Who controls the system?

Over the past week I have been having big problems that culminated in the battery unable to charge and stuck at 2%. In an effort to sort things out, I have used the portal to change some settings. For example, I turned on the winter conditioning setting for the battery only to be told indirectly by GE that it should be off.

More recently, I have sought help from my installer who tried to fix things by recalibrating the battery. Presumably that means they have full access to the system as well?

Then I discover that GE themselves, without my knowledge, have been tinkering away changing things remotely.

This all rings alarm bells. From a number of angles. Apart from the security issues, what happens if we work against each other, changing settings within the same timeframe as someone else is accessing the portal?

Any observations or questions would be very welcome.

Giveme Your installer has installer-level access; GE have manufacturer-level access; anyone you've given the API key to will have API-level access. Oh and you have user-level access as well of course.

GE have access to your system and more control and information than you can access.

Your installer will have access if you didn't change the password that they set up for you.

You have effectively signed up for this GE controlled eco system and you can't easily shut them out. It's possible but you will be in breach of your warranty FWIW.

You should only make changes on instruction from GE now you have a ticket raised and they are attempting to resolve the issue.

Good luck...

M_J Your installer will have access if you didn't change the password that they set up for you.

Your installer uses their own account to access systems they installed, not yours. If you look on the portal somewhere there's an option to revoke access for the installer - also shows whether they have access currently or not.

Edit - its Account Settings->Manage Account Security

Giveme Then I discover that GE themselves, without my knowledge, have been tinkering away changing things remotely.

GivEnergy generally don’t make any changes to your inverter unless its in response to a support request.

If you are referring to the “remote change detected” messages that are appearing in the remote control log, those are spurious and are not actually your inverter settings being changed, its “just” the portal thinking your inverter settings have changed when they haven’t - see https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/5634-random-battery-calibration-message

[unknown] yes, granted the reference in my post was due to an indirect support request (not from me) but this doesn’t really explain if the roles are defined anywhere. Where does the intelligent customer (no laughing at the back) end and monitoring and maintenance role begin? As I see it, there are three overlapping access privileges, the user/owner, the installer and GE. I have seen elsewhere on the forum that GE have made back-end changes that show up in the full set of logs, but can’t evidence this.

Giveme It's like the Post Office all over again!

Giveme Installer won't go near it unless you contact them. GE much the same - although there have been exceptions where they realised default settings were wrong so changed the "fleet".

M_J useful. Is this set out without ploughing through masses of documentation? I am not looking to lock anyone out, only understand the parameters.

Giveme No, no documentation AFAIK

[unknown]

[unknown] it now looks like the underlying problems are more to do with poor incident control leading to unjoined-up communications. During the past week we have had random messages from GE, often referring to past events or responding to third-party input which is not shared with us. They also rely on too much jargon. When eventually a GE engineer did a site visit he quickly found a rash of things caused by faulty installation. His view was - if you buy something from Curry’s you go to them not e.g. HP or Samsung to chase up faults. This could be clearer and would avoid a lot of chasing around. Thanks to his evidence (with photos) the installer (after a few more misfires) came out and replaced the inverter. For now at least everything looks good.

Vestas

Vestas it now looks like the underlying problems are more to do with poor incident control leading to unjoined-up communications. During the past week we have had random messages from GE, often referring to past events or responding to third-party input which is not shared with us. They also rely on too much jargon. When eventually a GE engineer did a site visit he quickly found a rash of things caused by faulty installation. His view was - if you buy something from Curry’s you go to them not e.g. HP or Samsung to chase up faults. This could be clearer and would avoid a lot of chasing around. Thanks to his evidence (with photos) the installer (after a few more misfires) came out and replaced the inverter. For now at least everything looks good.