I tried reducing the power output settings, but now it appears that my inverters are operating at minimal power. Tried via remote control and just get errors and to contact support who aren't available after 5pm. Absolutely frustrated with this GivEnergy system!
I believe they may have released a bug.. Hopefully one of their engineers will see these posts and get a fix in place. I am not looking forward to turning the system off, but it looks like it is going to come to that.
anabanet Not holding my breath for an engineer to pick this up out of hours.
Robin tried the chat channel?
GrahamRead chat channel?
I have been able to change the timed charge settings (which had reset to charge to 4% between 00:01 and 00:01)in the old portal and it now shows the correct settings in the beta portal.
Yes - that worked to fix the time. Now how to fix the discharge and charge rate which is currently 134 w....
anabanet did you get this fixed - mine is stuck at 130W ish too
no, still broken.
Did this start around lunchtime yesterday? My Hybrid stopped charging from PV around this time. The ONLY way I could get it back was via beta portal:
settings > eco mode (toggle off save, then toggle back on, save)
Then settings > battery > reserve > 5%
I found If I set it to the normal 4% reserve it killed the battery charge dead for some reason.
(I also found this slider in the 100% reserve position which was odd as I've never set it at that)
Yeah, so my battery wasn't charged overnight because the settings in the new portal are completely borked... not a great day to start with 58% charge.
Frequent updates are great and all that, but I'd rather less frequent, better tested ones.
Does seem a bit broken at the moment - the one night I tried to change my charge settings as I needed to ensure the EV didn't drain the battery (I needed it charged to 100%, and that tends to run beyond my cheap tariff window), and it broke everything. The charge timers wouldn't set. I did then set them via old the portal - but - the max input and output power has dropped to a low W and I can't change it; so hardly any charge overnight. :-( - which at least meant the battery didn't' drain to the EV, ironically.
Also found my battery wasn't charged overnight because the settings in the new portal are completely borked... not a great day to start with 4% charge, ie empty! Both timed charge and timed discharge are set tp ENABLED. I can change them, and confirm saved settings, but when restarted they have both reverted to ENABLED at 01.00hrs and 4% charge.
Using the old portal I managed to get into charge mode, but then I charged at 134watts!!!!
hoggy At around 3pm I noticed the issue, so it could have happened between 10am and 3pm
Good Morning
Thankyou for your feedback. We made an update to the site yesterday which unfortunately contained a bug in the code. This essentially sent a value of 1 when trying to update any part of the inverter settings, including the charge times etc. This has been fixed this morning and an update will be pushed live in around 1 hour. We apologise if this has caused any inconvenience with the operation of the battery. Thankyou for your continual support.
This is working for me as of 1 minute ago..
Danlambert (GivEnergy) I can now adjust settings without error, but the dashboard is only showing zero values.
Robin I logged out and back in again - and that seem to fix it. Was able to also set everything again to correct values.
GrahamRead Did that as well, but still all zero values.
I have raised several issues over the past 10 days with respect to our two GivEnergy inverters and recently installed 8.2Kw batteries. This has taken a great deal of my time to investigate and try and determine what the hell is going on, and supply data to GivEnergy to support the issues raised, this is made even worse when both portals inaccurately report data, primarily due to systemic design issues(IMO).
In summary the prime issues have involved one battery failing to charge, and what looks like it is loosing settings, and the other going below the 4% set battery discharge and randomly charging from the AC grid. With the issues I have seen one does wonder if even the values from the Inverters can be relied on to be accurate? We are beginning to loose all faith in this product and its reliability!
We and our installer have had little or no response from GivEnergy to date to advise what is being done to correct these issues or what investigations are being undertaken, if any.
Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm having some horrible issues with all of it. I'm unable to change modes in the online portal or on the iOS app (Android app won't install, says I'm in the wrong country, I live in Norwich, Norfolk, go figure). I've been using from the grid since just before 0700hrs when I have 76% of 16.4kWh of energy available to me, Yesterday, the battery breaker tripped, took me a while to find that, the breakers are behind the battery boxes out of view. Therefore, yet another hour of paying Octopus 35p per kW instead of running free. I have mostly run free since Nov 21 using this system and most days I run free and cover gas and electric standing charges, on sunnier days, I make some back that goes toward the gas consumption but with these ongoing issues it'll take much longer than anticipated to get the capital back. I spoke with support this morning as they hadn't replied to my email from yesterday to be told my system was 'stuck' in Mode2 not Mode1 where it should have been. This is starting to actually cost me real money as I'm unable to sell power to the grid or buy power when things are favourable because I don't know what it's going to do when the time period is over. GivEnergy make think it's acceptable (to cost their customers money), I do not. I'm told a new 'advanced' version of the portal will be made available on a SUBSCRIPTION basis. In my opinion, I think they should concentrate on getting the software that exists to work properly first before screwing customers for yet more money. If the software I write for a living performed as theirs does, I would have precisely zero clients. The iOS app is abysmal, it takes far too long to update as does the online portal, old and new. So, question: If support can change my modes remotely, why can't I? Should they be wasting time on a subscription platform when the standard one is not fit for purpose? Does anyone know of any third party software that actually works with the GivEnergy products? Does anyone have any (useful) advice of how to make the online portal work correctly? I've tried standing on one leg, hopping whilst I change things in the iOS app and threatening the controller with a very sharp screwdriver... anything I've missed? I think a company rename is in order - GivFrustration! All I'm really asking is this: can the 'system' be set for 10 second updates, not 5 minutes (that's worse than useless when fault finding). Can the systems in place actually do what's asked when changing modes. Personally, I don't think it's too much to ask and has to be way easier than writing a whole new subscription app. Or am I asking too much? You might as well send your answers on a postcard because error corrections on their systems take a long, long time to put right. This has been going on since November, 2021. To clarify, the hardware system is mostly working, the software is the real issue here, that's what's costing me money, the inability to control the thing.
Danlambert (GivEnergy) We don't mind too much until it starts to cost us real money Dan.
adrianscotter It does sound as if you've a fair grievance if you're unable to carry out usual end-user changes and I hope it gets sorted very soon.
As regards accessing the system data (via app or portal), I've concluded that it's of no use for moment-in-time information. From the Givenergy perspective, they have a growing user base and so their traffic from commissioned inverters is only going to grow and grow. If the data is only used to look back over yesterday and last week, it serves its purpose well (IMO) but for looking to see what's going on at this moment, it falls short. If I want to know what's happening now, I look at my Bright App which receives updates from my SMART meter every 5 seconds (but only works for import from the grid currently), and my myEnergi Zappi EV charger app which shows the flows of energy between my solar system, house load, the grid and the Zappi. I'm not sure how often the myEnergi app updates but it's much more frequent than every 5 minutes. I've also gone down the Givtcp route where, when my Bright app is reporting zero import, the inverters both receive an HTTP GET request from my Raspberry Pi running Node-RED and I am able to find the export value reported by the EM115 meters to the inverters, the value being displayed on my phone in a Node-RED dashboard. However, this request can only be sent every 20 seconds to avoid problems with the inverter response times.
If there was a way of knowing how old the data on the Givenergy portal/app was it might help a little but there have been times when the app has reported evidently erroneous data: solar output over 9kWp (two inverters), battery charge 5.1kW (two batteries), a house load of -2.9kW and an export of 7.3kW (DNO Limit is 3.6kW)! Of all these data, I only believed the solar output and maybe the battery charge as it was the middle of a very sunny day. I'm presuming that the data consolidation bit of the app/portal received different data at different times and I saw an anomaly resulting from a timing issue, although quite where the -2.9kW of house load was coming from, I can't fathom.
For updates more frequently than every five minutes, the local Givtcp route is now officially available but it's up to the end-users to sort out their own system, which will cost time and probably money as well. I heard that an Energy Management System is planned to be developed. I got this snippet from a web chat before I had my system. Detail was entirely lacking but I think it was intimated to be a box installed locally to provide data locally, and more frequently than every 5 minutes, and presumably to coincide with their next revision of inverter hardware which will have an ethernet interface. Maybe that is what the subscription service is for?
I get caught out way to many times when adjusting the system, they need to bin the legacy portal and directly link the app to the beta portal.
The other day, on the app it was set to mode 1 and charge on go faster. I adjusted the charge amount (from 70% to 100%).
When it should have been charging from the grid the app appeared to be set correctly but not charging. The beta portal appeared the same and I went into the remote control to find that the "AC charge enabled" was turned off.
i activated it. Then waited a few minutes to refresh.
It was not charging.
The only fix I know works is...
set the remote control values as i want.
in the app, change from mode 1 to 2 then back to 1.
It works fine then.
Today I found the excess solar was getting exported. AC charge disabled again.
They really need to sort this sort of basic setting out