Givenergy & iboost

Dear All,

I'm a new GivEnergy user, and have only recently had an 8.2KWh installed.

Prior to the battery being installed, I had a Marlec iboost running perfectly and correctly only heating my immersion (Megaflo) when there was sufficient spare solar PV generation.

However, now I have the GivEnergy battery installed, what you can see in the screenshot (https://pasteboard.co/zJ1RTdeNSFCw.jpg) is that my iboost is running using energy discharged by the battery which I believe is incorrect.

I reached out to Marlec and they suggested I buy a Sender 250 for Solar iBoost (https://www.marlec.co.uk/online-shop/solar-iboost-spares/#popup_214243248597) which is what I'm currently now running, and can clearly be seen on the photo is not helping at all.

I just wondered if anyone has seen this kind of thing before and have any ideas how to resolve it ?

Many thanks in advance,

Paul

I have exactly the same set-up as you. My battery is set to the 'Eco' mode, I also adjusted my iBoost so that the export wattage has to be >200w for it to fire up rather than the standard out of box setting (I think its >50w). Since I did this it seems to be working great.

Hey Simon,

Thanks for the reply, I can also confirm that my battery is set to 'Eco' mode (and i've just reset back to factory defaults just in case)

Now that my battery is flat, the iBoost is now correctly reporting my 1.9 KWh import from grid and is not heating the immersion.

Any more thoughts ?

Thanks

Are you sure that the inverter is not doing a battery calibration run? Export to the point of being flat followed by full import would tend to point in that direction.

paulmiles

Sender 250 is a waste of money. Told me the same, waste of 60 quid

If the iBoost is newer than APR 2018 there is a setting to adjust the cuti-n. Set to 250W and a delay of 30seconds

I can only assume your iBoost may be faulty or not set up correctly? I believe there are 2 potential immersion connections on the iBoost, maybe yours is wiring / defaulted to the wrong one?

Sorry, I'm not an expert on this, only what I've learned in the last couple of weeks.

@mrand31 - Any ideas how I can tell if its doing a battery calibration run ?

@TheDragon (GivEnergy) - Unfortunately my iBoost predated the configurable setting of the cut in so I was forced down the Sender 250.

@Ra - I'm really not sure,

paulmiles re the first point, the battery will fully empty then fully charge.

I had my battery put in last week. The installer called Givenergy and they started it. Can definitely see the discharge and then immediate full recharge in that day ! Can't see it recorded in invertor logs though.
My Iboost has been behaving set at 100w, so either wait for battery to charge or pause it.
Have you accidentally pressed the discharge in quick settings or set a timed boost on the Iboost?
Just some thoughts.

I would call givenergy directly and they can advise if the battery is calibrating and possibly identify any issues from their side.

paulmiles Paul just to give you comfort I have an iBoost (installed October last year - no supplementary sender) and it is working fine with my Givenergy Battery System. As SimonHall said in his reply I found I needed to set the trigger level to 200w otherwise the transient exports caused by battery and / or large household loads coming off did set the iBoost to draw from the battery. At the 200w setting you do get some incorrect minor runs of teh iBoost. My daily pattern since March has been PV online, supplying house load, charges battery, then heats hot water then runs export.

This is my second PV install with an iBoost this time with a battery. First installation at previous house worked fine for the 5 years before we moved. The iBoost is the best value component in the system!

I know this probably doesn't help - but I can also confirm the iBoost does work with the givenergy setup. My iBoost is set to a threshold of 200W. Batteries charge, then hotwater then I export (or start charging the EV if I'm in)

The iBoost does occasionally grab battery power - usually when a load comes off or it's a Sun in and our form clouds type of day, but it's transient.

Are both your iBoost and givenergy current clamps in the same place? Whether this makes any difference I don't know - but just thought it meant they are both seeing the same current flows.

I have a 9.5 and AC3 with 2015 iBoost.

Installer disconnect iBoost CT clamp as he believed it would conflict with battery. Decided to try it to see what happens. My iBoost CT clamp is located first on the incoming supply, just after it comes out of ground. The other CT clamps for GE and my Ohme EV are around meter and consumer unit.

Today was the first day and everything seemed to work as I’d hoped. Battery charged off excess solar, when battery was full and grid export started then iBoost kicked in to heat water, when tank was hot, grid export resumed.

New stock 9.5 and AC3 but 2015 first gen iBoost. I had planned to buy the 250w sender or 2nd gen iBoost but it appears I don’t need to, not sure why. Can’t really understand why iBoost would pull from battery as clamp is looking for current returning to grid surely??

Grahamthomas Just keep an eye on it, I had to fiddle with my export setting on my newer iBoost as I was getting some chatter between the iBoost and the battery. It would tend to sort itself out eventually but this could take a number of minutes and if its one of those days where the sun is going in/out a lot this was definitely an issue.

Ra You were right. Started yo-yoing between the iBoost and battery.

Guess I will need to try the sender 250 upgrade or upgrade to the iBoost+

I've got an older iboost and was consistently seeing the iboost taking precedence over the battery.

I invested in a Sender 250, and to be honest, I still see the iBoost taking priority. I've adopted the crappy situation of plugging and plugging the iboost sensor cable manually when the battery is charged.

This is something I plan to revisit once its a little sunnier - possibly by buying a newer iboost which I've heard 'just' works.

Yes, they do "just" work. Perfectly OK if the sunshine is constant, but if there are intermittent clouds, then the iBoost reacts quicker than the Givenergy inverter when the sun returns, and "steals" energy which "should" be going into the battery. I haven't actually seen it taking charge out of the battery, tbh.
Even with the iBoost startup threshold set higher than the default, this still happens. In yummer, I simply turn the immersion off (luckily have a switch downstairs) until I see the battery is fully charged. In winter, no problem, as there simply is not any "surplus" solar energy to worry about, so I leave it switched off permanently. My personal priority is battery charge first.

paulmiles

I have an old iBoost so I just disconnect the clamp until the battery is full. I tried setting the reserve power to 95% so if there was a race and the battery discharged into the hot water, it would only drain teh battery a bit.

Problem is that the reserve power setting doesn't work so the battery discharged anyway.