Need setup information for an alpha ess battery system

[Rickt]

Who can help with setup information for the alpha ess battery system 

tried ringing but gave up after an hour and 10 min on hold..

looking to start exporting my excess battery power back to the grid……

who can help ……cheers rick

[Basil_AGL · Accepted solution]

Hey @Rickt, 

Thanks for reaching out and sharing your experience. Waiting that long on hold sounds frustrating, and we appreciate your patience. 

For help with setting up, the best contact is our dedicated team on 1300 447 465. They’ll be able to guide you through the process and answer any questions.

Cheers, Basil

[Mal_1]

Hi Rick,

after two days of 2hrs on hold I left a frustrated message for Alha and then next time I tried, they answered.

They told me that the app settings for discharge times is only for discharge to the home and they may do an update in the future to allow to set discharge to grid times. AGl solar was very helpful and no waiting to get through, but the rep confirmed that neither the Alpha app nor AGL app is able to control discharge to grid.

I'm disappointed but since AGL has promised a $200 bill credit and $200 account credit for joining VPP I'm gonna stick it out till after winter and hope to be able to get the 25c feed in from my large spring feed in if Alpha gets their act together. 

Please AGL, can you put some pressure on them? and also make sure that auto control isn't disabled by being a VPP? as I saw a post about this happening for a sigma battery owner.

Rick, I figure I'll eventually be able to take advantage of the battery 25c rewards plan I'm on, and I want to see the financial reward for being a VPP, but if I don't get any substantial benefit by 6 months, I'll have to go back to Amber, where their app does enable discharge and charge control...only issue is it's variable rates, as it's linked to the wholesale market.

[ChrisE_AGL]

Hi @Mal_1 

I've reached out to our solar teams who will contact our stakeholders at Alpha to try and push them along with this. 

That being said, there is currently no easy easy way to setup AlphaEss batteries to export during 5-9pm and thus AlphaESS may not get the full benefit of the Battery Rewards Plan.

It requires a lot of technical knowledge to be able to setup an Alpha Battery for export.

To implement forced export, you would need to use a third-party software that can control the inverter via API or Modbus. This approach requires mapping out all the necessary commands for charge/discharge scheduling and export limits.

To do this you can use Modbus.

AGL accepts no responsibility for the customer changing their battery settings.

If you require further details, please contact your manufacturer and installer directly.
 

Thank you, Chris