Timescale for All in One (AIO) Parallel Operation?

Hopefully someone from GivEnergy will see this and respond, as of yet I have been unable to find an answer.

As per the topic title, do we have any ideas on timescale for the All in One (AIO) Parallel Operation?

I ask as I currently have the AC 3.0 and two 9.5kw battery's, and I am currently looking at upgrading / changing the system.
With the 19kW (2x9.5kw) of storage this is more than enough during the summer months, however during the winter months we charge up the battery's using the cheaper off peek rate, and unfortunately 19kW is just not quite there.
The 3kw charge / discharge is just not quite enough at peek demand.

So I was either looking at purchasing a 3rd 9.5kW battery to increase our storage, and a 2nd or 3rd AC 3.0 to cope with the peek demand.

The other option is to decommission and sell my current setup, and purchase the new GivEnergy All in One (AIO).
This will give us the required peek demand, but only 13.5kWh, as they currently DO NOT support Parallel Operation.

Is it worth purchasing two All in One's and having them installed but one just sat there idle hoping that the software / firmware support happens at some point soon?

So once again could GivEnergy please kindly give some feedback on this?
Are we talking weeks, months, etc.

Thanks in advance.

MadProfessor2002 not from GivEnergy...

You ask "is it worth..." and the answer is probably no. How many days each year are you importing at peak rate, how much of this do you hope to run through a bigger battery and how long do you think it would take to pay for the investment? You could be buying a very expensive paperweight.

Powerwall x 2 would be my suggestion if you want to replace

10kW max power and 27kWh max storage. That and you could add a third.

If you want to say GE I wouldn’t buy on and wait as if one batter is idle it will degrade as it’s not charging and will sit at empty. You could see if multiple AC3 are supported yet.

Obviously if they certify two or more soon that could change your conversation.

Question to you though, how much is the grid draw actually costing you? I would not be sure you’d ever pay for your (any brand) battery upgrade in savings.

I expect it may be a while yet… many of us are still waiting on a timescale for the AIO to work reliably as a single unit…

Paul / theDragon is currently testing it in his house, but only been the last few weeks as far as I know, so I think it will be a little while....

MadProfessor2002

I’m not sure which tariff you are on…. IOG?
Not sure how “short” you are in winter and in which respect, sounds like storage and charge/discharge capability. Maybe just a bigger inverter would go a long way to improve things?

An alternative is, you could just replace your current inverter with a hybrid 5.0 and that’d easily charge 2x 9.5 kW batteries in the 6 hour window (roughly 5 1/2 hours from completely empty, which they never quite are)

• See how you go and possibly add another 5.0 hybrid inverter with one or two extra 9.5 batteries?

You’d get a max of 8kW discharge rate to “home and grid” for exporting (and max of 7.4kW discharge rate to home only) and 7kW charge rate with the two hybrid 5.0’s and 4x 9.5kW batteries and 38kW storage.

Or with two Hybrid 5.0 inverters and 3 batteries you’d get 7.5kW discharge rate to “home and grid” (and 7.2kW max discharge to home only) and 7kW charge rate and 28.5 kW storage.

Both options would charge in 5 1/2 hours.

Then you only have to sell off the old inverter (I’m sure someone may need an replacement or would like to snap up a ‘spare’ at a good price)

Would either of those be enough?

Alternatively, you could just buy one 5.0 Hybrid inverter, stick the two batteries on that one and buy one more battery and put it on the 3.0kW inverter and see how you go? I’m not sure if you can mix the Hybrid and the 3.0 AC inverter like that though? Or stick it on a hybrid 5.0 as well.

With the two hybrid inverters you’d get a bit of redundancy as well if something breaks. So you could hobble along instead of being completely down and waiting for an engineer for weeks and weeks.

You’d need to get the EMS (“Out soon” - been at least a year “Out soon”). Or you’d need to get on a hardware EMS trial or the “balancer” software trial, the latter of which I’m on and it is working well to prevent cross charging.

How long before the EMS is actually on sale.
I’m not sure….soon?

How long before AIO parallel operation is available…. Even longer most likely. But no one knows. Could be a long while. Or they might expedite it.

Or buy one AIO, and add it to what you’ve got already or buy an AIO and a new 5.0 Hybrid for your current battery pair.

You can get two 9.5 batteries for the price of the AIO. Or one 9.5 battery and a 5.0 hybrid inverter for less. Just depends how well they play together if you mix and match.

So you’ve got plenty of options. Just depends how much extra power and storage you really need.

I think they are working on the EMS for AC inverters first and also working on tripple AC 3.0 inverter balancing at the moment. So maybe your double or
tripple inverter suggestion (battery on each) could work well for you also.

Looks like you’ll have to get your calculator out to see which option is the most reasonable price to get what you need.

Best to also contact support and ask what balancing solutions are being released first and when?

MadProfessor2002

Also found this video here about the AC3 EMS for double/ tripple inverters which will be coming out first and is worth a watch.

TLDR; EMS for AC3’s “Jan or Feb 2024”

https://givenergy.co.uk/solar-and-storage-live-an-faq-roundup/

Pete UK it won't be out as per that timescale.
They are doing another iteration of it first so expect another 6+ months on top I'm afraid.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/489882062425810/permalink/863669885047024/

AC3.0 cross-charging. HA & GivTCP finally running - so I've been trying Willy Reckitt's automation. Had it running for a couple of days until I noticed that the grid was supplying 880W for about 20secs every two minutes. Killed the automation and it stopped. Found the various GivTCP logs - they show the various write sequences as it drops or increases the inverter power. Unfortunately there were also lots of failed writes - some timeouts but also critical errors.
It may well be that a HA automation will not work with Gen 1 AC3.0 inverters - no CRC checking?
GivTCP is also vulnerable to GE changes to the inverter firmware - don't forget that it is not supported.
Anyway - come on GE just release the EMS as is - stop polishing it ...

hoggy

Thanks for sharing this. The chap on the video is talking about EMS V2, what happened with EMS v1 and do you have any idea why we are being mucked about as they let “perfect” (haha) be the enemy of “good”? And he is taking about “later next year”, as in December, do you think? I don’t use FB so don’t follow anything there but this constant pushing back of the product roadmap doesn’t bode well.

JJB it's a long winding thread, without making this post enormous some key takeaways are:

well what a very speculative consavation all incorrect by the way, so ver 1 of the EMS would work perfectly even against a hybrid plant if we had the time to get the firmware done, and then there are the new rules on security, so to get the V1 to market including all if the new data security rules just doesn't cost in, now the CEMS is already built with the new cyber security rules in mind, it nas to have the control software written, thus takes time unlike the v1 which has registers the V2 CEMS does not , it also incorporates other abilities which I can not discuss on here. As to using two AIO through the EMS no reason why not as long as we have the firmware for the AIO to allow the EMS to talk to it, hybrids no as the code required would need to be done in firmware for the EMS and the focus needs to be kept on Developing the CEMS control software hence a commercial decision, our vision is we should be able to gave any type of inverter and battery controlled via the CEMS unit and should be able to daisy chain CEMS units together to control even more inverters

And

I did read one post that suggests they have circa 80 of those V1 ones mentioned above that won't be going into production. It's unlear if you can just get one on first come first served to get rid of them or they are at GEs discretion for systems already installed that are being a pain.
However I do believe going this V2 route has some tradeoffs in that it will disable Home Assistant access as it screws around with the Cems box too much. So you'll be cloud only it sounds like (needs clarity)

hoggy Thanks again, especially for wading through some of the worst abuse of the English language I’ve seen in a while. 😳
I don’t use HA so don’t have much issue with that, I did try it but was using a Pi3+ that wasn’t really up to the task.

It’s alarming to see GE describing their decision to opt for a V2 market entry as a “business” one. I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep leap-frogging technology as some numpty comes-up with a new piece of vapourware, ignoring the “business” fact that people like us have already paid them £££ for a system that doesn’t deliver.

I'm considering adding a 3rd 9.5 battery to our system to support ASHP running on very cold days. At the moment we drop back on to gas when it's very cold which we'd prefer to avoid if possible, even though it's still cheap on low gas tracker rate. However we can't charge a third battery on IO and so we'd also need a second inverter or a radical upgrade. I'm not going anywhere near the AIO system until it's reliable, so would likely look at dual inverter. However, the HA solution for control seems very clunky with ample scope for problems, so I've parked the project until the official EMS is out. Then there's waiting to see if it actually works - GE's record with reliability of new kit isn't great and so that could be a while. Could be summer before I can revisit the project so just being patient for now. I guess the main concern as others have noted, is whether GE invest time into support for legacy systems or just focus on fast-to-market new stuff that doesn't work very well and then they need to fix. We'll see soon enough I guess.

hoggy "Cloud only" for anything is unacceptable. There HAS to be a way of controlling equipment locally, if not then its junk not worth buying.

I'm on mobile so FB is a pain but that's my interpretation of it as it stands:

hoggy Best to forget about it then unless people have an internet connection with a very good SLA, which kind of rules out home connections.

There's zero technical reason not to permit a local connection from a GE app, so its being done for another reason.

What puzzles me is why anyone at GE is talking about "business reasons" for anything. What can they claim to know about business? Their products are "me too", at best, they are woefully behind even their nearest competitors, they have virtually no interest in their customer base and wouldn't know how to satisfy a market need if their lives depended on it.

One of the unintended consequences of the energy price rises are that my system payback time has reduced dramatically, meaning I'm in the fortunate position of being able to pay for something that works, from a company I can communicate with and people who engender trust. Perhaps GE is more successful in the industrial sector, where procurement managers don't care so much for the things us unfortunate consumers need. Such a shame.

hoggy Thanks for sharing.

I read this that the new gen 2 CEMS box will replace the existing wifi dongle and act as a master controller over the multiple connected inverters - controlling the balancing of them, setting SOC rates, discharge and charge slots, etc

Which makes a load of sense in terms of a topology, but:

• means the new box needs to be designed and extensively tested for all sort of complex scenarios, one inverter "stuck" and needing to be restarted/reset to defaults, firmware updates being applied to inverters, as well as all the usual stuff like capturing inverter metrics and passing them back to the GE app and portal
• whole load of questions about how this box will operate, what API's it provides, whether it is "GivTCP compatible", etc

I've not looked extensively at other inverters but from what I have seen GivEnergy do have a good story about making local control available to their appliances. Local GivTCP was available in beta for the EV charger around the time it was product launched and they appear to offer far more control and information than some of their competitors.

I don't know all the details but I take it as a positive sign that GivEnergy were able to look at the cold hard facts of the situation and make what must have been a brave business decision to realise that development on the v1 CEMS is going in the wrong direction and they need to restart in a different direction. Frustrating for those that have been sold multi-inverter setups and have been waiting years only to get knocked back again, especially when GivEnergy have as we all know been quite slow in getting new products and features out to market.

geoffreycoan sorry a bit slow but what I found quite telling (& something I've been wondering for some time) was just how much of a puppet master the V2 magic box will be.
I think this very small, easily missed snipped holds an incredibly key change of plan:

"...thus takes time unlike the v1 which has registers the V2 CEMS does not..."

So something that always bugged me about the first Plant/cems/Sems box (which I've written about before & to a lesser but still valid extent, includes things like balance inverters/predbat) was that they would (over many years) be carrying out an incredible amount of writes to the hardware registers (as they are persistent registers even if you pull the power)
I honestly think you'd start hitting hardware trouble years later from doing so with the V1 as it would be constantly tweaking second by second to balance loadings. (see also, Tesla MCU1)

Now I can't say for certain, but the fact that the V2 "doesn't use registers" whilst now going in via USB "because its faster" and the words "ALSO carries RS485" would suggest that it potentially will pretty much bypass the inverters current brain / registers entirely and adjusts internal parameters on the fly? This would make a lot of sense and also be somewhat bad news for local control I'd imagine.

Just a theory.

hoggy Now I can't say for certain, but the fact that the V2 "doesn't use registers" whilst now going in via USB "because its faster" and the words "ALSO carries RS485" would suggest that it potentially will pretty much bypass the inverters current brain / registers entirely and adjusts internal parameters on the fly? This would make a lot of sense and also be somewhat bad news for local control I'd imagine.

I guess I’d assumed that the new box would start off from some of the existing inverter architecture so things like the portal and app access carried forward and so local control would be in a similar approach to what it is today. Of course no guarantee of this, there may well be something completely new. From the messages it looks like this is all undecided.

And how much the new brain sits on top of the existing inverters/bypasses them will have big implications for the development and testing.

Lots of unknowns but I think safe to say the new box is a significant way off. I doubt very much 2024

AIO Parallel is now in open beta.

All working as it should. Minor continous tweaks to data as more feedback comes in.

It's been done from the ground up as All data is from the gateway and new registers. Before unused.
Commissioning is the area I'm most focused on, so anything needing manual nudging is being noted and streamlined.

Any sight of being able to run an AC3 in parallel with an AIO off a Gateway?

This is of significant interest to those of us with an existing AC3 and batteries.

I have a similar issue to yourself but I am using 2 9.5 batteries and a 5 kw hybrid inverter. Like yourself I want more than 2.6 at periods for the house requirements. I was told when I purchased the system 2019 that by the end of the year I would be able to use 2 inverters giving me the power of the 2 batteries. This has never materialised as I presume givenergy are developing new products.
I was never informed or I didn’t read enough re the battery total output as I assumed that the control was the inverter.
The software has not been developed by givenergy so I am in limbo

Trumper I have a similar issue to yourself but I am using 2 9.5 batteries and a 5 kw hybrid inverter. Like yourself I want more than 2.6 at periods for the house requirements. I was told when I purchased the system 2019 that by the end of the year I would be able to use 2 inverters giving me the power of the 2 batteries.

The capability for multiple hybrid inverters in parallel has existed for some time, I have had that setup for nearly 2 and a half years. 2x 5kW Gen 1 hybrids, battery on each.

GivEnergy don't recommend this "plant" setup as the two inverters have no knowledge of each other, but I have found in practice the setup works very well. On the Gen 1's they didn't tend to cross charge (I believe Gen 2's and 3's can), they just ramp up and down to share the house load between them.
I get a max discharge rate of about 5,4kW (2x 2.7kW) and a max charge of 4.8kW (2x 2.4kW).

There is supposed to be a CEMS box that will enable the inverters to work better together, but as I say, I have found it works pretty good without.

Slight update to this, I have a couple of months ago upgraded to the A0.191/D0.193 firmware on my gen 1's and this introduces "gen 2/3 behaviours" like faster response times. I now do see cross charging happen with these overnight when there's no solar, but its not severe, about 200-400W from one inverter to the other, weirdly it always happens in one direction, inverter 1 to inverter 2, but I've found I can stop this happening by setting battery pause mode to PauseCharge on inverter 2 and just turn it back on again next day when there's solar to charge up from.

geoffreycoan
Thank you for that information - to be honest at 78 I have to rely on the supplier as I am not
Up to your skill level. I had heard about the parallel solution but Givenergy advised not to do it.
So still waiting for a solution from the supplier.