Amber Electric & best inverter/battery....

[manicdoc]

Hi,

I wonder if someone could help in firming up my thinking around my home power set up.

ATM I have two enphase solar installs, which can at max pump out 8Kw actual. I'm able to control some big power loads, such as AC, hot water heater and pool pumps. So I can do some solar output (& cheap times) to load matching minute by minute but with this I'm missing the ability to time shift power around. So saving money but not truly maximising things.

In Australia there is a company called Amber Electric which allows you to get access to the wholesale electricity market directly - you pay ~$19 fee per month for this, but you get pricing currently in 30 minute slots (and soon to be 5 minute slots if the forum is accurate).

My aim is to have a system that can use solar or grid to charge the battery when cheap and then use some of the battery to feed back in when grid power demand is high - so I save money by reducing what I pull from the grid but can also push onto the grid when profitable.

I'm also after something that I can control, given I can do load timing or shedding if needed. I have a strong background in comp sci, so coding is not a problem (probably run it all on its own Pi using a state machine, DB and some data handling scripts). I was looking at the Victron MultiPlus-II GX charger/inverters which can be controlled by MQTT. Amber Electric look to have an API I can call.  I was thinking of using LV Flex 5 batteries. This way I can add on more storage if the figures indicate it would be useful. Also it looks like this can operate like an UPS if the grid drops.

I also suspect that not having a battery is causing the net charge to 'flip/flop'  (i.e. some loss not really in my favour is going on), where as if I have the house load behind a battery there can be solid periods of running off the battery and so cut the grid loading to a solid zero.

Basically, would this work? Or am I missing something..  Much thanks.