Solcast not making it into the plan as expected?

[ItsIllak]

I'm pretty new to predbat, but have this set up with a LuxPower GEN-LB-EU 8K hybrid inverter, 16.1kwh battery, 10kw solar and a Myenergi Zappi charger, set up through Homeassistant.

It was working well and then started hitting some problems, or possibly it wasn't working well and I just didn't realise, but eventually got the data correct and that revealed problems... I'm probably only a day into a full, working configuration with accurate "today kwh" and "now kw" figures so it's definitely still "learning".

Latest issue was that it started to fail to get solcast predictions at all - they came out of the plan entirely. Now they're back, but if I look at the plan for the next 48hrs, it shows a total of 24.84kwh expected. Then look at the apps.yaml config and it shows:

pv_forecast_today sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_today = 21.533kWh
pv_forecast_tomorrow sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_tomorrow = 23.3602kWh

So, it seems it's still struggling to use the solcast data? It's planning for less than half of what it should see solcast predicting? Or am I missing something?

[ItsIllak]

My apps.yaml as that's likely to be a question:

pred_bat:
  module: predbat
  class: PredBat
  prefix: predbat
  timezone: Europe/London
  dno_region: "J"
  ha_url: "http://192.168.1.250:8123"
  ha_key: !secret ha_key
  currency_symbols:
  - '£'
  - 'p'
  threads: auto
  load_filter_threshold: 30

  # Daily energy sensors
  load_today:
  - sensor.total_household_energy_daily
  import_today:
  - sensor.luxpower_inverter_grid_energy_from_grid_today
  export_today:
  - sensor.luxpower_inverter_grid_energy_to_grid_today
  pv_today:
  - sensor.luxpower_inverter_pv_pv_energy_today
  - sensor.mklbe4l034_energy_today

  # LuxPower inverter
  num_inverters: 1
  inverter_type: LuxPower
  inverter:
    name: "LuxPower"
    has_rest_api: false
    has_mqtt_api: false
    has_service_api: true
    output_charge_control: "current"
    current_dp: 0
    has_charge_enable_time: true
    has_discharge_enable_time: true
    has_target_soc: true
    has_reserve_soc: false
    has_timed_pause: false
    charge_time_format: "HH:MM:SS"
    charge_time_entity_is_option: false
    soc_units: "%"
    num_load_entities: 1
    has_ge_inverter_mode: false
    time_button_press: false
    clock_time_format: "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
    write_and_poll_sleep: 10
    has_time_window: false
    support_charge_freeze: false
    support_discharge_freeze: false

  # Charge control
  charge_start_service:
  - service: switch.turn_on
    entity_id: "switch.luxpower_inverter_ac_charging"
  charge_stop_service:
  - service: switch.turn_off
    entity_id: "switch.luxpower_inverter_ac_charging"

  # Discharge control
  discharge_start_service:
  - service: switch.turn_on
    entity_id: "switch.luxpower_inverter_forced_discharge"
  discharge_stop_service:
  - service: switch.turn_off
    entity_id: "switch.luxpower_inverter_forced_discharge"

  # Current limits, in Amps
  timed_charge_current:
  - number.luxpower_inverter_battery_charge_current
  timed_discharge_current:
  - number.luxpower_inverter_battery_discharge_current

  # Live power
  # Battery flow: negative = charging, positive = discharging.
  # This is already in Predbat's required sign convention.
  battery_power:
  - sensor.luxpower_inverter_battery_battery_flow
  battery_power_invert: false

  pv_power:
#    - sensor.luxpower_inverter_pv_pv_power
  - sensor.total_solar_power

  load_power:
  - sensor.total_household_power


  # Grid flow: negative = export, positive = import.
  # Predbat requires negative = import, positive = export.
  export_limit:
  - 6000
  grid_power:
  - sensor.luxpower_inverter_grid_grid_flow
  grid_power_invert: true

  # Battery state
  soc_percent:
  - sensor.luxpower_inverter_battery_battery_soc

  # Usable/nominal battery capacity in kWh.
  # Fogstar battery: 16.1 kWh.
  soc_max:
  - 16.1

  # Maximum battery/inverter rate used by Predbat's modelling.
  battery_rate_max:
  - 8000

  battery_min_soc:
  - number.luxpower_inverter_battery_on_grid_cut_off_soc

  battery_voltage:
  - 48
    #  - sensor.luxpower_inverter_battery_battery_voltage

  # Scheduled AC charging
  scheduled_charge_enable:
  - switch.luxpower_inverter_ac_charging
  charge_start_time:
  - time.luxpower_inverter_ac_charging_start_time
  charge_end_time:
  - time.luxpower_inverter_ac_charging_end_time
  charge_limit:
  - number.luxpower_inverter_battery_ac_charge_soc_limit

  # Scheduled forced discharge
  scheduled_discharge_enable:
  - switch.luxpower_inverter_forced_discharge
  discharge_start_time:
  - time.luxpower_inverter_forced_discharge_start_time
  discharge_end_time:
  - time.luxpower_inverter_forced_discharge_end_time
  discharge_target_soc:
  - number.luxpower_inverter_battery_forced_discharge_soc_limit

  # GEN-LB-EU 8K
  inverter_limit:
  - 8000

  # Do not enable export_limit unless you want Predbat to model a
  # deliberate inverter export limit.

  inverter_clock_skew_start: 0
  inverter_clock_skew_end: 0
  inverter_clock_skew_discharge_start: 0
  inverter_clock_skew_discharge_end: 0
  inverter_can_charge_during_export: false
  clock_skew: 0

  # Solar forecasting
  pv_forecast_today: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_today)
  pv_forecast_tomorrow: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_tomorrow)
  pv_forecast_d3: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_(day_3|d3))
  pv_forecast_d4: re:(sensor.(solcast_|)(pv_forecast_|)forecast_(day_4|d4))

  # EV/Zappi detection.
  num_cars: 0
  car_charging_energy: sensor.myenergi_zappi_23895568_energy_used_today
  car_charging_power: sensor.myenergi_zappi_23895568_power_ct_internal_load

  # Energy rates: configure these separately for your electricity tariff.
  rates_import:
  - start: "23:00:00"
    end: "06:00:00"
    rate: 6.99
  - start: "06:00:00"
    end: "23:00:00"
    rate: 30
  rates_export:
  - start: "23:00:00"
    end: "00:00:00"
    rate: 0
  - start: "00:00:00"
    end: "23:00:00"
    rate: 15
  days_previous:
  - 7
  forecast_hours: 48

  battery_scaling:
  - 1.0
  import_export_scaling: 1.0

  prediction_kernel_enable: true

[gcoan]

Latest issue was that it started to fail to get solcast predictions at all - they came out of the plan entirely. Now they're back, but if I look at the plan for the next 48hrs, it shows a total of 24.84kwh expected. Then look at the apps.yaml config and it shows:

pv_forecast_today sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_today = 21.533kWh
pv_forecast_tomorrow sensor.solcast_pv_forecast_forecast_tomorrow = 23.3602kWh

Difficult to tell without seeing the plan and more detail of your solcast sensors, but it could be due to the forecast.

Solcast provides 3 forecasts, a 10% forecast, a 50% forecast and a 90% forecast - if you like a worst/middle/best case. Predbat blends the three of them together to devise a single forecast for each half hour slot. You can adjust the ratio of the 10% and 50% forecast so it could be that your 10% forecast is particularly low or the ratio is set higher than the default 15%.

https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred/apps-yaml/#solar-forecast

[ItsIllak]

OK, so more detail? Here's the plan for the daylight hours tomorrow:

And here's the two aspects in solcast (I've put the orange dot on mid-day)

East:

West:

So, taking that 12pm half hour timeslot. Predbat predicts 1.14kwh, East is at 3.03kw, West is at 0.40kw. So, total 3.43 - that's 1.71kwh for the half hour slot. So, doing that I realise that Predbat is bang on 2/3rds of the prediction. Is that normal for some reason?

[gcoan]

2/3 is not the default for any reason, it depends on the rest of your PV configuration

Predbat won't predict 3.03+0.4=3.43 for a start. As I mentioned there are 3 different solar predictions, you are only looking at the yellow line the PV50, you need to look at the PV90 (grey) and PV10 (white) and scale those by the appropriate factors.

Have a look at your PV config settings for predbat:

In particular, the metric settings which are the weightings in the PV calc.
Check what these are set to.

Also, it could well be that PV calibration is throwing you off, this is where Predbat calibrates the solar forecast based on historic generation vs forecast. You might turn this off (I personally don't use it in favour of Solcast auto dampening)

[ItsIllak]

Weird that the particular half hour slot I chose happened to be exactly 1.5x! So weird, I'm going to assume that's some built-in limit - if it is more than 50% out, it's capped, assuming something's gone wrong?

Anyway, yes, I've now realised that some problems I had with my inverter integration have completely screwed my last 7 days calibration. Two days where 80% of the panels produced nothing against predictions (other days were fine). So, I think I'll mark your help as the answer!

All of those PV settings are on the default, so same as yours except Calibrated PV data is being used...

Thanks for the replies, you got me to look in all the right places :)

[gcoan]

Anyway, yes, I've now realised that some problems I had with my inverter integration have completely screwed my last 7 days calibration. Two days where 80% of the panels produced nothing against predictions (other days were fine). So, I think I'll mark your help as the answer!

All of those PV settings are on the default, so same as yours except Calibrated PV data is being used...

yes that's very much a symptom of PV calibration, if your solar generation is screwed then it will muck up Predbat's forecast.

You can just turn it off for a week or so to let your history recover and Predbat will use the raw Solcast forecast

[ItsIllak]

Final word on this from me - the page I didn't see that would probably have answered this for me was the metrics page in predbat. It's pretty clear that the predictions have been pretty woeful (because 80% of my panels were offline for a day or two):