Can The Alpha Home Storage Battery Live Up To Its Claim?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มิ.ย. 2024
- The Alpha ESS Home Storage Battery is with me for review and test so I put it threw its paces in this my 2nd full lithium battery review of the channel, The video will look at everything from the build quality of this home storage battery to its ability to store solar energy and charge from the grid plus how it works with home assistant we also look at some of the negatives I found with the system
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00:00 Which Home Battery To Pick?
00:20 Alpha Ess Smile 3 Battery review
00:57 5kWh Module Upgraded By Heatable to 10Kwh
01:21 Fitting The Battery Outside
01:52 Dimensions of battery
02:45 Build Quality & Install
04:28 My Problem With CT Clamps
07:56 Stuff am not happy with!
09:02 Depeth of Discharge
09:37 Backup Power
10:36 App Website & Homeassistant
12:50 Can't Force Export but Aux ports
14:22 Local Data
Channel all about Electric cars and battery-powered devices, I seek to educate myself and you the audience every week with the info I know from working within the car trade.
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For a quote for solar and battery please use my referral link with heatable at evnick.com/heatable Please NOTE since this review as of Febuary 2024 this system now allows export back to the grid!
About your comment about automatic switchover, that is exactly what I have done both in my solar building and at the house end by using electromagnetic contact that can be activated either from the grid end or from the inverter side. I have mine energised by the inverter so as soon as I lose PV energy the grid comes in in a matter of milliseconds. For the application you're discussing it would be a case of using the grid to energise so when that goes off, it would automatically isolate the system. I also use the same system for the earth (grounding) because I don't like multiple ground rods at a distance so when the PV is on (most of the time) I use my own ground and when it's off I allow the house ground to connect also in order to give a return path to the Grid neutral.
A
App looks very well designed with some useful features. Shame about lack of forced export, but not a feature that many are going to use often
Hows your GIvenergy unit doing??
It’s ironic that you said it’s fully ip rated and showed those stuffing glands roughed in and with huge gaps in them amd the wrong cable type rammed in , however I agree with the review I have exactly the same setup my self cheap and cheerful but do the business , my cover is also metal the must have changed it to plastic since last year , adding battries is made super easy too as mentioned , the app has improved massively over the last 12 months , its great to see somebody admit that CT cables are NOT cat5 unlike some of the major EV manufactures will tell you .
It’s worth noting that I’ve been messing with all the connections since installed and that it’s in my garage where it won’t see any water
Hi Nick, really good series on solar and batterys. We have had an Alpha ESS Smile 5 (~15Kwh) for a year now. It is in the garage which is a fair run from the meter box at the house. We are running CT clamps. So my question is , how much unintended grid useage do you get with your solution? I am probably seeing 0.25kwh unintended grid useage every day. Although it does vary a bit. Approx £2 to £3 extra on the bill each month.
I have an octopus mini but you could use your IN home smart display on your smart meter, open that and the alpha app and see if grid usage is the same for me its PREFECT its sometimes drifts LIVE usage as 5-10 watts which is nothing. Giving you unintended usage for day wouldn't really help give you the answer you seek so hope this helps you find the issue
@@NicolasRaimo ok cheers, it's difficult to tell, when I look at either the Alpha app and the IHD because of the lag in the app it's difficult to correlate the two. Most of the time the app shows 7w/15w drift maybe slightly worse during the day with solar. Every so often it has a crazy 30 secs where it will show like 350W draw then settle down again. I have two chargers a Zappi and a free Indra Pro (with a lease car) . The feed to the Indra pro has just been reconfigured in the meter box to stop battery drain with the sole intention of getting an Ohme Home Pro for use with Intelligent. So following on from this reconfiguration I will keep an eye on the battery and see if that's affected it's stability , the CT clamps got moved round a bit! I have applied for an Octopus mini after watching your video ... But I don't think they are giving them out at the moment.
Hopefully I will get the Ohme Pro installed and go on Octopus Intelligent and Outgoing (we have 6kwp solar too) in the next couple of weeks. The Outgoing tariff will make up for any unintended grid draw and make me feel a bit better about it!
Thanks for your reply ..
Hi Nick Great video and very informative. I have been watching your videos since the early days of the Zoe and on the back of them bought ZE 40 and a ZE 50 and then for reasons you will understand dumped the ZE50 for a Megane E-tech. I have Solar, Alpha Batteries and emergency circuits with an earthing rod etc. I have a Zappi charger and use Solar Divert and do various other things to try to ensure I use all my power avoiding exporting to the grid. The Alpha has charge and discharge program settings. When charging to say 80% between 0:30 and 4:30 when the battery reaches 80% any further demand is satisfied by importing at cheap rate from the grid meaning the battery is not discharged between 0:30 and 4:30 if you have programed it to charge. There is a discharge program which I have not set but my understanding is that if you configure it the battery will export ie discharge to the grid during the times set. Are you saying this is not the case ? If so are you saying the discharge program is not a way of timing when it exports to the grid ? What then is the discharge program setting for ? Thanks in advance for your view on this Nick and keep up the good work Cheers Trev
Hi!, If you click the big ? in circle next to the discharge option it says the following "if 'battery discharge time control' function is enabled and the discharging period is set, this means only during the setting period the batteries can discharge only to loads but not to the grid"
It allows you to exclude discharging to loads for example if you got HIGH export rates for certain times of day you'd not allow discharging during this time
Thanks for your reply Nick. So if you have a full battery is there a way of using the charge and discharge programs to force an export from the battery out to the grid if there is a HIGH export tarrif for a particular time of day ? Thanks in advance Nick for your help and knowledge on this
Is that an ac coupled system and a hybrid system all in one ?.
Is the maximum draw on that 3kw
The Alpha system is the ess smile all details in video
I've got the same model. Correct max 3kw charge to battery and max 3kw draw from battery
One question with this and the ESS smile5, is the warranty is only 5 years, 10 performance, I guess it depends on the usage but lets say I get 12.5 years out of i, that then means I would need to replace the battery and inverter probably at least once, so £4000+ which the figures dont normally take into consideration I guess, but as they are modular and things are changing all the time, will I be able to get a replacement battery and/or Inverter box when the time comes is it not better to have a separate inverter and battery.....?
So to confirm Force Export is me saying grid please take say 5kw of energy back right (ideally 4-7pm peak time), is there no way the grid takes any energy from the battery for the SEG payment....? or with you heatable solution the seg is purely from the panels?
A new car has a 3 year warranty it doesn’t break 6 years later… they need to have a cut off point I’d expect the inverter to fail maybe in 15 years battery should last a lot longer.
SEG purely from panels yes but Heatable do givenergy batteries also that allows forced export
@@NicolasRaimo yes agreed, but do you know what happens in say it does go pop will you be able to swap it out easily (change the battery in the custom case, or they plan to support them for quite a while, or you can fit a newer model inverter and/or battery that dont match so well) or are you looking at a wholenew system.
Also I guess you have the Alpha battery for a little while now, are you still happy with it and the Rea setup or is there anything you would change?
@@user-ti7ph3lr8q the alpha battery is solid but of kit but lack of forced export is a negative for me I’d change that, the panels preforming great! The micros are amazing. Not bothered about backup power never get powercuts I’d say 10kwh is minimum size battery you need! Also alpha smile 3.65 inverter bit small it’s fine in summer when solar is on full but in winter could do with being 5.
If you do get a quote via Heatable please use my link as am trying to have them work on some more projects with me and them seeing installs coming through helps! Evnick.com/heatable
13:12 surely you have asked the bros? 🤔
or do you allege their supplier haven't supplied them with manual?
Regarding stopping discharge when the EV charger kicks in (e.g. Intelligent Octopus), I get round it by using an Shelley EM cable clamp setup (about £50) on the live to the Ohme EV Charger. When the EV charger kicks in, the current increase is picked up by Home Assistant from the Shelley EM. Home Assistant then disables Alpha discharge and sets charge mode as the electricity is cheap when Intelligent Octopus is in EV charge mode. So I actually top the Alpha up with cheap electricity. Once the EV charger stops, Home Assistant resets the Alpha to my default (charge overnight). While this is happening, any solar is going to grid but Octopus pay 15p/kWh whereas the Intelligent charging cost me 7.5p/kWh so I make a small amount of money.
How did you get home assistant to change the schedule work mode on the API intergation?
@@NicolasRaimo You can use the HA integration to enable/disable Charge From Grid and the times it does it. When Charge From Grid is active, the Alpha doesn't discharge.
So, my default is Charge From Grid 23.30 thru 05.30 when Octopus Intelligent is cheap. If the EV charger kicks in I set it to 13.00 thru 12.45, effectively constant.
Be aware though, the Alpha Integration on HA is currently being changed as Alpha want folks to use their public API which wasn't public until recently
@@malcnewton I got alpha Ha plug-in what code and steps did you take for this to trigger I have a home mini on my HA so I got a device control for my ohme charger on that
@@NicolasRaimo How do you want me to show you? I used the Visual Editor which probably isn't that helpful. I could get the YAML source it generated but just need to redact some of the secure bits. Failing that a screen shot of the Visual Editor?
@@malcnewton that or Twitter think I found a way to call it would love to compare notes
Cat6 is fine but not for CT clamps more than about 6ft away.
Usuaful info for some but clearly they were not experts.
Remember my cat6 was existing due to my nature of my setup with me having test rigs for EV chargers and various equipment