Hi, new to GivEnergy, install completed today. PV system with hybrid inverter and battery. I have set the battery charge time to coincide with cheaper tariff rate but it doesn't appear to be recognising the setting and is charging from the grid continuously. Any suggestions?
Battery is going through commissioning it's normal. It will discharge fully as well once it's done charging.
Great thanks.
Grid charging battery outside defined charge period - once a large charge - now frequent small charges - not using the app, just controlling from laptop - any help appreciated
Cotswolds Is that the winter conditioning setting (desgined to keep the battery warm in cold weather) - runs for about 10mins at a time I think
Cotswolds we need more information to be able to help you. Can you share what information you are looking at and why you think it is doing small battery charges.
It could be the winter battery conditioning, it could be battery reserve set to high. Where is your inverter and battery, what type of battery?
geoffreycoan Thanks, The battery and inverter are located inside the house - on the landing - so ambient temperature should not be a problem. Winter Battery Conditioning is not enabled. The inverter model is GIV-AC3.0 - battery 9.5 186 Ah | 9.52 kWh | (1 Pack). I noticed that there is a firmware upgrade available - done today - 2025-01-24 16:53:11 - software shows as D0.205-A0.205.
The system is set to charge during Octopus night time Economy 7 from 03.45 to 07.05 and charges no problem.
Today the system also charged from the grid between 09.30 and 15.00 - 3.7KWh.
Oddly the timing of this grid charge coincides with Solar Generation to Home of seems to match Solar to Home of 5.5KWh.
Hopefully the firmware upgrades might solve the problem - will check tomorrow - but if you can see any obvious reasons for the non-scheduled battery charging, anything would be gratefully received.
Obviously at the moment the day time battery charge, at day rates, is not a problem, since that charge is being released back to home usage, but would not be desirable during the summer daytime high solar charge.
Thanks again
geoffreycoan
Sorry - missed that the battery is set to charge and discharge 3000w - 5% reserve.
Cheers
Cotswolds Thanks for the replies.
If you did a firmware update today then did it kick off a battery calibration as well? That might explain the grid charge, but then it doesn’t sound enough as a calibration is a full discharge and a full recharge of your 9.5 battery.
Is it a new installation or have you had any work done on your electricity meter recently (am thinking whether the CT clamp has been connected the wrong way round).
The next thing to look at is in the givenergy portal whether there are any notification messages indicating something not right with your setup.
And to rule out it is just not the GivEnergy app showing weird wrong data, can you check either your meter readings around the time that this extra import is happening. If you have smart meter you can more easily look at the data and confirm it is actually importing at that time.
Sorry for the delay replying.
This is an established installation - 16/02/23.
I have downloaded the data from 01/01/25 to yesterday 26/01/25 which seems to be all I can get.
There doesn't seem to be a direct timing link, but the Grid charge to battery outside the set charge hours at night cheap rate only seems to happen if there is some Solar generation to Home on that day, and the Grid battery charge seems to be relatively high or low in sync with the Solar generation .
I have attached a pdf of the Excel working file that hopefully gives some useful info - the csv version of the Excel file lost all formatting so no use - I couldn't see a way to remove it.
I have separately checked and the billed KWh agree with the Grid to Home + Grid to Battery splt correctly between night and day rates, so it doesn't seem to be any mis-representation of the activity.
No luck with getting anything from GE I'm afraid - as before any help appreciated.
Cheers
Cotswolds Thanks for your spreadsheet, I see the problem very clearly, as you say, when you get solar generation your inverter pulls in from the grid and charges the battery from the grid as well as solar. And its not just small timing differences, its quite a bit its charging and you’ve verified with your electricity bill and the grid import is real and happening.
I’ve never seen anything like that before and am struggling to think why it could happen. I’ve never seen kind of thinking its something to do with the solar CT clamp, but even then it doesn’t make sense.
A few things to try/check:
If none of those work then I’m afraid its waiting for GivEnergy support to respond, sorry
Very strange
Cotswolds It's an AC-coupled system, so I think that means that you have a separate inverter somewhere generating AC from the solar panels, and then the GE inverter is able to either take AC and put it into the battery, or take DC from the battery and generate AC from it. (In such a configuration, I'm not sure how the GE system distinguishes solar - does it have a CT clamp around the output from the solar inverter ?)
The way I interpret this... the solar inverter is generating power, and the GE inverter is choosing to take some of it and put it into the battery. Unfortunately, it's taking a bit too much power, and the house is having to import from the grid to cover the excess.
It could be that the GE inverter is underestimating the house consumption, and so believes that there is excess power being generated from solar. Or something like that ?
Interesting that there seem to be overlaps where both battery-to-home and grid-to-battery are > 0. Perhaps that's just a sampling detail - the transition happened sometime within that period.
DD that’s my understanding as well and was the sort of diagnosis I was thinking, pointing towards the solar CT clamp.
Maybe it is mis-reading the solar generation and thus over-charging the battery. Check the physical CT clamp, that it is securely clipped around the output from the PV inverter and that the clamp isn’t too close to any other cables so picking up stray current off another circuit.
If the CT clamp is faulty though then unless there are notification errors in the portal it’d be hard to diagnose
Hi
Can anyone tell me why there seems to be only 1 time slot to charge the battery ?
Im with Octopus and they have informed me of 3 time slots which are the best times for charging
Helenwakeford If you have one of the older inverters they only have enough memory for a single charging slot. Sorry
If you only have one charging slot then you’ll have to use something external to manage the charging in the 3 Octopus Cosy slots it sounds like you have.
Octopus R&D, Home Assistant, WonderWatt or My Energy Optimiser are all potential options you could use
Thank you for that,but our invertor is only a coulpe of years old ?
Have you checked the portal.givenergy.cloud - My Inverter - Remote control (cog icon)?
Be careful in there, but if you have a newer model, it should have ten charge slots.
I think it's only Gen 3 Hybrid that does.
Gen 1 hybrid and AC3 doesn't.
Gen 2 Hybrid we are not sure about, feels like a no based on other people's comments. Although maybe it depends on the firmware version.
Helenwakeford
What inverter is it?
Gen1, 2 or 3.
Gen1 are deprecated but when supply problems came during covid, Gen2s did not arrive and my promised gen2 ended up as Gen 1 in late 2022
Just had a look and its an AC3.0,so does that mean it only has one charge slot ?
Sorry but i dont know.
There are people on here who may know.
my Gen1 hy5.0 has only one slot.
Suggest you try Wonderwatt, Octo R&D scheduler or HomeAssistant if you need/want more
i use HA and it has been great and with Predbat even better
Helenwakeford yes, AC3 only has one slot. The hardware inside doesn't have room for extra registers which would support the extra slots.
Helenwakeford Wonderwatt allows 20 schedules but does cost £17.99 for 3 months. These are the first few I have set up
I also have an AC3.0 limited internally to the one charge slot.
It's quite reliable as long as your internet is good and your Wifi doesn't keep dropping out.
Helenwakeford You could also take a look at Rubik Inverter Monitor - it runs on Andriod (poss IOS?) and has a one-off fee that will also do this. This is run locally though so you would need a dedicated tablet/phone on all the time to support
For the cosy tariff, this may help
https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials/tariffs#cosy
You will need an android device on at home all the time (an old tablet or phone) and there is a one-off fee of £10 to enable the features you need in the app.