GE have announced the launch of a new 5.12kWh battery with 100% discharge. On the YouTube video it looks to be pretty small and compact which set me wondering whether 2 of these would take up less space than a 9.5. If so this may solve my space problem with adding more battery storage.
Has anyone seen dimensions or prices for the new battery please?
All technical details are listed on the Givenergy website now, no prices though you would need to ask an installer.
I looked on both midsummer energy and its technologies website when I saw the video myself and couldn't see any prices for it either.
Does look to be much more compact than the existing 5.2 battery though.
Beware one drawback with chaining batteries is that the SoC on the two batteries doesn't stay aligned (the first one charges and discharges faster). When one battery reaches 100% or 4% the other stops charging and discharging so you don't get the full capacity of the two chained batteries. See other posts on this forum about this issue,
Maybe there will be revised versions of the other battery sizes as well following the 5.12?
geoffreycoan I want to see a revised AC inverter that delivers > 3kW.
..... and I bet I am not the only one.
I fear that owners of the AC3.0 inverter with 8.2 kWh and 9.5 kWh batteries have been abandoned by GE for the AIO.
Rob
Rbor I think you’re right there Rob
Rbor if I had the space I would have had the AIO.
Got a 5kW HY3 and 9.5kW batt, but I am tempted to get another battery.
Rbor An AC4 would be most welcome. It should have been the logical size for GE to develope. G98 installations are limited to 3.68kW so the AC3 is too small. I wanted to install a second AC3 when the much promised controller was available, typical GE delivery hype so still waiting.
Hopefully they'll ram the Polar 6kW in a Giv shaped box at some point... think givs focus going forward inverter wise will likely be HV though.
matttheotter If I didn’t already have the 8.2, I would have the AIO. But as they don’t play nicely together the pragmatic choice seems to add a 9.5.
ChrisRowe Yes, that's something I have recently discovered - was going to put in an additional battery DC side of the hybrid and found out the only option with an AIO is another AIO (not even another AC coupled battery) 😢
Midsummer Wholesale now have the new 5.12 kWh battery listed for £2114, compared to £1796.20 for the Gen 1 5.2 kWh. Looking at it per usable kWh-
£2114 / 5.12 = £412.89
£1796.20 / (5.2 * 0.8) = £431.78
The new battery is also 9 kilogrammes lighter.
Both are listed as having a 12 year warranty and both prices are not signed in and without any trade discount.
Some snooping around over in China would suggest there's a new 9.5 (G3) in the works. Smaller and rounded front like the 5.12.
Curious about 2 things on those:
CAN option for comms, even though no current LV inverters support that (RS485 only)
Far greater current capability (120A+ / 6kW) than any current inverter. And a Boost / Burst mode?
Perhaps a sign of things to come.
geoffreycoan this is another benefit of the AIO, when you have two even though the load is distributed if one reaches 4% before the other then the other keeps discharging. So you get full discharge from both. If one for some reason goes offline, the other just keeps going.
JasonF That’s good to know, that the AIO gateway acts as a “director” over the two AIO’s, but they can still operate independently.
If I had my time again it would be an interesting question as to what I’d buy now. The AIO wasn’t available 18 months ago when I had my system installed. The faster charge and discharge rate even from a single AIO would be the main factor that would attract me to it, but intrinsically I prefer the concept of DC hybrid because there’s less solar conversion losses. I’d seriously look at the PW3 as they just work and can scale horizontally without issue.
Would like to add more battery capacity to my existing setup and there 5.12 is smaller and neater, but I know the maths won’t add up …. must resist temptation !
geoffreycoan intrinsically I prefer the concept of DC hybrid because there’s less solar conversion losses.
I wanted hybrid for the same reason. But what's interesting is that, as it turns out, I currently rarely charge from solar, which means I'm actually operating my hybrid little differently from an ac-coupled system: charge battery from grid overnight; export solar drectly during the day (though consumption takes first bite, of course), run from battery in the evening, exporting back to grid last thing.
But that's possible just a summer-only thing. ASHP should be arriving soon, and will no-doubt have to re-evaluate everything.
JasonF That is interesting to know - I did post a question in another thread about this very topic (as I am considering getting a second AIO)
geoffreycoan our house came with a 1.2kw solar array, which basically we always consume with house load so it never ends up in the battery. Mostly I charge the battery at night on IOG and then use it all day. I never got close to the peak 6kw load of a single AIO let alone the 12 of the combined - but it’s great for charging and discharging in power ups etc, or if the car needs an emergency cheap charge.
CW if you link the thread I’ll take a look.
JasonF DD in hindsight I agree, most of our battery charging is from the grid when the import rates are less than the export rate. I’m on Agile so tend to charge overnight, likewise your IOG or Go it makes sense to charge the battery overnight and export pretty much all the solar during the day
I have an older FIT array so originally with my gen 1 450/451 firmware any AC generated by the FIT array used to just go straight to the grid. Definite advantage of the newer 191/193 firmware is the AC behaviour so it charges off excess grid export regardless of where it comes from
CW yeah the parallel AIO doesn’t have those issues as far as I’ve experienced. The gateway acts as the controller but both will behave on their own. As I mentioned when one of mine hits 4% the other keeps going, same with charging they both get to 100%.
JasonF I am quite tempted by a second AIO, but when I see these threads where multiple batteries do not play too nicely together and then coupled with the fact that the second AIO is relatively new, it puts me off (I'm still having some interesting off-grid behaviour since they updated the inverter firmware) so all these things kind of put me off. I'm no expert but I would just expect these things to work and not have various problems as have been described across the threads
CW Notwithstanding the AIO firmware “journey”, I thought feedback on the forum of multiple AIO’s connected through the gateway seem to be working quite well, nowhere near the same problems that the multi-inverter or multi-battery setups on AC or hybrid inverters have.
CW Yeah I was pretty nervous initially, and there are some non major things to iron out like home mode on the app doesn’t work - I haven’t had a single problem. It’s just worked as I expected it to. And I’m getting an average 13.2kwh out of each battery.
CW here’s mine 
JasonF Oh I like the look of that 😃
JasonF Nice. Room for a 3rd and 4th one next to it 😉
geoffreycoan Maybe - for me it's too early to feel confident that all the wrinkles have been ironed out. I still need to have the AIO cut-over under 20ms when the grid goes down, and it doesn't even do that. Hopefully that will be resolved when my installer comes out to take a look, but these sorts of issues give me pause to move forward
geoffreycoan haha two is plenty! If I start using 27kwh a day I need to look at what I’m doing! Although, the reason we get a second one was because one wasn’t enough for the air con in the summer. So with heat pumps etc I could see some people needing 3.
CW I get that, I actually need to do a grid test, I’ve been putting it off … I got them to enable the 0 second switchover a while back. That’s not your issue is it? Do you have that setting enabled?
JasonF Apparently "yes" - but they did a firmware upgrade last week and when I was testing the off-grid, it delayed cut-over by about 30s (interestingly it didn't when I was asked to switch the CU off - not sure what that signifies) - so waiting for the installer to come out and take a peek
CW well I hope you get it sorted.