Adding a battery to an existing GivEnergy installation after administration

Hi All,

Hopefully a quick question - that may not have a straightforward answer I suspect!

I have an existing GivEnergy installation that's working nicely (Gen 3 inverter with a Gen 2 9.5KWh battery) but I'd like to add an additional battery to the set up. Now I know this is possible (get the cable, set the dip switches etc) but having spoken to my installer, they're (rightly) very nervous doing this since GivEnergy went into administration. Their experience is this type of upgrade is likely to need GivEnergy support to do something to help register/commission the new battery - which nowadays doesn't exist?

My installer has done some digging and from what they have found out on a Facebook group "it should be fine" as long as the firmware versions match between the batteries when the install is done.

Has anyone tried this since GivEnergy went in to administration and what was your experience?

Used Givenergy batteries are current so expensive it makes no economic sense. Other brands are cheaper and come with a warranty.

Maltbyite the batteries are definitely just plug and play. In the past I swapped mine around between inverters and they worked fine.

The issues came from the portal not always recognising the changes; that’s what the commissioning process did, it registered the batteries with the portal for warranty purposes because sometimes that didn’t work automatically. Of course now that is less important.

If your installer is onboard then you could get them to recommission the system, or not bother.

I’ll be adding extra batteries to my inverters in the next few weeks so will report what happens for me. I am not anticipating any issues nor plan to involve my installer.

Agree that the batteries are overpriced at present.

Rubikcube Will other brands work with Givenergy though, or would be a case of replacing the system?
I had planned to add an extra battery ( just before Givenergy collapsed) to a relatively new system, but that's obviously a non starter now.
I'm considering the possibilty of something like an Anker 7 system running some extra panels on a shed roof and feeding in through a plug-in - if that would work, as a way of providing extra battery capacity.

IW There are people working on decoding the inverter to BMS communications which would lead to being able to plug non-givenergy batteries into a givenergy inverter.

It’s also possible to wire a 54V battery (e.g. pylontech) in parallel with a givenergy battery, letting the givenergy battery do all the comms to the inverter. This should work but pylontech etc won’t give any warranty as its not a supported configuration.

You can do extra solar with an Anker or similar plugin system but these are very expensive for what you get. Any secondary inverter/battery system you’ll have to deal with cross charging to your givenergy

My understanding was that almost any battery could be connected to the inverter but only same brand batteries could be 'daisy chained' together so the Pylontech info is useful.

Definitely not looking to replace my current battery/inverter setup as hoping to add this as a 'cheap' upgrade. As a comparison, what are you seeing as the current price for batteries and what would be a good price? When I quickly priced something up last week I was coming to about £3k for a 9.5kWh for the Battery, link cable, delivery and install.

geoffreycoan definitely interested to hear how it goes.

Maltbyite what would be a good price?

Under £800 if its a 9.5kWh GE battery.

Anything over that is massively overpriced as you can buy brand new 16kWh batteries with fire suppression and built in heating for £2.5k fitted. Obviously they have valid warranty/support and probably haven't been lying in a warehouse for 12-18 months (like the GE batteries) going flat.