to see the defrost cycle interval parameters with the higher access?
