Battery/inverter not working properly

Have a Gen 2 hybrid inverter + 9kWh battery.

Worked fine for nearly two years until some time last week or so.

It no longer responds to commands.

The battery reports at 100% all the time but hardly anything goes in or out of it. There is no reporting on grid input/output.

Could have been due to firmware updates or re-signing with axle energy. Or something else.

I cannot see a way on the app or web portal to do a full discharge/recharge cycle, which would be a nice thing to try to kick it into life.

Does a factory reset do this?

This is very frustrating given that I finally have a cheap overnight tariff which I am not able to take advantage of.

The Givenergy call line seems to have been closed to end users, so I sent them the above in a message but haven't had a response.

I attempted to download the givinstaller app after receiving a message about this but it does not seem to load (says it has a bug).

Anyone have any suggestions for me?

DBamford There is no reporting on grid input/output.

Can you clarify that: do you mean it is reporting zero import and export, even though the grid is (presumably) powering all your consumption.

I cannot see a way on the app or web portal to do a full discharge/recharge cycle,

If you have the quick-settings button configured on the app, you can do a forced discharge that way.

Thanks for the reply!
DD oh yes I assume that the grid is powering the house, aside from 40-50kw from the battery, which seems to be its maximum discharge (if it is correct).

I lost the quick buttons from the app when getting the latest version (which was necessary to run the EV charger). Not that they ever worked.
Though I've realised now I can get them back! I've set it to "discharge now" but still reading at 100% as before.
Here is yesterday's graph, though you can only see house load because grid isn't reporting and battery amounts are tiny.

DBamford for a forced discharge to not work, one possibility is that the reserve has become set to 100%. But it ought to still show the grid usage.

One way it could lose the grid usage is if the CT clamp has stopped working, but if it hasn't been disturbed, that shouldn't really happen. The CT clamp connects via a small meter, and on my installation that has its own MCB. If that had tripped, I guess you:f this behaviour.

Thanks - CT issue is one possibility.

I've had issues with the device in the consumer unit before. It came up with 'comms error' on the Givenergy app/portal when that has gone wrong in the past.

I haven't had any errors this time, but I have just held down the button on it to see if that will change anything.

DBamford I think the inverter speaks to the meter using modbus protocol over a couple of wires - Comms error could certainly indicate a problem in that vicinity.

https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/1858-incorrect-em115-wiring

DD Sorry the comms error was something I've had in the past and resolved. This is different.

I've just fished out our smart meter display thing and it confirms that the battery is not meeting the house demand - when I put the dehumidifier on the grid input shot up.

Since I can't get through to Givenergy I suppose I will have to contact the original installer, though I haven't had the best relationship with them and went with someone else to install the EV charger.

Thanks for the suggestions and if anyone else finds this situation familiar then this might be thread (currently unhelpful admittedly).

Just found a comment on a You Tube video which might be relevant to my issue, though that person had a ticking sound on their inverter and I haven't heard that.

"Had exactly the same and yes a reset brings it back to life but after a week or two it will happen again. My guess is you are running firmware above D0.910-A0.910 if so you need to contact support and ask them to disable 0 second UPS this will stop this happening."

Except when forcing a discharge, the inverter will only discharge the battery to cover any perceived house demand, which it infers from observing import from the grid. Since your system appears to be reporting zero grid import, it has no reason to discharge the battery. So until the inverter is able to correctly report grid import, I don't think it will work correctly.
So I'd say that's the first thing to sort out.

Forced discharge not working may be a separate problem.

DBamford I wonder how it inferred those spikes in consumption. It doesn't measure that directly, but infers it from how much AC it is generating, less any export it measures.

DBamford yesterday was quite sunny here - if you had the same, could you post yesterday's power chart. If consumption happened to match solar, that would suggest to me that it's not measuring grid usage correctly. If it didn't generate any solar, that might indicate output power has been restricted for some reason.

Thanks for all your suggestions. Installer and Givenergy seem to be leaving it to each other to investigate with gusto.

DD
Yesterday was very poor for solar.

Today has been much better and I think we've even exported a bit. Solar has been very poor in recent days which I thought might be due to the system issues but maybe it was just the weather.

It is just so strange because any cause that gets suggested (CT clamp failure, settings issue etc.) would presumably cause a different set of issues. Perhaps there are multiple separate problems interacting with one another.

DBamford That looks rather odd: all the solar is going into the battery, yet the battery is flatlined at 100%. And there's still nothing to explain where the energy for consumption is coming from, nor indeed how it's even coming up with consumption numbers without any corresponding grid import.

If you have Android, have you tried the inverter monitor https://givenergymonitor.wixsite.com/tutorials ? Not exactly sure what it might tell you, but maybe it will reveal something interesting.

Oh, this is embarrassing.

The RCD had tripped and I hadn’t noticed.

That explains why the inverter couldn't see the grid output.

I will do a recalibration tonight.

Hopefully this will be a useful thread for someone - check the basic things first!