Buyback program

Hi
This is more of a business idea for Give.Energy and food for thought for the rest of you.

As you are all aware G.E are introducing a new model of inverter almost every year.
I'm curious if there are any plans for a buy-back program.
Like, I'm currently on H 3.6 gen 1, which is working perfectly fine but I can see that gen 3 is really pushing the envelope and has some features that I would benefit from.
But I'm not gone spend another 2k to replace a perfectly working Inverter.
Or think of the scenario that you would like to upgrade from 3.6 to 5 after 3-5 years from the installation.

It would be nice if there was a possibility of trade-in, partial exchange etc..

What do you think?

MikeCM8 it has been mentioned by other customers before, not sure what benefit there would be to GE, but it's a good idea, especially as we all need to replace inverters eventually one way or another.

Cdent

• for parts(my understanding is that G.E equipment is manufactured in the UK).
• manufacturer certified Second-hand option
• I bet you could twist it by some " environment/ zero waste" policies etc

Err, I think you might find the manufacturing is in China.

MikeCM8 I believe that while they claim things are manufactured in the UK, they're not currently. They are however building a factory, so that may come in the future. But the likelihood of reusing parts for the second hand options may be possible. On the second hand option, there is a small market for it but I don't see GE offering 5/10 year warranties on certified items, so there's a lot of risk involved for the customer, so not sure how many they expect to see, especially when they're on Gen 3 soon! Agree about the zero waste point though, and there's a lot from the whole solar/inverter/battery set up

edit:
@wilfleek got in there before me with confirmation manufacturing is in China

There is a decent amount of value in recycling electronics. Some kind of upgrade program would be good for GE, would keep customers engaged especially as they seem to release new inverters fairly often. For me it would be an upgrade to the AIO.

Not sure there’s much in it for GE doing this. I picked up a year old G1 5kW for less than £300 few weeks back.
(Weirdly less than what it’s close relation / parent / “same inverter, different box” is going for on eBay)

The Gen 2 has little in common with G1, maybe the DSP controller, but it appears to have removed the DC battery busbar limitation entirely and has different PCB layout due to no longer having a PCB bridge between PV and Battery boards so it’s not like then can just cobble a bunch of G1s into G2s.

Just a thought as my mind meanders. Older units if bought back with appropriate firmware changes could be bundled together and popped into a container for grid scale. Maaaybe.

hoggy Not sure there’s much in it for GE doing this. I picked up a year old G1 5kW for less than £300 few weeks back.
(Weirdly less than what it’s close relation / parent / “same inverter, different box” is going for on eBay)

Where did you find that. I would buy one of those for that price and hopefully get an old battery just for the night off peak charge

SteveCook was advertised on the UK solar & Battery group on Facebook. Someone had upgraded to Gen2. £250.

hoggy Does that mean GE kit is over priced new? Or that there is no market for second hand units? I thought the ratio would be along the line of mobile phone trade ins. 2 year old phone trade in for 20 - 50% of its original purchase price. I refer mainly to Samsung phones, had them for years.

THALL who will install commission and provide the installers backup for second hand units ? Isn't that the reason for low second hand prices?

justpassing
I think keep in with your 1st installer and then pay them to install/commission the 2nd hand unit.

SteveCook if they are willing to. Seems few comments that installers aren't willing to install or support second hand kit!

justpassing At a guess, all the certified installers could do that. Source a secondhand unit from GE? Not sure. It is just an idea. At the moment these systems are sold and expected to run 10 years, if there was an upgrade program I think they would get a lot of upgrading rather than just replacing at point of fail. Could be an untapped cash source. Get some green credentials too! Not sure any other battery supplier offer recycling? Upgrades? Could be a very good thing!

THALL I think its a few things:
Gen1 is hamstrung on charge rates (you can trace it back to about 2017 really)
You can't DIY self install / commission (although you can run them without connecting to the portal and purely through Home Assistant if your really desperate)
Warranty can't really be transferred too well (an installer if you can twist their arm to install a 2nd hand then "owns" the entire installation, something I wouldn't be keen on inheriting)
2nd hand batteries to go with are quite rare.
Segen is literally giving Gen1 inverters away with batteries to get rid of them.
Everyone wants the latest kit.

All things considered (bearing in mind your paying for UK support and also the portal for say 10years) I don't think new ones are overly expensive (to the trade).

There might be some merit in G2/G3 to AIO trade in but you still need another straight PV inverter (which Givenergy don't do) to run alongside it as the AIO is just AC coupled. Not sure if there are plans for a hybrid AIO although naming it would be fun - AIOAIO is a bit of a mouthful!

As an aside 2nd hand batteries still seem to hold value more than the inverters mainly because you can use them on any of the lineup G1-G3

I suppose the other thing is the appetite for upgrades - G2/G3 stuff is available quite readily unlike before so in theory there should be quite a flow of old kit entering the market but there doesn't seem to be.

You can (for now although I suspect it'll get closed once I let this slip) roughly work out how many installs there are via the API by asking it about an account that doesn't yet exist (it gives you a different response rather than "not allowed" for one that does.)

So I make it as 40,054 accounts as of 13:33 - 24/05/2023, some of those will be installers but even so that's an awful lot of inverters out there.

so roughly 39-40k installs, and there is currently 0x 2nd hand inverters on eBay, about 3 on FB Marketplace.
(I'm ignoring a bunch of AC3's as I'm pretty sure some of them are that batch of about 10 apparently stolen ones from Doncaster!)

hoggy In short, buyback/upgrade program is very unlikely. Which is fine if you are happy with ebay and fb market place. I can understand people with gen 1 being keen on a gen 2 or gen 3 upgrade. No such upgrade path for AC users, the only improvement I would personally entertain at this point is an AIO, or 2AIO :-)

That would be my take yes. (sorry, got carried away there!)
Nothing stopping 3rd parties doing some sort of repair /service exchange type things as time goes on.
I see companies like Affordable Solar keep trying to find faulty Givenergy batteries for their techs to learn on:

WE WANT ANY FAULTY SOLAR BATTERIES FOR OUR TECHNICIANS TO IN HOUSE ATTEMPT REPAIRS (WHERE POSSIBLE)
THE MORE PARTS UNITS WE HAVE IN HOUSE WE CAN REPAIR AFFORDABLY.
WE APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT IN THIS EXERCISE AND WE UNDERSTAND THAT AFFORDABLE SOLAR LTD REQUESTING FAULTY BATTERIES MAY SOUND STRANGE, HOWEVER OUR TECH'S ARE WANTING TO TROUBLE SHOOT AND ATTEMPT TO REPAIR.
IF YOU WANT A NEW BATTERY FROM GIVENERGY WE WILL ALSO GIVE YOU A CORE CREDIT FOR THE FAULTY BATTERY JUST SEND THE DEFECTIVE BATTERY BACK TO US AND WE GIVE YOU A CREDIT FOR THE CORE.

I can't see why GE, in the future, wouldn't want to take on second hand systems as long as they set a strict set of parameters/tests to onboard them.

Years ago businesses were buying second hand telephone systems and paying for them to be installed and tested by third party installers and then commissioned by BT.

I can't see why it wouldn't down go that route, when the systems become an "off the shelf" standard.

I'm guessing the give away inverters from Segen are being delivered now so you should see a flood of new G1s on the market for silly money: