GivEnergy EVC - Ground leak error:26

Hi All,

I have been getting loads of these errors (as the sun has been shining quite a lot). I thought it may have been my system that was at fault. I am measuring the grid voltage and when my PV system was turned off the voltage went down below the requirement 253v. However:-

An update on my voltage issue:- (very interesting)

Raised a complaint to SSEN on Sunday, they phoned me up at midday to inform me about a visit by an engineer later today (max 3 hrs)

Engineer turned up at 3 ish (very knowledgable and willing to chat through what’s happening). Asked about my system and then said this is all on us and nothing you’re doing is wrong.

He pulled the fuse and measured the voltage so no import or export) and it was 252.8v (so .2 short of the max allowed)

He said he was in the office when the complaints team sent the request to his department, so was able to do some homework before he left (for visits)

Logged onto my smart meter and can see the readings now and back dated. Could see the over voltage. Looked at a few meters in the local area as well and saw all were going over during the day (in this nice weather) as well.

Next he looked at the local sub-station and said it was 11,580v. All substations should be 11,000v. He then looked at a few sub-stations and saw all were above 11,000v.

This meant it was an Area sub-station not a local sub-station issue. He phoned the person that looked after that and they agreed it was an issue. He would turn down the area sub-station voltage (today or first thing in the morning).

My guy would then log back onto the local sub-substations to see if they were back to 11,000v. If not adjust them up/down to get to the correct voltage.

He then said once this is done the sub-stations are automatic and will keep the correct settings going forward. E.g as my local sub-station was 11,580v this is what it was automatically changing to meet this requirement, once at 11,000v it would keep this as the new target.

Lastly he said he would keep my job card open, if I still see an issue to ring up, he will check things again and get them adjusted if needed.

So loads of points to SSEN my local DNO (thank you guys)

If your boring like me you can keep an eye on your local substations as pretty much all DNOs now have some form of monitoring portal (some are a lot better than others)
Thankfully for you, SSEN is one of the best so you can use their NERDA portal which plots it all on a fancy map and dashboard.
https://www.ssen.co.uk/our-services/tools-and-maps/near-real-time-data-access-nerda-portal/

You do need to sign up/ login but it's free and there's no need to be a grid engineer or anything.

Quick update:-

I have set up some Gauges in HA to keep an eye on the Voltage. This is at 08:00 today

If your DNO doesn’t sort out any voltage problems for whatever reason they may give then GivEnergy sell a voltage optimiser product for approx £250 which would need installing/wiring up by your installer. Mine stopped the ground leak errors that my GivEnergy EV charger regularly suffered from. Also it would stabilise the voltage for the whole of your house.

SteveClubley There’s quite a few different voltage optimisers on the market, many of them advertised as to how much money it can save you by reducing unnecessary voltage so you only pay for the power you use rather than the excess being wasted as heat (and yes I know this mixes up voltage and power in the same sentence).
TBH I view those kind of saving promises as snake oil.

But reducing the voltage level to prevent issues with the EV charger could be worthwhile. The Giv device is one of the cheaper ones out there.

Am interested in how well the voltage optimiser has worked alongside your inverters, whether you’re still able to export OK when the grid voltage is higher than your home’s optimised voltage?

I definitely have issues with high grid voltage, in part caused by the number of other houses with solar (I have seen more issues this year), and with the amount of solar and export I do. On sunny days without intervention the grid voltage rises above 258V and my inverters shut off briefly, voltage drops, generation starts again and the whole cycle repeats. My current mitigation is to trickle charge the batteries during the day so reducing the kWh exported in the peak solar day.

My understanding is that the inverter has to boost the voltage slightly for the power to be exported, so wonder if the voltage optimiser would still enable bulk rate export?

SteveClubley

Thanks for the info, I did think about one however thay are quite expensive and the DNO are legally responsible to reduce the voltage, as I have a complaint raised and have a reference number I will be going down this route. 👍😎

geoffreycoan The latest version of my app has a fault log, which should record any instances of the inverter shutting off due to high voltage.

geoffreycoan You're really not supposed to use "voltage optimisers" to stop your export shutting off due to excessive voltage when exporting. That's a matter for the DNO, not the householder and your system is working as designed.

Really, just don't do it.

The use of an optimiser just on the circuit to the EV charger might be worth considering. It will reduce the voltage that the charger sees without boosting the voltage back to the grid which, as Vestas points out, you really shouldn't do to get over a high grid voltage which the DNO should (must) address themselves.

In my case I have a nominal 248v grid supply and the DNO has rightly said it is within limits. Thankfully I have a SolarEdge Inverter which has a higher voltage shut-off threshold than the GE. I have seen 257v on occasions on sunny days when exporting almost 6kW. The GE battery inverter is shutting itself off but the SolarEdge inverter is happily blowing up everyone else's voltage sensitive devices.

Windy Miller I have two GivEnergy Gen 1 hybrid inverters and an older Growatt FIT inverter. They all seem to have a cutoff of around 258.3V

Today a good case in point, from about 10-3pm when the export power (blue line) is around 6.5kWh, grid voltage reaches 258V and the inverters shut off (green in particular repeatedly drops to zero, the red and purple to a lesser extent)

More battery capacity so I could charge at a higher rate to reduce the export power (or at least shift it out to later on) would help, but unlikely to be cost justified. I doubt that a Voltage Optimiser would pay for itself anyway, but interesting to explore.

Some days it’s fine, I don’t get any such ‘grid clipping’, others like today I do.

The DNO did reduce the supply voltage about 2 years ago and that helped massively. I doubt very much that they would consider it as being out of tolerance any more; the current issues being self inflicted

I've not looked for a while but this is today's voltage chart. At 14:16 I have a peak voltage of 259v whilst exporting 4.4kW. Battery already charged so the GE inverter was idle. What's more interesting (troubling) for me is that I hadn't realised that the Grid voltage is above 253v for quite a lot of the night. I'm not exporting so I wonder who of my neighbours are?

geoffreycoan
Hi. I don’t recall exporting being prevented at all. I have just the one 5 kW inverter. I charge the 8.2 kWH battery off peak so as soon as sun is up it exports at approx 3.6 all day.
When I get home I’ll do some export vs voltage charts to check the range.
The GivEnergy voltage optimiser has four settings for voltage range. I believe they are physical jumpers that were set by the installer.

geoffreycoan

Hi Geoffrey. FYI some charts for today.
First - inverter power
Second - export power
Third - grid voltage

SteveClubley Thanks Steve, looks like its working well for you, exporting as you’d expect it to and grid voltage entirely within a reasonable range

It does not look like they tweaked it down yet.

geoffreycoan I doubt very much that they would consider it as being out of tolerance any more; the current issues being self inflicted

Its out of tolerance and they WILL have to do something eventually as it'll be adversely affecting their equipment plus of course the DNO is on the hook for any damage caused to consumer equipment (everyone on that phase). Its not a situation any DNO would want to continue.....

After me giving SSEN some praise 🤷🏼‍♂️

Hhhmm not happy. Just phoned SSEN.

They have not done anything at the Local or Area sub-stations (as expected)
They are now saying because it has to be done at the Area sub-station it has had to go to planning (could be weeks)

Hi all, a quick update.

Had an unexpected call at 19:00.

Call from SSEN engineer at the local sub-station, he has just adjusted the voltage by 10 volts and said I should not have any more issues.

I asked about the Area sub-station and he said they had a meeting and it would have caused to much disruption to the grid and a possible outage (same as you had Geoffrey) if it was adjusted. So did not get the vote.

Just had a look and this is what it is now, I will keep an eye on it for a few days.

Hi all, just a quick update:-

I have had no Ground Leaks since the Sub Station update 👍✅
The GE EVC has been working very well, so recommend submitting a complaints form online via your (local) GNO to get them to look at it.

Daveb01 Glad you got it sorted, fingers crossed it stays like it 🙂