Upgrading inverter from 3.6 to 5.0KW.

Our initial install was a 3.6KW Gen 2.

With hindsight, 5.0KW would be better long term, and I suspect there's only a couple of MCB upgrades needed in the consumer unit - cabling appears to be more than chunky enough.

As our inverter was mistakenly configured as a 5KW one for a year before GE changed a setting, I'd hope there's just a software option to flip that back - but do we need to get the MCS certificate changed too? I think we also need G99 approval.

Has anyone been down this route?

rjp You'd definitely need G99 approval and the existing MCS would be void but I can't see any way GE are going to reconfigure it for you as a 5kW.

As far as they're concerned its been commissioned and is under warranty as a 3.6kW.

Do report back if they do agree to reconfigure it as I'm sure a lot of people would be interested.

... yet despite it being ordered and supposedly commissioned as 3.6KW, they'd accidentally configured it as a 5.0, and it ran happily like that for a year. I'm surprised none of our breakers tripped.

Note that despite their best efforts, it's still reporting as a 5.0!

I may be misremembering, but weren't they the same hardware?

Didn't some 3.6's get reconfigured as 5's (or vice versa) in the great gen 1 famine of 22/23?

I'm not sure if Giv do it anymore but yes (for Gen 1 atleast) it's a software change.
Pretty sure (given they can do it remotely) it's a fairly trivial register change rather than an actual reflash locally and if I was a betting man it'd be the DTC register.
Asking can only get you at worst a 'no'

As hoggy says, for gen 1 at least it’s a software configuration change, that’s all. Sounds like it’s the same for the gen 2.

After all, why make two different models of equipment when 99% of everything is the same inside. If I remember correctly from when the GiveEnergy engineer replaced our Gen 1 5kW under warranty (that came with a sticker on the side saying 3.6kW), the dropdown list of inverter ‘modes’ covers all sorts of different setting limits for different countries. Have a feeling I saw one for the Ireland and one for South Africa but I may have got that wrong.

My replacement Gen 2 was a 5KW unit when fitted and downgraded to match the original 3.6KW unit via a software update and a couple of case stickers.

our old one was stickered as a 3.6, but it reports as a 5 in the portal and performs as a 5. its serial number also confirms its a 5kW

Fridgeman its serial number also confirms its a 5kW

How can you tell from the serial number?

hoggy Hold on, are you saying Gen1's are basically all the same and its software that changes a 5 down to a 3.6? i.e. my 3.6 could just be upgraded to a 5 at a flickc of a digital switch?

TimI absolutely, the gen 1 its a software config via the installer portal to change the behaviour between a 3.6 and a 5kW hybrid. I’ve seen it done twice on my inverter, once when the inverter was installed and changed from a 3.6 badge to a 5kW, and once by givenergy support when they tried to reset the inverter to get IOF working for me.

TimI This type of thing has gone on for many years with all sorts of products.
38 years ago I was in the market for a betamax video recorder so that perhaps shows how old I am!
A friend of mine at the time worked at a company called wigfalls, there were two models of the Sony C7 recorder, £280 and £370 the engineer told me to buy the cheapest one and for £5 he could upgrade it.
I watched him take the front off the brand new out of the box unit and replace a blanking plate with six button tops and that was it.
Both models were exactly the same electronics except the cheaper one had a blanking plate to hide the button mechanism.
That way Sony only had to make one model but could sell it as two different models and price points thereby giving the customer a greater choice!

cars too... BMW introduces new heated seat subscription in UK

DD I like the register quote in that link,
"It may feel like buying a mug and having to rent the handle"

geoffreycoan Not one that you could just convince them to do freely though? Shame, would be useful to have the extra peak capacity,

We did have three Hewlett Packard 10MB hard drives at work. Not cheap in those days. We discovered they could be upgraded to 20MB by removing the case and flipping a switch on the circuit board 😃

When is someone going to take GivTCP or its equivalent to its logical conclusion and enable all this functionality on it, so one can 'jail break' GE inverters?

You didn't see me write that...

mrand31 thats all well and good but what about us who have paid for a 5 kW inverter?
Can we upgrade to a 7kW 😁

i would be happy to pay the price difference if there was an option for an upgrade.. just saying

MikeCM8 Yeah, thats an interesting one. So, who do we need to bribe... i mean... there's a brown envelope here with soemthign in it... i mean... pay for the upgrade.

rjp there was a post on here all about the various serial numbers a while back.

mrand31 doing it is the easy bit (all the parts are there) defending the wrath is the harder part.

Fridgeman there was a post on here all about the various serial numbers a while back.
Found it in here. https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/2462-pre-sn-2209-gen1-inveter-firmware-upgrades/11

Mine starts EA2306 which means Gen 2 3.6KW made in Feb '23.

This ties in with the inverter label. @TheDragon (GivEnergy) mentioned in that thread that some 3.6's might "have a 5.0 board, but be throttled in software." which implies there are HW differences. Maybe that's only for the Gen 1 units?