Incorrect Consumption/Grid to home values across all monitoring systems

GivEnergy system - two 5kwh Hybrid Inverters, each with an 8.2kwh battery. First inverter and batteries installed 28/04/2021. The second inverter was added 28/09/2021.

Since adding the second inverter the consumption/grid to home values have been shockingly incorrect which makes it difficult/impossible to accurately monitor the system. This has been reported multiple times since last year and acknowledged by GivEnergy, but is yet to be resolved.

This is affecting all their customers with a multiple hybrid inverter/battery setup and is becoming increasingly frustrating with each passing day expecially after having spent several thousand pounds for a system that we cannot effectively monitor.

Can we be provided with an update other than "we are aware of the issue and are working on it" because it appears that what is being worked on is everything else but this.

Anyone else frustrated with these dodgy values?

Robin

Hi Robin,
I have the same problem ... slightly bigger system with large PV array, so it would be very useful if this all worked as advertised.
It works, but not easy to know what is happening in any detail as the only real value is the power graph which seems to be largely correct. I don't therefore understand what the problem is.

DavidPowell2021
Hi David,
I find the My Inverter card quite useful. A bit of a faf to click through multiple tabs, but at least the data is accurate.

Is it possible for multipe hybrid inverter/battery systems to share the load evenly between the two? So if the home rquires 2kwh each inverter/battery will provide 1kwh.

We have exactly the same setup as Robin which was completed last 2 weeks ago when the 2 batteries arrived. The cloud protal(s) old and beta just report inaccurate figures, and the daily, weekly and monthly reports are just rubbish, at their best they just double up the amount of imported power at their worst that report nothing used at all.

I have spent quite a bit of time trying to work out what is wrong, software or hardware, this has not been helped by one Inverter reporting inaccurately due to a badly fitting meter monitoring cable(now fixed) and the other inverters wifi dongle going through several session of loosing connectivity, makes no sense as is immediately next to the other by 2',

I have checked the grid meter monitoring figures on the the actual meters and these correlate with our actual grid better indicating current usage, so reported inaccuracies there are down to software/firmware bugs.

I have monitored the system for several hours at a time using the beta portal, and what is quite clear is that it is inaccurate in several areas. What is quite concerning is on occasions it reports that power is being exported to the grid when in fact both batteries are reported as charging, and this is when the reported PV power going to each inverter is less than 2.6KW by a long way, why on earth would the system export power when it can store it, this is loosing us money if it actually is happening. When I check our SMIT2 meter it does appear that export to the grid is occurring when it has no business to do so.

So all in all not a happy bunny with a system that has cost quite a lot of money and yet I cannot be certain it is performing correctly or is in fact doing what it should do! GivEnergy need to address these issues ASAP.

AJSki2fly Are you seeing transient export - that occurs before the inverter notices and reacts by ramping up battery charging. There's always a delay due to the sampling rates. It's particularly problematic on days where strong sun keeps popping in and out from behind the clouds. The over-all "loss" to export is pretty small usually - at worst in the order of one kWh.

GrahamRead

Hello

If by "Transient export" you mean random export when there is plenty of PV power available to supply the home and charge batteries then the answer is yes. As for low amounts of loss to export this is difficult to judge at present due to low solar activity at this time of year.

I guess it depends when you are seeing the random exporting occurring - if there was a constant sun/consistent solar generation exceeding a stable house demand, then I'd expect to see constant battery charging and little to no export occurring.

If however solar generation is changing quite significantly as the sun goes behind clouds or/and house demand is suddenly increasing (some one put a kettle on for example), then there will be a small delay as the inverter reacts to the changing solar input and/or house demand and quite possibly a short - transient - export will almost certainly occur (or grid import depending on what's' changed). Low solar activity makes this more likely - as the generation doesn't exceed house demand by as greater degree probably. Unfortunately it's not usually possible to see this in the portal as the sampling rate is too low. The smart meter will of course / IHD.

Here's an example I put on a previous post of house demand (use) suddenly dropping, and the there being a transient export to grid before the inverter reacts (there was a stable, albeit small, solar input): https://ibb.co/64R1qT9

AJSki2fly Robin

Sadly you have to accept that while the GivEnergy hype is reasonably good, the delivery is just plain poor. There are a few issues at stake here:

1. You will always get some transient export as GrahamRead has said, it doesn't seem to matter what system you get. Learn to live with it.

2. The 'cloud-based' reporting with GivEnergy's cheap and crappy WiFi dongles is a joke. They are flaky, temperamental and largely useless. If you want accurate reporting, and certainly more frequently than 5 minute intervals (if the "meter comms" doesn't also fail) get a different monitoring system with separate CT clamps.

3. GivEnergy don't GivaToss about people with more than one AC inverter, or "plant" as they call it. They know the software/firmware is an issue and reports nonsense numbers. It's only 10am here and according to the GivEnergy dashboard, my 6kW PV system has already generated 437.3kWh of solar, which is impressive. Sadly, however, the dashboard reports that my house has consumed 3,189.3 kWh of energy, which may explain why my bill is so high.

There are plenty of people with GivEnergy systems who are saddened that the real world experience doesn't live-up to the hype. We are paying for being on the bleeding edge of tech, we will never "make" money from this experiment - which has never been my own aim - and can only hope our stories will help better inform those who come after us.

Personally, I'm planning to GivUp by moving to the myEnergi ecosystem and get myself a shedload of their CTs and use their app. They already have an EV charger (the GivEnergy hype never materialised) and they already have an energy diverter (the GivEnergy hype never materialised...)

Starting to get the picture?

I think that's a bit harsh, but I appreciate that I don't' have a multi plant system. I bought into the givenergy hardware as it represented good value for the hardware and was a UK company, and for demonstrably excellent hardware system support.

The portal is a work in progress, and continues to improve in my view. Cloud based monitoring is never going to be the best solution for real-time data due to the high frequency of sampling required and the load it would place on the central service. It's best for aggregate "what happened today, and over time" type monitoring - i.e. what we all probably default to after the initial few weeks (months) of obsession 😄. I know that's what happened with my solar 12 yrs ago when it was first installed, now I just check it occasionally and the generation trend to spot any degradation.

So I agree, for real-time monitoring far better to use local sampling. If direct calls to the GivEnergy inverter are more broadly supported at some point that will be great - the wifi access will be handy for that too, otherwise use clamps as you say and services like emoncms etc.

Can't comment on the multiple plant reporting issues, hopefully that will be sorted for people soon.

GrahamRead You may think it's harsh and I respect your point of view, as I'm sure you do mine.

What I take issue with is being sold one thing and delivered another. I didn't pay any less for my plant setup and had I known it wouldn't work as advertised, I may have chosen elsewhere.

GivEnergy has operations in the UK and elsewhere in the world. I daresay the UK Limited company is "British owned" but I doubt it would be able to do much without its Chinese partners and those elsewhere in the world. This is the nature of global commerce and who owns what is of little importance to me, having lived and worked in various different countries. But I can't abide over-promising and under-delivering.

The hardware is good. Probably, but I'm not sure how I'd really know without more accurate and reliable monitoring.

I have been looking into their underlying data, and I have found that they are not zero'ing their daily totals. So for EXPORT for example, the next days data starts at the closing days value. It should start each fresh day at zero.

anabanet You wouldn't think it would be so hard to fix. Irritating that it's not being prioritised despite the "we're working on it" response we always get when we ask.

JJB Does this help? Just spotted it.

https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/237-reported-issues-and-resolutions

wilfleek Thanks, it's a step in the right direction but until they sort out the multiple inverter data reporting, it's not possible for those of us who have such systems to know what's going on with them.

It’s sad that they can’t resolve this issue for you guys and I would probably feel the same. It’s probably no consolation but the only monitoring that really matters is what you’re metered for by your energy company…