As it stands...

Just curious...

As I learn more about the opportunities to create and use renewable energy within my own home/work... as to the collective opinion of the forum with regards to the OVERALL OFFERING from GivEnergy...

I'll start...

For me, I'm pleased with my investment and pleased with the overall performance.

I don't think my system is fully optemised and there are maybe more efficiencies I could squeeze out of my cyrrent system... such as the grazing through my Zappi on sunny days, with a manual mode to action that...

There are definitely things I want as part of my system that are not available as products or features within the GivEnergy ecosystem...

I would like a whole home solution with car charging and electricity diverter devices to provide an integrated simple solution to make the absolute best use of my investment.

I think from a support aspect its OK. It's not good and definitely not great, but from my experience it was OK.

The app is simple... maybe too simple?

I've very limited (none) experience with the online portal so happy for others to fill in the blanks.

My energy bills have reduced considerably (roughly a 3rd) and with the cost of electricity and gas my payback period, in theory, is reducing as the prices continue to increase...

I don't have any other reference point other than the no renewable energy option so I give my opinion based on my experiences over the last 8 months.

Happy for others to give their opinion of the overall offering from GivEnergy including the positives/negatives.

Absolutly love my kit, couple it with home automations, such as HomeAssistant with GivTCP, you can get the system singing any tune you can imagine.

GivEnergy have an EV charger in development, aswell later in the year, hot water diverter.
All hapilly talking to each other, without external controls.

If you want to integrate lots of different brands, As I have, Home Assistant is the way to go, most stull has official or homebrew options for HA.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) that would certainly be nice as hopeful to shift to full eV household later in the year. Having one GE charger (if offers similar capabilities to Zappi), but integrates properly should allow charging/preconditioning of car without battery drain as it would recognise the battery presence at all times (hopefully!)? Useful for the winter days when keeping battery charge is preferable

TheDragon (GivEnergy) that's great to read, and to me shows what is possible if GE have the ambition to make their ecosystem as good as it can be...

I'm disappointed in the speed at which they are developing these new additions to their product line up, it seems like while guys like yourself are making it work... they're simply not pulling their weight in that regard as they don't have the same ambition for their products or investments as we all do...

I'd love to get into Home Assistant, but fear my virginity growing back once my wife becomes tired of the neglect she will face once I commit to learning it and then endlessly tinkering with it... I jest of course and see those who have the ability to effectively show up companies like GE with homebrew solutions as true pioneers that these companies should be thanking...

Keep up the good work.

Smk82 the reality is as my family grows and the cost of living keeps going ape shit...there will eventually be 4+ girlfriends and boyfriends cars on the drive... realistically 2 chargers would be a minimum we will need so the ecosystem and integration of ancillary products needs to be more that a nice idea and given the priority a customer base demands...

I'll be honest while I'm thrilled with what I have... if I was shopping again, a whole home solution would 100% be near the top of my priorities list. Always advise people who ask about my system, to consider what products they need or may want and how they may or may not either be available or integrate with one another.

GE have left their customers hanging in this regard IMO.

BigAl oh I agree. GE have been slow, but recent firmware issues/pandemic etc have probably not helped matters. Myenergi are the only company as far as I know currently offering the whole ecosystem and their batteries are more expensive in comparison(probably why they aren’t cleaning up, and that’s only available from April). My folks are lucky as they are just starting the journey and want an all in one stop solution.. so they are having the ME system installed, so I’ll be able to see how good a “totally integrated” system can be.

Unfortunately when I ordered my GE batteries no company had a “complete” system, I would definitely prefer it as I think the better integration is worth it.

BigAl they're simply not pulling their weight in that regard as they don't have the same ambition for their products or investments as we all do...

BigAl see those who have the ability to effectively show up companies like GE with homebrew solutions as true pioneers

That's the thing. I can knock up code to do anything I want because I know my kit and how it hangs together. And when it fails, I can fix it because I can see where I neglected to cater for that particular situation. And when it doesn't work when I'm away and the wife is home, I can leave what I'm doing (immediately), remotely connect to the server and switch the lights on. And when the API changes, I can while away the hours changing all the snippets of code wondering why I didn't start out methodically, documenting everything I did, and then spending three days unpicking the logic because one bit that used to work not doesn't and I can't understand why.

Yes, the professional developers should be working at the pace of innovators but assurance and company strategy slows things down somewhat. I'm glad to offer ideas and examples, but I also want them to deploy robust, well proven and quality assured software that can survive changes to personnel.

Tim Massive round of applause to this. Brilliantly relatable explanation.

Even with the levels of error checking I've built in my homebrew, there's been the odd day of cold showers and domestic strife due to the most unexpected of hot water failure reasons (DNS... Legit.) Building something truly robust for the mass market takes much more time and investment.

All,

There is a new head of Software development and Integration, a new Head of Product testing and security.

they are growing way too fast for their current manpower, so glad to see they are getting good people in at high levels to take control of key areas.