We have just moved house and the there is a GivEnergy battery in our garage.
We need GivEnergy to transfer our details onto this as the new owners, however, no one picks up their phone and no one responds to emails.
Any ideas what I should do? At the moment I have some scrap metal sitting in my garage!
GivEnergy - please get in touch!
Harry
Hi
Not sure anyone from GivEnergy reads or does anything with comments on this forum.
Can you get the account details from the previous owner?
In the short term, you could try the free Android Inverter Monitor app on a phone. I believe it communicates directly with the inverter, I think for a one of £10, it can control the inverter
Harry you will first need to get the inverter setup on your wifi. Details are in videos on youtube.
Once you have done that then as suggested you can use the rubik cube android app to control your inverter locally.
Getting the inverter moved to your ownership and the warranty transferred over can only be done by givenergy support. Log a call with them and wait.
Yes they are overloaded and in the scheme of things yours is not a priority case so it will take some time and there’s not much you can do but be patient.
Harry UK another option for local control is to use a python library.
It's usually the installer that does the initial onboarding. I wonder if it would be worth looking for a local installer willing to adopt your system. (Might be tricky since they are potentially opening themselves to significant risk.)
Presumably the property was sold with the working system included in the sale, so…
One thing in the meantime, (which is what I’d do and would probably solve your problem faster) is you should contact your solicitor who you used to purchase the house, and state “I can’t access the solar system included in the sale of the house and have no control of how it’s using my electricity to/from the grid which is a problem” and ask them as a matter of urgency to get the following details from the previous owners of the property;
*** All documents, installation certificates, DNO approval (if required) and warranty details of the solar/ battery system (including any serial numbers you need) so that you can use it. As it was sold as a working system with the property ***
I’d ask them “to supply their old credentials so that you can continue to use it and be able to control the import and export of your home electricity, until it’s swapped over to your WiFi and your own GivEnergy account.”
“In order that I can access the system, Please supply”;
1) The previous home WiFi name (SSID) and password the owners used.
2) The GivEnergy account username and password they used.
Then you can set up a “guest network” on your home WiFi using the same SSID (WiFi network name) and use the same WiFi password they supplied. The GE system should then automatically connect to your new WiFi on the guest network and you would be able to logon using the username and password supplied the by previous owners on the GivEnergy app and/ or website.
The previous owners, like a lot of us were probably quite proud of their system and would be more than willing to help. I’d also state that you only need this temporarily and you will change it once you have access. Keep it factual and polite but stress frustration and urgency !
Once you’ve got access to the system you can then go about;
1) Swapping it over to your own WiFi network and password for your house (via the app - ‘Change WiFi’)
2) swapping over ownership (via GivEnergy) which will no doubt take a lot longer and require a new account and password.
@everyone;
One thing we should all probably do as GivEnergy owners is to think about this before we move.
What I plan to do if I ever move is to setup a guest network for my GE system, call it “GivEnergy” or “Solar System”, with a separate password, move it over to that and then at least it’s easy for the new owner to have access by setting up a guest network themselves with those details (which can simply be passed on with the sale). This means not revealing my main wifi network name or password to the new owners (so I don’t have to change passwords for all my kit). Then I’d stick the SSID name and password on the inverter along with my GE username and password and that’d be it. Move out, no worries.
Pete UK I agree, getting hold of the prior users login details is by far the simplest way to get access to the portal and control over the inverter. And hopefully the sellers will oblige.
But I don’t think you can strong arm the solicitor by claiming that it was sold as working. Caveat emptor is the usual legal premise for buying a property.
Just my view, not legally qualified in any way !
It’s not really strong arming the Solicitor as such, just asking the question. Maybe it just wasn’t on the previous owners minds at the time.
I suppose it depends what was in the contract. Which it may not have been. One more thing to note if buying a property with an existing system, get the logins etc in writing and checked for access in the survey/ exchange of contracts etc. you’d think it would automatically be part of their due diligence but obviously it’s not. Like the home survey “couldn’t access the loft due to no ladder” and “couldn’t access the roof, too high - looks ok from the ground”, “services and appliances appear connected - not tested” etc, etc 😂😂
I would presume it is perfectly reasonable to expect it to be working and have access to its controls though. 🤷🏼♂️ What happens after that is not the previous owners problem though. So getting the details afterwards could be difficult due to the lack of incentive/ interest on the part of the previous owners. Whereas during the selling period they are probably highly motivated. Worth asking though !
When my parents bought a house many years back they were unpleasantly surprised on move in day to find the previous owner took everything including every single light bulb. So you just don’t know who you’re dealing with. I mean how tight is that?
Some people are complete a*** holes ! Others not.
It’ll be interesting to see how the OP gets on.
Thanks so much everyone.
I actually posted on a different GR forum and a chap called 'Dragon' who works for GE got in touch.
He simply transferred our details over with presumedly a click of a switch. Wish i posted on these forums in the first place and not rang the telephone number or emailed!
Anyway, the battery is up and running and I was playing around with it last night. We have an air source heat pump and solar panels. I plan on going onto the Octopus Cosy tariff and charge the battery during the off peak hours and discharge it during the peak hours? I'm very much a novice here.
I do have a couple of questions, not sure if anyone can answer.
Is the Winter Conditioning Mode important? It was bloody cold last week in the UK!
Octopus have asked for a battery schematic (drawing I assuming of some description) of our set up for our FIT. The previous owners didn't leave this. Does anyone think I should be paying the installer for another copy of these? I've asked our estate agent to get in touch with the sellers and they said they don't have it!
Thanks for all the suggestions regarding solicitors. We've moved into a village, and one of the previous owners passed away fairly suddenly hence the sale. He only installed the battery in Nov '23. It's actually where I grew up and where my parents live - we vaguely know the sellers. Anyway, just trying to not go in too heavy handed as I know it was a reluctant sale, and not too sure how much it would achieve.
Thank you all.
Harry UK The Dragon is Paul Landregan who works for GivEnergy. If you catch his eye he’s pretty good at getting things done.
If you have a heat pump, Cosy is a good tariff to be on, that’s what I am on with my heat pump for the winter. I’ll probably go back to Agile for the summer. Cosy gives you three cheap rate charging periods so triple dip at filling the battery sufficient to run the heat pump. Here’s a graph of my import for yesterday:
When it’s cold my batteries don’t cover me from one cheap period to another and there is more importing, but that’s covered financially by what I export in the summer. On your point about exporting on Cosy, there is no peak export rate on Cosy (there is in Flux but the export rates are worse). Also the Cosy import is 14p, fixed export is 15p, so after battery conversion losses you would be loosing money by force exporting. In summer just let the batteries fill with solar and export the excess.
Your two questions:
The schematic will probably be one of these options:
https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/pdfs/givenergy-full-schematics.pdf
Perhaps the installers know the setup they installed, or perhaps you could work it out?
Harry UK if you’ve got an EV worth looking at IOG too. We have solar, battery, heat pump and an EV and it has worked out pretty good. Depends on your personal usage. I think it is tim and kats green walk that has an online tool to work out what is best.
Excellent - glad you got it sorted.