Predbat never charges from grid during cheap rate window

[danwilliams911]

Problem:
Predbat has never once planned or executed a grid charge during the cheap 02:00-05:00 window. Battery consistently sits at 4% from ~21:00 until solar arrives around 09:00.
This happens even on days with poor solar forecast whereby that battery is not predicted to charge to 100% from solar energy at the end of the day.

System:
Predbat v8.37.6 (addon v1.7.1)
GivEnergy inverter + battery via GivTCP/MQTT
Solcast solar forecasting
Octopus Flux (import 12p 02:00-05:00, 25p standard, 35p peak / export 8p cheap, 15p standard, 25p peak)

What I've tried with no effect:
charge_min_benefit: 0.0
best_soc_min: 40
best_soc_keep: 1.0 and 3.2
set_soc_enable: True
set_charge_window: True
charge_window_best set to 02:00-05:00

My theory:
Predbat optimises over 48 hours. When the following day has good solar, the overall metric stays low and it decides charging overnight isn't needed, even though for a few hours, prior to any solar generation, grid energy would be required at a more expensive rate. It never charges on poor solar days either, suggesting the 13p spread between cheap import (12p) and standard import (25p) isn't enough to trigger charging in its calculations. So strange.

Im intrigued how other people convince Predbat to trigger a charge during the 02:00-05:00 window.

[gcoan]

I don't think your theory is correct.

As long as you have left input_number.predbat_forecast_plan_hours set to the default 24 hours, you should be fine and predbat will not let the battery fall to empty if this causes grid import that can be avoided

https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred/customisation/#calculation-options

You almost certainly have an error with your configuration.

You mention setting charge_min_benefit and charge_window_best, these are not valid predbat configuration items which strongly indicates that you have been using generative AI to "help" you with your predbat configuration.

AI hallucinates and such mistakes is highly likely the root cause of your configuration issue.

Re-work your predbat configuration using the supplied documentation, follow the inverter setup guide, use the givenergy template and configure it correctly to point to the givtcp entities (it should almost entirely auto-configure). Where you have to enter values in apps.yaml make sure you are setting them to the correct values per the documentation, i.e. watts where it needs to be watts, kw where it needs to be kw, etc. Could well be you have got one of these wrong.

https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred/

AND DO NOT USE AI to help you!

[danwilliams911]

Thank you. Makes complete sense. Appreciate your time posting with that. I have this morning managed to get it working!