Calibration bricked batteries?

I scheduled a calibration via the portal to start at 12:30hrs today to resolve a red light on battery one. It exported the remaining power fairly quickly but then stayed at 4, 3, 2, 1% and then 0% remaining for hours and never completed Stage 1. It was discharging at a rate of 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 1 watts and then eventually not at all.
What was noticeable in the excellent Android Monitor for GivEnergy Inverter app was a _822mV variance in the cells on battery one, and eventually a 3V difference between the packs. I let it run on and on because no-one at support was answering and a whole lot of nothing continued to happen.
Eventually I stopped the calibration six hours after it started (using the same app) and tried to at least charge to five percent to sustain their minimum supported charge.
At this point nothing is happening with either battery and their reported voltages are now 7.4V apart. I don't think that these packs will be talking to each other.
Are the packs now bricked? Could I turn off both batteries, restart the inverter and turn on the second battery to see if I can get it closer to 50V and have a chance of them both syncing again.

Update: The voltage delta continued to widen with the voltage on battery 2 continuing to fall so I switched off both batteries.
This was the cell and battery data before I did that.

The second battery won't come on now so I assume the voltage is too low. Presumably this is installer or engineer territory.
I will try the number in the installation manual in the morning.

By my understanding (and I may be wrong), calibration is supposed to stop discharging and move to stage 2 once any cell falls to 2.5V. Cells below 2.5V is not good. I have no idea how to fix this.

Battery 1 is dead - cell 1 is screwed, hence the red light.

Looks very much like the calibration process can't cope with a faulty battery when two are fitted and hence you now have a dead battery (#1) and a flat battery (#2) because of the voltage difference between packs.

Support/installer time. The very best of luck to you - you will most definitely need it 🙁

Edit - were it me, I'd disconnect the first battery and run with the second. You will probably need to run a calibration on the second battery once you disconnect the first.

From my basic understanding of the BMS if you get a red light on the battery and it doesn't clear then it's an issue for GivEnergy to deal with.

The BMS goes through a self checking process to ensure it is safe to continue.

There is a timer mechanism that fires up this routine to check. Not bothered to time it but could be around 10 minutes.

Some errors will clear, but after a day of red light I would try and log a call with GivEnergy support.

you've hit the UV cell protect voltage of 2.3V so the BMS won't release until it's back above 2.4V.
If it doesn't gradually settle then, you will likely need a direct cell connected charge.

Think yourself lucky - I just picked up a 2.6 battery that is simultaneously somehow in the following faults: pack UV, cell UV & cell OV!

Due to the famous lack of responsiveness of Support, which I am now experiencing, it seemed like something I was on my own with. I did try and contact them when Stage 1 of Calibration didn't end.

These posts made me think that the right light might be calibration related or that it was at least worth a try.

https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/108-battery-status-light-is-red/
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/4625-battery-red-light-error-again
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/863-new-95-battery-red-light-on-master-slave-fine

In the event though I have taken a working pair of batteries and ended up with one.

I was able to recover battery one after manually stopping the calibration.

GivEnergy were able to coax the second battery into life. I will need to be very brave running a calibration again, at least until the support issues have been sorted out.

pwdst wow you got support to look at them?

I have been waiting 4 weeks for my dead batteries.

How did you contact them?

Well done...

I have been part of a trial for some firmware and fed back about the calibration fault in case that was related. I did also raise tickets with the Support Desk so I am glad it wasn't that sort of timeline, which I know it easily could have been based on recent feedback.

I had at one point been considering investing £1200 in adding to our GivEnergy batteries but right now I am considering ripping out everything GivEnergy and spending £6000 on 12kWh of Sigenergy kit.

pwdst You're not going to get much in the way of GivEnergy battery storage for £1200

Sigenstore are the darlings of many installers at the moment and they have clearly been promoting their product with youtube influencers (Gary does Solar in particular).

They seem to have good kit.

But the same could have been said for GivEnergy a few years ago.

And Sigenstore are a closed ecosystem with their proprietary inverters and batteries. For me that would put me off if I were to jump ship, which I'm not contemplating; it works well enough and its not financially worthwhile to throw it all away

Our second battery has fallen out of sync again, which is probably fixable if I can hold of support.
I was only planning on adding another 2.6kWh Gen 1 battery for reasons of compatibility with the existing system, payback and battery balancing. That would still have been less battery capacity than I would have liked but was all I could justify.
Our system was missold in terms of capacity to start with which didn't give us the best start. The current buggy software and lack of support makes it difficult to justify spending another penny on the same vendor.
It looks like it might be feasible to get an Eleven inverter and 9kWh storage installed for _£4500. I also like the sustainability of the materials for these batteries.

pwdst I was originally (mis)sold 2 x 2.6 batteries and added a third about a year after having the system. Having 3 x 2.6s has been nothing but trouble and I wish I hadn't bothered. The three are never in sync and I end up losing so much usable capacity from 1 and 2 that having 3 is often worse than if I just had the original 2.

@Dabz Thank you for your feedback and your experience of getting this done. It definitely sounds like we should either limp along as we are (if we can get our second battery live again) or cut our losses and replace all of the GivEnergy kit. Spending more now would clearly be throwing good money after bad.
Are you running the latest battery firmware (3022) and firmware for your inverter?

pwdst I'm on 3020 battery firmware, D0.450-A0.451 for the inverter. I've emailed GE support to see if I can get a response via that method because this morning I had the same old situation - Battery 3 on 0%, Batteries 1 and 2 on 23/24% so I'm losing a lot of usable capacity on 2 batteries.

Should your inverter software be the same D.45x & A0.45x ?

Red light is back on battery one, even though it disappeared for a while after the calibration. So the entire process has been pain for nothing.

Ortwin Inverter 450/451 firmware is fine, it is what I am running on mine. It's good for older inverters.

Is it possible to put the battery firmware back to 3017? My one battery seems to be running great on 3017.

Rubikcube yes you can do a manual install of the firmware following the instructions on the installer resources portal. https://givenergy.co.uk/installer-resources/

Unfortunately it looks like only BMS 3022 is available for download directly. For older versions would have to get from GivEnergy and you might as well ask them to do the install as well

There's details of what's in each firmware version in https://kb.givenergy.cloud/article.php?id=22 and a more detailed and up to date at https://givenergy.co.uk/firmware-revisions/G1-G2/

One of the key changes was the temperature limiting. I thought that was introduced in 3017 or maybe 3018 and then fixed in 3019 and 3020?

I do remember being rudely shocked by charging speed last winter when that changed without notice. This winter we would have been better off as our hot water tank and associated heat pump pipes would have kept our loft warmer anyway.
The newer firmware made it much less of an issue though.

for main releases,
3017 was good and stable, but had the low temp charging rate error. (0.25C rather that 0.33C)
3020 fixed that and a few other things and has mini self calibrations when full and held there for a bit.

wrighar I’m still on 3015 on my 9.5 battery as I didn’t want the derating. I put 3020 and then 3022 on my 5.2 to test it prior to the 9.5.

3022 (and 3020) reduced my 5.2 capacity from 4.2kWh available (80% DoD) to 4kWh which I reported but there hasn’t been an updated version since. Had planned on going back to 3015 but never got round to it.

Tried EON who installed our system who in fairness tried to help us even though we are outside of their own warranty period (slightly ridiculous that this is shorter than the finance agreements they market to pay for the equipment).
I have made twenty nine attempts to reach GivEnergy support with the expected result.
I think it is perfectly fair that I set a four week timer starting now and if our second battery isn't back online or an engineer appointment made within that time I contact the finance company regarding the mis-selling and start to investigate a more reliable equipment manufacturer.

pwdst You don't need to bother about misselling. Just open a section 75 claim with the finance company for breach of warranty/contract.

That will concentrate minds because the finance company (or credit card company) will recoup ALL their costs from the installer/manufacturer for section 75 claims and those costs (legal) will usually make the initial cost of the equipment trivial.

Ideally you get your money back - or a large chunk of it. Not so ideally, GE/EON "fix" it. Until the next time....

I emailed our electrician who used to be a GivEnergy installer. I say used to be as he has recently stopped working with their equipment due to the many and varied issues with both the equipment and the company, to paraphrase.
He is recommending Fox equipment now, which I believe Octopus are also installing, and planning on replacing his own battery and inverter.
If GivEnergy don't reply then I have a very expensive paperweight hanging on the wall.

Maybe someone needs to start a class action and force either some change or force them out of business

SteveCook Maybe someone needs to start a class action and force either some change or force them out of business

Just to counteract, you may be frustrated with support issues and lack of engagement but do you really want to force GivEnergy out of business?

That would mean:

• no warranty cover so any problems are unsolveable
• the GivEnergy app and portal stop working so unless you have local control, you have no control over your inverter
• a bunch of people made redundant

There is no supplier of last resort for us if GivEnergy go under.

I'm not a GivEnergy fanboy by any means and I hear the pain everyone is experiencing, but I'd suggest the best course is for GivEnergy to resolve their way through it, restore customer support, improve their external ratings (trustpilot etc), reinvigorate the installer base, generate cash to recruit more staff, etc. All of these things are linked of course

Fox reviews on TrustPilot are, for now at least, even worse than GivEnergy. I also want a subscription service so continued payment by me is contingent on the product continuing to perform. Based on reviews of companies I have looked at so far I could toss all of our GivEnergy gear, spend thousands, and be in the same or worse position in another two years.

geoffreycoan
I agree with you, but I dont think anything is going to change by hoping they do something to improve.
I hope they do improve as my kit has been fine (with some action by me), but I am not holding my breath.
HMGov needs to do something if it wants houseowners to go down this path

geoffreycoan I agree. My experience of GivEnergy has been good, so far. This is based on a 2021 Gen AC3.0 plus 2x 8.2kWh and Solar Edge (inverter and app have been rock solid).
I was happy to go with a British company when it became generally known that LiFePO4 batteries wouldn't catch fire. And with Octopus offering cheap rates and smart meter know-how, it seemed like the time to install.
I think GivEnergy had a very good innovative, technical Team who were starting to struggle with the logistics of designing/modifying batteries/firmware that was being designed/manufactured in China. When the Forum started, GivEnergy staff were very active in sorting out any issues. As demand for batteries increased exponentially (I suspect), they struggled to keep up with the Forum which is when the Dragon came on the scene and saved the day for a while. When he joined GivEnergy, we thought all would be well, but I suspect that even he was shocked by the state of the in-house technical team due to management issues caused by rapid expansion. All companies tend to go through this stage because the very bright "ideas man" is often not equipped with the right managerial qualities to supervise a complex business through expansion.
One can only hope that the Dragon is gradually having some impact, but with rapidly changing product lines to AOI and Gateway etc, I suspect that even he is struggling. No doubt many of the original staff, eg Adam and co, have moved on and I wish them well. Let's hope the remaining staff can keep the show on the road!

How long can a battery be fully discharged before it is junk? Asking for a friend

pwdst An LFP battery with a BMS will not be damaged. Even a GE battery with no lights on and won't turn on, will still likely have the cells at over 2V ( so at least 32V for the pack). It isn't fully discharged, and will likely be recoverable until the warranty runs out.

Now the question is if GivEnergy will respond before 2033. At the moment I am not optimistic.

I gave up playing nice and phoned the installer priority line. I spoke to a very nice and helpful gentleman who said that one cell in the slave battery (I presume cell 2 based on the screenshots above) was out of line and they would need a field visit to resolve the issue.
The lead time for this is five to six weeks apparently which is frustrating. Had their support not been such a big problem I could have spoken to someone when the red light appeared and at least had partial usage of an impaired battery until the visit.

The field engineer visited today. It seems like there are bad cells in both batteries and we have been promised a new 5.12kWh Gen 3 to replace both existing 2.6kWh Gen 1. Looking at the data the cell in battery 1 went within days of going in. I don't know if that was a factory defect or due to cold weather before the firmware was updated to improve cold weather charging.
In the mean time both have been brought online with both batteries in sync and I have had a reserve of 10% recommended to avoid the cells dropping out of line, so I will need to update Predbat to stop it resetting that.