Firmware 3007 has not fixed sudden SOC drop to 0% problem.

I have been monitoring the displayed 100% SOC battery voltage each day since installing 3007 on 27/6/22. This voltage has been slowly declining (as it did pre 3007) and so I decided to run a test today (by emptying the battery to the grid) to see what the real SOC was. The battery discharged down to 33% then suffered the dreaded sudden drop to 0%.

So in a month I have lost 33% of the battery capacity (the battery was actually only 67% full when it was displaying 100% SOC).

The fact that the battery discharged to 0% and ignored the 4% cut off and 4% reserve settings implies that the erroneous SOC reading is believed by the control software. Discharge was only halted when the low battery voltage limit was reached. (As an aside, if this is the case then I wonder how the upcoming inverter software update is going to fix the "ignoring cut off and reserve limits" problem that it is rumoured to?)

If control software is going to use the displayed battery SOC reading then this has to be accurate and not allowed to drift over time. The SOC needs to have the 4% and 100% end points recalibrated each time these values are reached, which suggests using measured voltages rather than long term tracking of cumulative input/output. Tracking input/output is really only suitable for displaying an estimate of the SOC when it is between the end points and it is not long since a lower(4%) and/or upper(100%) calibration took place.

I upgraded mine to 3007 last weekend - to be fair I've not seen the sudden drop of capacity.

But my battery does tend to get fully depleted fairly regularly and then filled again so doesn't sit part way very much - though does when there is a lot of solar around - which it hasn't the last few days - actually June has been disappointing!

In the past I have seen the voltages drop gradually until the low limit is reached and a ₁.5kWh top up is triggered.

My battery voltages are pretty stable - cell 15 is still having a brain fart which I thought 3007 was meant to sort.

We had the same thing happen yesterday morning - the battery dropped from 51% to 0% instantaneously. We're also on firmware version 3007. The "opposite" problem occurred a couple of days earlier, where the indicated SoC jumped from 65% to 100%.

Interestingly, now that the battery has recharged (in ECO mode) to a displayed 100% SOC, I note that it has taken on board the full 9.5+kWh of energy rather than the useable 8.2kWh. This mirrors what it does in a calibration run and I am not sure I was expecting it to do this. Does anyone know if hitting the low voltage limit initiates a calibration run as well as a forced charge to 4%?

It never has with mine. Just topped backup to 4%.

In a separate thread, @hoggy reported no historical issues with the older 80% DOD 8.2 kWh battery (160 Ah).

Is it just the newer 90% DOD 8.2 kWh 200 Ah battery that has the problems, or more wide-scale to include the 2.6, 5.2 and 9.5 kWh batteries?

anglefire It took about two weeks after installing 3007 on my system (AC 3.0 inverter and single new 8.2kW battery) for the reducing 100% SOC battery voltage to become noticeable.

In the summer my system charges to (a displayed) 100% every day and very rarely drops below (a displayed) 75%. I sized my battery based on winter PV production and it gave me 1-2 days reserve last winter when the sun did not shine. Funnily enough I was expecting 3-4 days and I now wonder if this less than expected reserve was because the battery was never actually getting anywhere near 100% useable capacity when it stopped charging and displayed 100% SOC.

It certainly looks as though pattern of usage affects how quickly the displayed SOC % drifts from reality and systems that deep discharge the battery appear to stay in sync for longer than those that don't.

Woodstock We are lucky to have some left for next day let alone a couple of days and that keeps us going until the sun gets back up to strength again - which is around 10am in the summer - it does keep going until 7pm in the summer though when it plummets.

For example, today we have generated 13.2kWh - and the battery started at 4% and is now 50% full - but we have used the over to cook tea.

I do only have the one 8.2kWh (100% DOD) battery and 12 395w panels (6 south, 6 west).
Rarely export anything significant - except the day we were away and the sun was nicely out!

anglefire Those voltages are interesting. Is your battery the newer 100% DOD type?

My battery voltage peaks at around 55.8V on a calibration run and (after the next normal recharge to 100% cycle) it will stabilise at around 52.8V. I take this to be the calibration charging to the true 100% battery capacity and subsequent recharges only going to the useable 100% capacity. In any event, it is the 52.8V at a displayed 100% SOC that gradually reduces over time. By yesterday (after 30 partial discharges and recharges to a displayed 100% SOC) this had dropped to around 52.3V. The voltage drop is gradual and not easily detectable from one day to the next. I first had suspicions at around 14 days that things were not well but gave it a month before running a test.

Woodstock Yes mine is 100% DOD.

The ringed area is where the calibration was done on Monday

image uploader

This graph is the last 90 days - 54v seems to be pretty stable and equates to 100% - 54.72 the peak after a calibration.

image uploader

anglefire Ah yes, I see we have the same battery! I have 16 220W panels ( 8 due South and another 8 due South). I think my low winter electricity consumption is down to cooking by gas and heating by wood burning stove (backed up when needed by gas central heating).

anglefire Thank you for the images, very interesting. A similar plot of my battery voltage would show much smaller oscillations with the midpoint gradually dropping over time.

Simon_C Yes, all relevant information that it would be good to know. I would also like to know if the 3007 battery firmware is common to both old and new 8.2kWh batteries and it can tell the difference between them and operates differently for each of them or are there totally separate firmware releases for old and new 8.2kWh batteries, albeit that they may share the same release number.

GE have said the 3007 isnt perfect. Hasn't fixed the SOC reporting.

Now more of of are using GivTCP to actually monitor the details. There is nowhere to hide.

I for now can see every cell of every battery.
They are all working ad expected. It's just the soc reporting that the issue.

I upgraded my two 8.2kWh batteries to 3007 a few days ago. After the upgrade they charged to 100% off the grid, seemed to work OK the next day, but are now both at 0% "charging" at 25W - I generally only monitor with the android app, and that only allows me to file a bug report, not come on here...

Now I've seen that others have had issues, I need to contact GE for a solution.

For whatever reason, after installing 3007, my batteries are now hitting the buffers at 7 to 8% SOC, when they used to run down to 4%, which is what I have set on the portal.

Mine has done the same. I have contacted Giv Energy who advised that there will be updated logic in the next software drop next month as it is a known issue. Best to keep reporting it to them.

Same here

4% before 7% now.
SOC still varies across batteries if not charged to 100% daily.

I have contacted Giv Energy who advised that there will be updated logic in the next software drop next month as it is a known issue. Best to keep reporting it to them.

Ha... they've been telling me that since February and assuring me it's their top priority to fix it. I'm on firmware 3008 now and still only getting between 3.6 and 4.1kWh of actual useable storage from my two 2.6kWh batteries.

SOC still varies across batteries if not charged to 100% daily.

I used to see this but it worsened over time (I've had the system for a year) and now even charging to 100% doesn't sync the SoCs. I finally managed to get them to replace a battery when the drift had grown to 35% between the two, and wasn't fixable by recalibration. The voltage on two cells was also way out of sync with the other cells in that battery. Not sure what all of this says for the long term reliability of installations experiencing this behaviour.

I'm hoping against hope that the remaining issue I have is mainly a calibration issue, but that SoC mismatch is still there (but smaller) and ten days after the replacement I still can't get them to respond beyond the usual "We'll get someone to look and get back to you."

Stats over Modbus show the SoC of bat1 currently bottoms out at 13%, bat2 at 19%. At that point the calculated SoC of the whole system is reported as 5%. At the other end, SoC of the whole system still reports 100% when bat1/bat2 are reporting 95%. Before the replacement bat1/2 were bottoming out at 30% / 4% and topping out at 91%/100%, respectively. Doing the maths, it adds up to around 80% of capacity being used, which ties in to the 4.1kWh I'm actually seeing on good days.

It does seem like there's a fundamental design problem in balancing multiple batteries. Given the push-back responses I've had from support I've a suspicion that this is more widespread than it appears but that many people are simply accepting what they're told without the technical knowledge to challenge it.

If you work back this has been going on since about Nov 2021 with various firmware's between then & now not really managing to nail it.
FW 3007 also applies to the 80% DOD packs but whether this has anything different to the 100% ones we can't tell.

We are no closer to narrowing this down then seeing as the 2.6 (when paralleled) & 5.2 (when paralleled) also struggle with SOC (although this could also be a separate problem to do with multiple packs balancing amongst themselves and/or ontop of the already questionable SOC reporting for each one?) both of those are 80% DOD so perhaps my theory is not as water tight as first thought regarding the buffers (I'm yet to see anyone with the 8.2 80% DOD one suffer this BUT it could just be a case of it wasn't around that long in the grand scheme of things)

My 8.2 80% DOD Voltages don't seem to be anything wildly different looking through the above thread but then the curve is pretty flat it might be enough to get the BMS in a muddle:
53.56V - 100% Resting
55.33V - 100% Peak Charging
51.71V - 4% Resting

I don't want to be "that" guy but with this going on so long it does beg 2 questions:

• Given so much time & a various firmware's can this actually be solved in software?

• We all know these are bought in (you can find almost identical spec inverters & batteries elsewhere (yes GE customise to an extent)) - how much control over BMS firmware does GE actually have & is this more the OEM? Do they just have no incentive to fix (or warrant/approve BMS mods beyond simple things like voltage ranges?).

I know a while back they advertised an for an ARM software developer so I'd like to think that was to bring firmware in house but it guess it could equally have been for the EV charger!

hoggy

GE state that they make their batteries themselves. Dirt to power or something along those lines.
The frustrating thing is, is once the batteries drift, only 1 of of my 3, the SOC bottoms out when the lowest one gets to its configured stop, normally around 13%. Leaving the other 2 with sometime upwards of 25-35% left. So Im loosing out on capacity. The voltages all track each other exactly within 0.01v. The cells them selves are within 0.01 per pack, 0.02 over the entire 3 x 16 cells. So its not a physical issue. Its deffo BMS, so can be fixed in software.

Its like the battery's are unable to talk to each other to communicate their SOC and even things out, the lower one backs off, the higher ones take more of the load. Same on charge, it one is lagging behind, the other back off and let the other catch up. Keeping them within 1% of each other. Each cell is controlled by a MOSFET so can ramp up and down independently if so required.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I’m not entirely sure that’s the case, unless someone’s selling them on the side out of China. If so then perhaps they need a word with Batterlution & also Sumry Inverters…

I guess the question now becomes - if they make everything what’s the hold up? (For the SOC jump thing anyway, I get that multiple packs being unbalanced is a more complex headache)

Out of interest, I restarted my inverter last night after the SoC hit 8% (17% / 22%) and stopped discharging. The inverter came back up claiming the SoC was 100% and promptly discharged a further 27%/1.3kWh to 73%. It then suddenly dropped to 0% (1%/1%). At 2am it charged from the grid back 5% (15%/17%), but seemingly needed 900Wh to do that.
Obviously these figures don't on the face of it add up, but ultimately it's the real world usable capacity that matters. Fingers crossed.

I'll see how it behaves today and whether all of this finally triggers the recalibration.

hoggy Could easily be that GE make them and then sell on wholesale for others to re-badge.

No disrespect to GE and I may be proved wrong but I also think they buy OEM and rebrand as their own (seen it a lot before). This would explain why app updates which just need access to an API are frequent and can be done in-house, but firmware updates need OEM involvement and they don't have the in-house capability to fix themselves. Would explain why this issue has dragged on so long.

Was I seeing things?
I thought I saw a new discussion pop up regarding BMS v3010 requesting beta testers.
Now it has gone.

There's nothing wrong with doing so (it's the same as Sunsync which is actually a Deye inverter with Westernised software ontop) but equally you don't normally spring out of nowhere in 2018 with a full Hybrid inverter system without some hand holding so I don't doubt it has shared architecture somewhere from the past.

I never did quite get to the bottom of where JMHing sits in all this from rummaging around Google, they do seem to have history together so I think ultimately it's their design and either it's then subdivided into different brand names for different markets or you can license it.
There's probably more kicking around but upto now I belive there is also Prime (whos G99 test cert notes JMHing,) Batterlution, Sumry & a few now defunct ones like Lantrun that share atleast some of the design.

Givenergy do have on LinkedIn a Senior Firmware Developer so I'm still none the wiser though!

I will say that the Gen 2 and the new 9.5 battery is (as yet) a unique design as I can't find anything with matching specs - so could well be an in-house ground up hopefully being made in Stoke shortly!

GE support have said to me in the past that the firmware is all taken care of in China, with the UK arm involved with the app and 'front end' stuff. I haven't "upgraded" to 3007 yet since my plant system would like it even less than it does the 3005 I'm currently on, apparently.
With some of the sabre-rattling going on with Sino-Anglo relations at the moment I'm not confident that GE customers in the UK are a priority for anyone in China.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) out of interest, how are you seeing the cell values per battery - as it's not available on the new portal. I'd like also t be able to see atleast SoC% per battery (I have two 5.2), and cell values a desirable. Like you they definitely seem to drift apart, based on the green light status on the front of the batteries

GrahamRead Likely using GivTCP: https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/6-local-control

chris_p Ah thanks could be. I am using the cloud API's, but the battery detailed info isn't available via them.

GrahamRead No it isn't, it used to be but only in the old pre-beta portal/APIs

Simon_C

Not seen either and I am a beta tester!!!

Just to tag in here.

Cells and PCB's are all manufactured by JMhing power, in which the CEO is also the CEO of GivEnergy, The Chinese arm does deal with all manufacturing/firmware currently.

I know this has been ongoing for some time, it has been difficult as this problem has not been clear cut affecting everybody, and also has been difficult to identify patterns for the issue.

We have new logic coming very soon (I've got it on test right now) the logic is going to require a change in both inverter and BMS firmware as its a change in the way the SOC is actually calculated whereas previously it had been amendments to the current calculations.

I am hoping to have this out and ready by EOP this month, providing testing goes well having some systems in full rate charge/discharges to see if as cycles occur the % and voltage do in fact drift apart.

As soon as I'm happy with test results, I'll open it up on here for testing in a thread and you will be able to email me for early testing of this logic on a smaller scale level, before we put it back out as mass production.

Adam-Reynolds Thanks for the Update Adam.

Adam-Reynolds I’m sure that will be welcome news (should it pass QA) to a lot of people on here.
Just make sure it doesn’t break my older 8.2 though (or if it does - make sure it finishes it off completely so I get a 100% DOD replacement 😀 )

Hi @Adam-Reynolds, thanks for the update on the battery problem.

It might do a lot for customer confidence if there was a little more transparency about this. I've just checked and apparently I've been running firmware 3007 since April 11th and have been experiencing and reporting these problems during all of that time. It's a bit exasperating to hear other people who've been led to believe that that version will fix the issue when it's been apparent for months that it didn't.

Speaking personally, over the months I've been discussing this with GE I've been given various explanations which don't match the data and promises of timescales which repeatedly come and go. All of this erodes confidence that anyone's really got a handle on the issue.

Hopefully the fix in the works now is finally going to work. I'd really like to have added more storage to my system by now but I can't really do that while there's a real possibility that the only solution to these problems is going to be a refund and a switch to another manufacturer.

GrahamRead
Using GivTCP on a Raspberry Pi3+

Knew for a while something wasnt right when batterys only get a bit of charge over time.
The data from GivTCP which is available to the GE engineers showed in all its glory the SOC drift downwards on 1 of the 3 packs I have.
So this after a couple of cycles not being fully charged was way lower than the others. Preventing them discharging down once the low one hit 0%.
I've been reporting the flashing LED on the pack for a while. Now o can se why.

GivTCP allows you to see the data in minute detail and then compare day by day

Adam-Reynolds

Forgot to add. Your welcome to look at my 3 batteries and their data.
Already today battery 2 SOC is falling behind the others.
Yesterday was a full 100% charge and they all discharged at the same rate.
Today only managed 40% and the symptom is beginning to show.
I rekon once the inverter reads 10% (Reserve) the batteries themselves will be all out of sync

Adam-Reynolds Thanks Adam. Good to see your update and looking forward.

I stumbled across this video, which gives some insight into the difficulty of providing an accurate SOC figure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AjndVSmyEo&ab_channel=Off-GridGarage

Just to give an update on this, my testing so far has gone very well, system running cycles now for over 3 days and still reporting correct and accurate SOC levels. Normally far past this point the calculations should start to drift.

I'll likely be opening this up for testing this week. Keep an eye on the forums if you want to be a test user for this new logic (only AC coupled to begin with).

Speaking to @Adam-Reynolds offline and just to let everyone know that GE think my problem has a different underlying cause despite some similar symptoms. Take my data with a pinch of salt, I'll update when we have more info.

Adam-Reynolds
Will keep an eye out. This week has good solar predictions so a calibration beginning early in the morning wont be such a burden on cost.

@Adam-Reynolds would be really handy to have the ability to specify a start time (and date) for calibration to make the most of solar and/ or cheap rate. I have submitted a feature request for this.

locked I couldn't agree more. 2 out of the 3 times my system has done this has been when we haven't had a massive amount of sun to play with. Mine has only been installed 6 weeks so it is still grating slightly to say the least.

Here is what mine looks like after 7 days. Overall usable capacity is dropping. Is battery finishing earlier and earlier in the morning.
The 1 day we didnt charge fully has knocked the SoC out for the rest of the week.
[]https://ibb.co/j5fnxMh

A charge to 100% is no longer sorting it out.
So ready to test this fix

locked I hope I didn't break the calibration by doing this, but if you set your max charge rate to lower than what your solar will generate then you can run a calibration on just solar.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I had charged to 100% (from ECO mode PV, not grid) every day since installing 3007 and still suffered.

Woodstock So you are eagerly waiting a post from Adam too then

judgepd I have done this too. Sat watching the PV output and adjusted the battery charge rate to suit every 30 minutes or so. 😀

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Oh yes! My system is about as simple as it gets; single AC 3.0 inverter, single newer 8.2kWh battery, no tariff, nothing to complicate the issue. I have been having sudden drops to 0% since December and know what to look out for.

👋 Just joined. 3 month old GE install.

Reading all these comments is akin to an AA meeting I reckon.

So cathartic!

RPA335 VGad you get some comfort knowing you're not alone

Adam-Reynolds
Adam. Have you got a list going for would-be guinea pigs?
If so, please include me.
2 X 8.2
2 X AC 3.0.

Ta.

Sykes

He is due to post this week asking for volunteers.
Probabaly in a new thread

Good news and bad news.

It does look like the drop issue seen was resolved in this newest test version, but unfortunately another issue has come to light in that the soc % will not drop lower than 8% currently.

Details have been fed back to the firmware teams and they'll be working on an updated version for me to again run further tests on.

I'll feedback when I have more news.

Adam-Reynolds
That's a shame, Adam.
However. thanks for keeping everyone updated with news - good, or bad. I, for one, would rather know what's going on in the background either way, rather than being kept in the dark.

Adam-Reynolds
That's similar to the 3007 one.
3005 went to 4%. Without any changes 3007 stopped at 9% on the GE App. GivTCP reported the actual SoC on the batteries was anywhere between 15 and 25%.

Good you're keeping us all in the loop.
Maybe a beta out before the sun disappears Sat?

Just to get myself attached to this thread. I sent the following to GE on the 8th Aug.

16th Dec the battery went live.

However, a fault condition has occurred 25 times since then. An average of about 3 times a month.
The fault is the battery percentage suddenly drops to zero.
I have no idea what happens to the energy that is lost when this happens but it is happening far too often.
I fear it may be indicative of a future complete failure of the installation.

I attach information, taken from your history charts, to let you see when these events have happened.
This includes date, time and %battery lost. (some other relevant data lines are included).
Please feel free to check these figures as I may simply have misunderstood the nature of the beast.

Date time loss
21-12-16 14:25 system installed
21-12-23 21:25 22%
21-12-28 21:35 12%
22-01-02 03:10 11%
22-01-04 23:30 05%
22-01-12 16:25 21%
22-01-16 02:20 09%
22-01-23 22:20 07%
22-01-31 23:50 20%
22-02-10 00:10 21%
22-02-15 01:40 11%
22-02-20 00:05 11%
22-02-26 22:45 19%
22-03-01 22:10 07%
22-03-06 00:50 06%
22-03-13 22:25 20%
22-03-24 07:35 28%
22-03-29 02:35 f/w 3005 + SOC
22-04-23 06:10 39%
22-05-23 22:45 09%
22-06-16 08:50 53%
22-06-25 04:20 34%
22-06-30 14:35 25%
22-07-06 10:20 32%
22-07-16 02:30 22%
22-07-16 16:25 f/w 3007 + SOC
22-07-24 05:40 19%
22-08-08 08:00 41%

GE replied this morning with a "yes we know and are working on it". They say it's a drift. I think it's more than that. 53% is not a drift it's a fault! (you may gather I'm not happy to be a beta tester)!

Nev Young

I’m starting to feel the same.

I have a handful of issues which probably all revolve around my system’s inability to generate an accurate SoC when under high load/charge.

EVs, which are batteries on wheels, don’t have this problem. It’s a fairly fundamental aspect of battery use and I’m surprised it’s cropped up at all “in the wild” let alone taken so long to sort out.

A system I paid a lot of money to save me money is now wasting it instead by charging when it shouldn’t and having no capacity left to store the free energy my solar is generating.

Nev Young it is a drift.

If you are able to monitor the real SoC of the batteries internally. GivTCP gives access to this engineer data. You can see the SoC on the inverter vs the battery drifting apart.

Occasiablly it them trys to reset itself, the battery runs down to 0% but the inverter still thinks it has x%
BMS protects the battery and disconnects, inverter sees this as an immediate drop to 0%
It then resets the SoC
Battery charged to 4% from grid for self preservation.

Rinse and repeat in a random number of days.
It's worse if you dont fully charge the battery every day.

Nev Young The drift is only 2%-3% per day. 53% is over 24 days.

RPA335 Many EV drivers will tell you a story of when the battery was running low and suddenly the range was plummeting 3 miles for every mile they drove. SOC drift does happen to EVs but not as noticeable because EVs don't switch between charging and discharging as often as a solar battery.

I'm IT not electronics so sorry if this is dumb..... why not get the inverter to use the SoC direct from the batteries?

If GivTCP can do it then why not the invertor? Is it because the inverter is third party?

RPA335 why not get the inverter to use the SoC direct from the batteries?

I think the inverter does get the SoC from the BMS, same as GivTCP. The problem is that SoC is calculated from a very flat line - see Wilfleek's post a few days ago

wilfleek I stumbled across this video, which gives some insight into the difficulty of providing an accurate SOC figure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AjndVSmyEo&ab_channel=Off-GridGarage

SoC really is a difficult nut to crack. As has been mentioned elsewhere, a battery that is fully discharged and charged regularly has less of an issue with SoC drift.

Just going to chip in with my tuppence worth here.

My battery has drops from ₄₀% to 0% every week or so.

I don't pretend to understand the nuances with EV / batteries, all I know is that I was sold an 8.2kWh battery that I expected to be able to charge/discharge 100% for at least 10,000 cycles.

Nowhere does it say in the brochure/bumpf etc that every week or so I should expect to lose all the charge in my battery and have to restart from scratch. I don't honestly care about the technicalities, I have dozens of electrical devices in my house that all use a battery and none of them exhibit this fault.

/rant over

Ra Not so much losing the charge but rather not fully charging. Your 8.2 kWh battery had effectively become a 4.9 kWh battery. The displayed battery SOC was reading 40% higher than the actual SOC and it would stop charging when the displayed SOC reached 100%. Doesn't make it any less annoying though and it is still a fault.

I see this talk of 'drift'....with the recent cloud coverage my battery has only been getting to ₅₀% charge and at some point in the middle of the night it drops from 7/8% to 0%.

This is only after less than 24hrs? Something just doesn't seem right to me, I would expect it to gradually tail off to 4% (which is the reserve set) and then remain there until solar array begins to charge again?

Happy Thursday!

Some good news this morning, we have the new logic available for internal testing, the R&D team have developed the new logic and I'll be running tests on it over the weekend.

I'll feedback next week any more news I have.

Adam-Reynolds fingers crossed it works!!

FIngers crossed Indeed. Many more are seeing the SoC drift now. Maybe as we are all talking about it on fakebook, more people are coming forward with the same issues.
This is what my 3 look like now.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Please forgive my ignorance, what is your graph showing there? What group should I be looking at on Fakebook? Many thanks 🙂

Ra its showing 3 batteries SoC, red, green l, blue the Inverter reported Soc (black).
Then the battery voltages in pink(all tracking the same)

Ra GivEnergy Battery Owners

https://www.facebook.com/groups/489882062425810/?ref=share

I do hope the new firmware fixes it - just for the record here's an example of it happening this morning (22/8) to my set up (2.x5.2) - 45% to 0%. The previous occasion was on the 8th Aug - when it dropped form 25% to 0%. In between it's been just charging from solar only and discharging to a min of 70% or so as we've been away. Clearly the SoC drifted along way from actual 100% - and when we got home and started using more....

It' matters slightly less now with decent solar - but once my daytime rates go up ALOT, it'll be more painful in winter if this keeps being an issue = as 100% charge at night on cheap rate won't really be 100%. i.e. effective loss of capacity

GrahamRead

Do you have access to your actual Battery SoC readings with GivTCP? Would be good to see what they were reporting.
I have 3 x 5.2s and not ever seen the Inverter SoC do this, but have on the batteries themselves, but the other way, a sudden rise from 75-100 on one battery.
Likewise when that battery gets to 0, the inverter stops discharging, leaving the other 2 with capacity, sometimes as much as 40% remaining.

As you say, loss of capacity, as you aren't using one or both or the ends of the battery capacity.

I am still on FW v3005 and since I have heard that 3007 does not fix this, I'm waiting for the next FW release before updating, but I see this issue quite regularly. Normally my battery charge gets consumed most nights so I mainly see a sudden drop from a low % to 0% then a grid charge back up to 4% - almost always early hours of the morning before the PV comes in!

However I was on holiday recently and had something I had not seen previously, but I know others have reported - there was a sudden large drop from 72% to 0% followed by the grid import back to 4% (can't seem to paste in images so can't share the screen grab from the portal). Since that occurrence on 10 Aug, I have had the sudden drop from 7%, 4%, 8% on the 14th, 17th, 20th Aug, so every 3 days! Looking back before my holiday, it has happened at different rates, but I generally see it at least once per week.

So I'm definitely keen to get the proper fix. I'd happily be part of any beta-testing (as long as there is a route back to a previous version if the new one turns out to be worse).

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I don't have GivTCP running - maybe I should look into getting it. (currently call the cloud API's directly - but they don't include the battery info that GicTCP can get)

GrahamRead

Nope. GivTCP gives much more

Yes my battery dropped from 35% to 0% then to 4% this morning.

I have had a sudden drop this morning from 53% to 0% and then a recharge to 5% which then falls back to the 4% reserve limit. It is currently raining and I am guessing that today will be a large import from the grid which does grate - as it does for others - and is not what I would expect from the system. I have reported the issue each time it has occurred and am looking forward to having a successful update.
Does anyone know if this issue is specific to GivEnergy systems or is it something that occurs on many different manufacturer systems? Only ask as I am concerned that this will deteriorate over time and lead to premature replacement of equipment. Is there a fit for purpose issue here!

Adam-Reynolds very much hoping for this after the drop from 41% to 5% today. Cheers for the update and look forward to the next

@Adam-Reynolds How is testing going.

No news in a week

Nothing involving GE comes up if you google "Stoke-on-Trent + Large Fire" so that's good news I guess!

hoggy

Very true. So that is looking on the +ve side i guess

Well, I would like to join the ever-growing list of frustrated customers. My battery does this about twice per month. I could post details, but it looks identical to other people. Fingers crossed that they sort it out soon. I think the phenomenon is now so ubiquitous that it deserves an acronym. Maybe Spontaneous CapacItance Discharge (SCID). I welcome other suggestions.

BDS - Battery Diarrhoea Syndrome?

Capacity Reduction Un-Diagnosed.

Added a second ac3.0 and battery 2 days ago and apparently I’ve become a plant. Installer said they would be diagnosing yesterday so didn’t worry too much when battery SOC line looked like a cardiograph. Now I see that the cloud data is all over the place, the app not that much better. Looked on Myenergi app and the readings look comparatively sane. I hope they fix this before the winter. Being an all electric home I’m going to need my plant working well.

GrahamRead Oh that looks eerily familiar.

To be fair to this product, I am happy with it. It does work well 95% of the time. And its much cheaper than PowerWall.

Plantlife
We have a similar setup from new, and the data from the app has always been between dubious, and clearly improbable. My best advice is use the Local (i.e. 'Home') view on the app, for the most credible data. Watch out for one battery discharging into the other (an inverter restart can help, in these situations) and the SOC values being very different in each battery - which leads to reduced charging power (if one has reached 100% SOC).
Other than that, very happy with my system.

just checked and 9.5kwh battery is showing 20% SOC and 8.2kwh is at 100%....

Plantlife
If you’ve access to fake book, look for Richard Russel. Has produced a small bit of code to monitor dual inverters and give them a prevebial kick in the ass.

Ahead of the official EMA box Giv are making to contol dual AC and dual hybrids

Had another 2 drops in 5 days. Going to be calling the courier soon to drop this brick off at your front door if there isn't a fix very soon. I honestly don't care about the technicalities of this type of battery against that type of battery, as a consumer I just want what I paid hard earned money for to work. At the moment it isn't doing that and my potential to charge it from solar is only reducing as we near Christmas 😤

Not sure why they don't just roll out the supposed Beta fix firmware even though it has a bug where it won't go below 7% - ( i think that was the comment/problem with it although can't find it now?)
I'm sure losing 3% at bottom end is preferable to completely untrusted SOC to many!!!

Grrrrr. My incontinent battery has soiled itself again. And still silence from the devs.

Robin_perry Mine will be disconnected and dumped on their doorstep shortly

Ra Let me know where.
I'll come collect!

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Lol, might be an expensive paperweight!

I'm fairly confident GE will resolve this, I mean they pretty much have to! But essentially the battery tech is well understood and I'm hoping that fundamentally just the software/logic is required to fix the problems everyone here is experiencing.

chris_p That's very true, my main concern is that after 6 months it is down to me to prove it was never working to start with to get my money back. From comissioning to 6 months in it is down to them to prove it IS working....

I've got a few months to go yet but have already registered my concern to them via email so at least I have a starting date to go back on.

I was asked by GivEnergy support to add this to the thread. Our battery double-dipped this morning. We see the ₂₀%->0% roughly every 10 days in the morning. This time it dropped twice.

0902 - 42->18%
1042 - 20->0%

Had my first drop to zero since my 8.2kwH battery was replaced in April. At 5am went from 33% to 0%.

PhilS
Thats some comfort that they are monitoring this thread for how far the bug outbreak has got

It's happening every few weeks for my system. Slightly more worrying is that the latest event seems to have thrown out the calibration, one cell is much lower than the others. It would be useful if we could trigger a calibration ourselves until this is resolved.

'Battery_Cell_10_Voltage': 3.217,
'Battery_Cell_11_Voltage': 3.217,
'Battery_Cell_12_Voltage': 3.072,
'Battery_Cell_13_Voltage': 3.217,
'Battery_Cell_14_Voltage': 3.217,
'Battery_Cell_15_Voltage': 3.217

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Hmmm. They have all our battery data on their portal. It wouldn't take many computer scientists to extract those that drop suddenly. A better resourced company would be contacting their customers to let them know they have a problem. I'm not convinced that all of their customers actually monitor their plant regularly.

interestingly, I have one cell (15) that occasionally spikes up. This is the last 7 days data but I have more.

If mine drops, it tends to be all cells together and then a burst recharge occurs to get SOC back to 4%.

large site with few links

kai that needs to be brought to Givs attention ASAP.

Tim I doubt many do to this level at all.

Agree wouldnt be too hard to see a cell is off.
They have this function backed already. If a cell is over x% from it's set its flagged as red, yellow or green.

The data is there, just not maybe something using the machine data and generating alerts. Splunk is what I use at work. Monitoring 100s of 1000s of items. No human could ever ttack

TheDragon (GivEnergy) It's more about when SoC drops instantaneously to zero. In fact any reading of zero is outside spec as minimum setting is 4%.

Well it's my turn.

Over past few days the cell voltages have been lower and lower at 5%. To the point of 2.5v per cell is not good. That's actually internally almost dead. Not 5%.

Have had to kick off a calibrate.
It didn't even discharge for more than 10 seconds. Before stopping.

It was already dead.
Time to charge back up and hope no damage done running them daily down to 1% or even 0%

kai Sorry, probably been asked before but I assume I can't get to that level of detail via the online portal?

Ra that’s correct. You need to use Givtcp for that level of detail.

Tim Shame really, don't know why they don't just have the information in the portal. If you can access it using another methodolgy just put it there to start with?

Ra Annoyingly it used to be accessible through the old portal.

One thing I don't think has been mentioned is inverter generation. Has this ever happened on a Gen 2 yet?

hoggy how can you tell if you have a gen 2?

chris_p you dont have a dongle in the inverter, just an antenna instead.
Or Serial number i guess, SA, SD & CE are all gen 1 stuff if you dont fancy going to look.

hoggy looks like I'm a gen 1er

hoggy I am waiting on delivery of a gen2 (ordered in June). Not sure they exist yet outside the development labs.

Rubikcube gen 2 exist and many (well a few anyway) have already been installed.

anglefire Thank you for the info.

I have a dongle (I believe) and it is happening to me. My system is quite new, less than 6 months old

Happened to me again yesterday, 20+% straight to zero and then charge back to 4%.
Hope this gets fixed before winter as I rely on the full capacity of my 2x8.2 batteries for daytime usage from nightime charging!

Still getting the sudden drop to 0% every 3 days or so (FW v3005 still). But this morning I got a different phenomenon. SOC leapt from ₄% to 100%, stayed there for _10mins then instantly dropped back to 0% and then the charge back up to 4%. Anyone else seen this?

I have a triple inverter and six battery setup which until recently has been working well since installation in October 2008, but the batteries have never actually balanced. In the early summer I updated the BMS, as instructued by GivEnergy, to BMS 3007, but could only get two of the three inverters to play ball. They continue to operate well, but still don't balance very closely.
The third inverter would not automatically update the BMS, so last month I did this manually by updating the USB memory sticks in the batteries (as instructed by GivEnergy) and the inverter accepted the new BMS.
The problem I have had since updating the first two inverters to BMS 3007, is that the third inverter occasionally shows a sudden drop to 0% SoC, but this is because it trips the battery isolator which needs to be manually reset. This is now happening on a daily basis and my installer has no idea why. Updating the third inverter to BMS3007 has made no difference.
This has not been a problem until now because I also have a sizeable PV system, but as PV declines fom around now and the price of electricity has shot up, it will be a massive issue as my house is all electric. Last night it tripped at 9:30pm and missed the cheap rate window with Octopus EV to charge the batteries. This will be a catastrophe (financially) if it isn't fixed by next month when the weather gets cold and I need the heating.
GivEnergy made out that my system is unique and they don't have a lot of experience with multi-inverter systems, but I see from this forum that this is not the case and they may even have some legal problems to deal with in the near future.

Tim
Mine is always off, yet I have never had any sort of feedback from GE. Had hoped that their promise of 'monitoring' the installation would be kept, but I guess this was just wishful thinking. Maybe should have bought Tesla!

DavidPowell2021 This is now happening on a daily basis

Your battery isolator or the battery power cable is faulty. Your installer needs to investigate and rule out or replace the cabling and if necessary (more likely) replace the isolator. It’s been logged on here many times and sometimes trapped insulation on the isolator was the cause (usually just after installation) but many times overheating of the isolator contacts causing more frequent tripping.

DavidPowell2021 sudden drop to 0% SoC, but this is because it trips the battery isolator

The SoC is calculated from BMS voltage measurements. With the battery power cables isolated from the inverter by a fault, the BMS will continue to measure cell voltage and report to the inverter over Modbus. This is a state of plant (battery SoC being reported but battery not connected) that has been asked to be flagged in notifications but no feedback to date.

When the battery drops to 0% suddenly is that 0% as in complexity flat or is that 0% with the lower buffer limit still intact that protects the battery. For example on the 8.2 its really a 10.5 with lower and upper buffer to protect the battery. Just wondering if this out of sync SOC is actually curing the batteries to go completely flat and possibly damaging them in the long term?

Kryten Not sure, TheDragon stated he had an issue a few days ago where some of the cells were down to 2.5V which isn't great 🙁

This is dragging on with no update from GE on the ETA for a fix. It has all gone worryingly quiet.

I am still on v3005 as I was expecting a fix to have been rolled out by now. But if this is going to take more time then should I upgrade mine now to v3007 or not? I'm getting a little worried about all the talk of potential (self-induced) damage. Does the sudden drop happen less often on 3007? What other fixes am I getting from 3007 over 3005? Any new issues that will be introduced that I need to be aware of?

I would appreciate some guidance from GE or others in-the-know on this forum. If I do update this week then find a new update gets released a few days later I will be a bit miffed!

Ra

I'm using britkat1980's givtcp docker container on my qnap nas. https://github.com/britkat1980/giv_tcp
The voltages are quite useful in figuring out how close you are to a trip - cells at 3.15V and SoC at 60% is just wrong.

I spoke to givenergy support and turned out my 2 batteries needed recalibration and were on different firmware (3007 and 3008) so did a manual fw update and recalibration. Don't think that will have fixed the SoC drift issue, but useful to do.

kai yes. Mine had a recalibrate. Back in normal limits.

2.5v per cell is pretty much real 0%. Damage territory if not looked at. Think another day and mine would have done the crash to 0% too

28% SoC reported and a cell voltage of 2.5 to 2.6 is just not right

Nearly three weeks since the last GE update from @Adam-Reynolds Fingers crossed testing is going well!

I’d imagine they want to make very sure that the next update fixes peoples problems, otherwise there will be a lot of irritation around! Watching this as my system starts being Installed tomorrow so would be nice if they roll out the fix to coincide with the commissioning!

Smk82 Yeah I'm trying to be positive, no news is good news etc

I don't understand how something so fundamental to the product could be broken so bad. These are surely the basics?

I've had my setup for a month and it doesn't fill me with much confidence. It started with 15% to 0%, then 20% to 0% and today 40% to 0%m

Had the product been all good until the last update?

I am genuinely worried about the longevity of the battery with these dumps to 0% and voltage drops.

danerf thats pretty much what everyone thinks - in all honesty it has one job (the portal, api, app are all just nice to have fluff)
All the important bits like firmware appear to come from the mothership out in China not Stoke so they are presumably at the mercy of someone else fixing it.

A less than ideal situation and one would hope that after this mess the whole firmware side is brought over here instead!
If its damaging batteries that's on GE. The whole "our kit will only work with our kit" works both ways unlike say Pylontech who have an amount of wiggle room to point fingers at someone else's inverter ruining their batteries.

This is going to be damaging to GE's reputation, Trustpilot already is a damning read for anyone browsing there before making their purchase.

chris_p Kind of wish I'd looked more tbh before I purchased but a bit late now :/

Happened to me AGAIN this morning, dropped from 39% to 0% have been waiting for it tbh as its been a week since the last one but because it has charged to '100%' each time it has masked it. Would post pictures but don't know how to on these forums.

Ra let's hope it's a one off bad firmware.

danerf The lack of noise for the past few weeks worries me, I think it was Adam who said they were running tests on the latest firmware but have heard nothing since, either positive or negative. Burying heads in the sand isn't going to make this issue go away!!

Ra I only found this forum via the support team sending me a link to this issue I reported. They are definitely aware of it.

danerf Perhaps they're herding us all in here before culling us in one fell swoop 😆

It's not a new problem:
First Report on here which is why people are quite rightly getting a bit fed up.

Just for my own benefit of trying to understand what is going on here, can someone validate my explanation of my understanding of it...

So the calibration runs, it gets to 'real' 0, so the battery is 0kW 'full' which it says equals 0%. Then it charges and when it is actually 'full' (say 8.2kWh as that is what I have) it sets a marker that says when you get to this point that is what we will call 100%. But as the battery charges and discharges the value of what it has set to 100% drifts downwards. So when it gets to 7kW it 'thinks' it is 100%. And as this happens over and over again that marker drops and drops. Meaning when people are hitting saying ₃₀% that is the real 0kW and the battery then says 'sorry, that's actually 0, I need to top up to hit my low limit value (typically 4%)'?

chris_p Sounds good to me! Basically the first time you charge you get to 100%, the next day you charge to 100% but in reality (in my case anyway, fag packet calcs) it is actually only 95%, next day charges to 90%, all the while telling me it is actually 100%.

Eventually you get to the point where it is saying it is 100% charged but only 60% which gets used by the house.....displays 40% charged and then bottoms out immediately to 0%.

Ra Cool, thanks. Makes you wonder why the bit of code they use during calibration to establish "100%" cannot be used during the charging phase to establish "100%" each time? I guess the issue then is that 50% no longer is 50% if you can never reach true 100% every time.

chris_p I don't know to be honest, I'm definitely not an expert when it comes to battery technology so don't quite understand what the issue is but at the end of the day we're consumers of the product, not engineers so we shouldn't have to be experts.

Ra Yeah agreed. I wonder how every other consumer device with a battery does it like a mobile phone, surely the concept it exactly the same, just a larger scale?

chris_p pretty much that's the theory.
It will use voltages as end stops so will have a defined low limit (0%) and High Limit (100%)
I suspect the problem arises mostly in these "100%" DOD batteries such that because the cells internally are in fact much larger than say 8.2kWh (you get about 10.2kWh really, you just get to use 80% of it) and this is complicating matters for the BMS as it's trying to take into account all the buffers and so on to limit you to just 160AH/8,2kWh.

This is all just a guess BUT my 8.2 is an 80% DOD one.
On the portal it's reported as:
Battery Capacity
160 Ah | 8.19 kWh | (1 Pack)

However I'm only allowed to "use" 80% of that so 128AH or 6,5kWh (AH x 51,2V) - This is about right (I've now dropped to 6,3kWh but that was just one test and it's shifted 8MWh to date so probably due a calibration anyway)

I believe that the newer 100% DOD ones still get reported as 160AH same as mine even though they are actually _200AH (please correct if wrong) - you are just allowed to use "all" of the 160AH in this case.
I'd like to think that it hasn't taken this long to sort such that the solution is simply to update everyone's inverters to the below and then just do the same as mine and limit it to 80% but who knows. Even if that means dropping support for mine if the system cannot tell the difference between an 80% and 100% DOD 8.2 Battery and this whole 100% DOD thing is a marketing fudge thrust upon a system that just can't handle "100%" discharge of a battery.

Battery Capacity
200 Ah | 10.2 kWh | (1 Pack)

hoggy Great explanation, thanks. And yes my 100% DOD 8.2kWh is shown as:

Battery Capacity
160 Ah | 8.19 kWh | (1 Pack)

chris_p Same as mine

Try balancing this with 3 5.2s. All doing their own misreporting. You end up draining the lower battery way below the lower safe limit, as the inverter still think is it has capacity left, the BMS doesnt cut out and say hey, im at 0% because there are still 2 batteries with capacity. So the one left behind gets dragged lower and lower.

I intervened and manually re charged them back up, as I dont fancy damaging the battery, despite its not being my fault and warranty. I dont want to be without one, due to failing.

Oddly its always the same battery that gets left behind, which is causing me some concern

TheDragon (GivEnergy) yes that is the other angle. Whatever the "Fix" is has to work across every connotation of batteries you could have past, present & future, without causing undue damage to the weakest / lowest DOD pack. I'm not sure how you pull this off when your 80% and 100% DOD packs are bonded together as they will surely never run the same voltage at a given SOC as your using different "boundaries" of battery capacity - so I guess you have to start "sleeping" packs or rely on them being idle long enough to charge each other up to keep them balanced?

(Competitor models with different DOD mixed together will start switching off packs as they become "empty" leaving the remaining higher DOD ones to carry on) Very complex when you sit and think about it all.

hoggy

I suspect the problem arises mostly in these "100%" DOD batteries such that because the cells internally are in fact much larger than say 8.2kWh (you get about 10.2kWh really, you just get to use 80% of it) and this is complicating matters for the BMS as it's trying to take into account all the buffers and so on to limit you to just 160AH/8,2kWh.

This is all just a guess BUT my 8.2 is an 80% DOD one.
On the portal it's reported as:
Battery Capacity
160 Ah | 8.19 kWh | (1 Pack)

However I'm only allowed to "use" 80% of that so 128AH or 6,5kWh (AH x 51,2V) - This is about right (I've now dropped to 6,3kWh but that was just one test and it's shifted 8MWh to date so probably due a calibration anyway)

Its hardly a unique issue though, is it? Take Tesla EVs- they use the same chemistry (LiFe) and they also have a physical buffer built into the battery. Yes, the calibration can and does drift (a bit) but nowhere are the batteries trundling along at 40% and then, mid-drive, they drop to zero and demand to be recharged.

It purely down to the BMS and software that GE have chosen to use. The fact that they are struggling to get a grip on it, to me, shows that they really do not have a firm hand on this technology.

https://tesla-info.com/guide/tesla-bms-calibration.php

Zakalwe Oh certainly I'm not defending it in the slightest, I've been more than vocal on the lack of any real progress (and it doesn't even affect mine!)
It's not just Tesla either, when's the last time you saw a Pylontech, Growatt, Alpha Smile, LG Resu, Fox.... do similar (beyond them being utter F'd internally with a duff cell)
My old Pylon's have it cracked and they are 7 years old now!

hoggy

Oh certainly I'm not defending it in the slightest, I've been more than vocal on the lack of any real progress (and it doesn't even affect mine!)
It's not just Tesla either, when's the last time you saw a Pylontech, Growatt, Alpha Smile, LG Resu, Fox.... do similar (beyond them being utter F'd internally with a duff cell)
My old Pylon's have it cracked and they are 7 years old now!

Hi hoggy...apologies if it came across as accusatory....it wasn't intended that way. I don't think that you defending the situation at all. I was pointing out that this doesn't seem to be such a major issue in other areas. The chemistry, electronics and software seems to work fine in other applications and with other manufacturers. That it seems to be an issue with GE is a bit of a worry, to be honest. There's no new ground been broken here, yet they seem to be struggling.

Very sorry for the silence folks we've had a bunch of new starters I've been helping get to grip with things and have been pushing this in the back ground.

I've just today had a new rollout of the new logic and am just in the process of hooking this upto our test rigs over the next couple of days after performing the cycle tests. Again apologies for this - its in hand as our priority and I'll update you on the status of those tests.

Adam-Reynolds

Thanks Adam.

Just let us know on the thread when ready for public beta.

How long do they typically let new software run/test before they declare its stable enough for distribution? (Assuming of course it works as designed)

I wonder why this issue affects some users, but not others? Is there some mode of usage that makes the system more prone?

wilfleek not fully cycling the batteries.
When we were going full to empty to full each day.
No issues.
Now less solar we get to 60% ish each day.
The real SoC is gradually dropping.

I've never seen a massive drop (Or rise) in SOC of my battery - mine only ever seems to drop from a few percent to nothing.
It did it last night just after 11 - just at the end of "running out of charge" - didn't get above about 45% because of usage and lack of solar and that is often the case unless there is a really good solar day or our usage is flat shall we say (Usually weekday when we are all working)
The trigger point for a topup recharge is 45v - very clearly seen here and individual cell voltages of about 2.82.
I'm not a chemist, but is the voltage drop normal on this type of battery?

anglefire

Yes, flat in the 15 to 95%
Sharpe drop as t drops below 10 and rises sharply above 95.
![https://ibb.co/mzgQ8vZ]

Just found this thread, so please be gentle!

I've been through this thread in its entirety, and it appears most folks are noticing their reported SOC being inaccurate when the SOC drops at the lower end..... but has anyone had their top end SOC drop, or max out below 100%? I'm having this at the moment, and my battery is refusing to take a charge beyond a lower max SOC. Yesterday it maxed out at 83%, and the battery voltage spiked from 56.6v to 58.8v, and each day that passes the max SOC drops by a further 1 or 2%?

Other than the max indicated SOC being off, the battery is working fine, which makes me wonder if this is another SOC calculation issue?

Using Hybrid Inverter, with 8.2kwh battery. Usage pattern throughout summer has been full charge on Solar most days, then drains until 25% for forced charge to 25% with OCT GO overnight.

BoeingBoy

It sound like it. As the voltage spikes to 57 or above, it should cause a SOC jump from x% to 100%.

Maybe you could request a re-calibration at a good time, so not to dump your battery to grid. Thei will force the reset of b0th 0 & 100%markers

BoeingBoy think thats a new one which i guess may or may not be unrelated (kinda sounds like something else going on but who knows with this bug! Normally it jumps to 100% though)
What happens if you go the other way and aim to fully discharge - does it keep going (or equally stop at some other arbitrary SOC value for a while) so your getting your full capacity or does it stop dead at 4% still?
Has a calibration been run on it lately (would be a start) as it may just need to set its internal goalposts up again for some reason.

I saw an FB post of someone mentioning that the amount of power needed to charge their battery up to 100% was slowly reducing leading to them to believe the MAX SOC value was reducing or out of sync. I think some others said they had seen similar

hoggy

I've not had it run down below about 7% for quite a while so I'm not sure.

I contacted GE earlier today and requested a recalibration, so when that actually happens we'll see what the result is.

Interesting I've just ran the battery down to 20% on the portal, but 2 of the green lights are on (25% to 50%) on the battery.... so it looks as though I may have more capacity below 0% afterall. I'll drain it completely and see what happens!

BoeingBoy I don't bother looking at those lights any more, they don't tally to what I was told they should tally to.

chris_p

They do if you read the BMS SoC directly using GivTCP

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I have not set that up, is there a dummies guide I can follow? I have a few Raspberry Pis running various tasks so something along those lines would be best for me if available?

chris_p

GivTCP is what you need @Britkat is the owner of it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ84z_Wa19k

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Thanks, I will review it this weekend and have a crack 😀

I wish Givenergy will open up and let us decide to what limit we want to discharge the batteries using Voltage.

When I had built DIY batteries and used another inverter (blue brand) it was so easy to set the targets and customise it! I fail to understand why the need to keep this so shrouded.
I'm hoping a fix would be in the offering but think it's going to be coming

What are the voltage ranges each cell should be able to run at?

ispookie666 I don't see how they could do that and maintain the warranty?

ispookie666 I daresay that if you were to contact them and waive your warranty rights, they'd open up the limits for you. We have to recognise that battery technology is not cheap and in offering a 10 year warranty with unlimited cycles, Givenergy is carrying quite a business risk as some of these batteries will fail (bathtub curve, some have already failed early in their life) for sure. For them, it's whether the incidence of failure in the future can be kept within their business modelling.

From a research perspective, it might be interesting to give control of a battery to a knowledgeable customer and see if their continuous attention to battery state does a better job of maximising throughput, capacity and longevity than the firmware developed by techies. Of course, the research would be flawed because nobody knows whether the specific battery in question would be one that would fail mid-life (bottom of the bathtub curve) or towards the end when most of those surviving to that point will fail anyway.

In fairness, we all have to hope that Givenergy's strategy on battery management is sound because if it isn't, the company could fail and we would all have worthless warranties. :-(

I don't see why opening up the battery voltage as a way to understand the actual charge would affect their warranty, they could very well restrict it to 2.95V per cell ?
The batteries are sort of junk when they just go from 40% to 0% SOC - would this not be breach of their own warranty?
Once you know at what cell voltage the battery is depleted (2.8 V) you can very well put a nice buffer and that should work well.
Even my old DIY battery using old Nissan leaf cells and cheap BMS was more reliable than this rubbish SOC as after a few runs you can find the minimum safe voltage to discharge to.

Does anyone know what the batteries use for cell balancing?

Doubt if there is any. Once the battery goes to 0% it quickly charges to 4% (at least for me)

ispookie666 opening up the battery voltage as a way to understand the actual charge

I think that you're not asking for access to the total capacity of your battery, just visibility of the cell voltages? If that's the case, then the only way to do that for yourself currently is with Givtcp. That provides individual cell voltages but doesn't get you any further ahead really. The sum of the individual cell voltages is available in the portal but if one is adrift from the others, you wouldn't see that (except with Givtcp).

The operating range for the Givenergy batteries is between 15% and 95% of actual capacity and this lies on a voltage curve between just over 3.1Vish to just over 3.4Vish. ie they choose to operate only on the flat part of the "curve". Their BMS (bearing in mind I know nothing of these) obviously measures the individual cell voltage and presumably balances voltage by varying charge current through each individual cell, to keep them all within a tight band. There is usually another aspect to BMS which integrates energy flow to indicate State of Charge. However, this is a bit like starting with a full tank of fuel in the car, driving 200 miles, then putting 15litres in, then driving 200 miles and putting 20litres in and hoping that between the car's mpg figure and mileage, you can calculate the how much fuel you have in the tank and therefore your range. Obviously a car's fuel gauge uses a technology to convert the tank level to a relatively accurate contents which can be converted to range given recent consumption.

ispookie666 batteries are sort of junk when they just go from 40% to 0% SOC

It is rubbish to have such an unreliable system but the actual SoC isn't dropping, it's the indication that's dropping, based on an algorithm that needs to be improved.

ispookie666 the battery is depleted (2.8 V) you can very well put a nice buffer

They already did! That's why an 8.2kWh (160AH) battery is actually a 10.25kWh (200AH) battery with 15% taken off the bottom and 5% taken off the top. More recent Givenergy batteries are sold as their operating capacity rather than their actual capacity.

Tim

They already did! That's why an 8.2kWh (160AH) battery is actually a 10.25kWh (200AH) battery with 15% taken off the bottom and 5% taken off the top. More recent Givenergy batteries are sold as their operating capacity rather than their actual capacity.

Ahhh that's good to know. I was suspecting this after looking at my homeassist stats.

All I would want is to have access to limit discharge at a preset voltage and limit charge at a preset voltage without having to rely on SOC based calculation per Givenergy. I can see the individual cell voltage using GivTCP (finally got it running for the last few weeks) and all the more convinced the arbitrary SOC algorithm is the problem. Reminds me of Scrat 😆.
For clarification, when I mention SOC, I'm referring to the one which is displayed and not the actual SOC.

Might add a shunt to actually keep track rather than the random number generator.

ispookie666 I think what would help here is some technical input from Givenergy to explain why the SoC problem exists and what they are doing to fix it. From a. customer perspective, the issue is around unexpected drop in reported SoC and apparent loss of capacity resulting. I can understand them not wanting to run calibrations every few days as that just pushes the operating boundary into their reserve envelope, but we also need to be confident as the days draw in, that the charge we actually have (whether from PV or off-peak) is sufficient to see us through to the next window for charging.

Tim The issue is purely surrounding the calculation in the percentage, I'm not sure on the specifics in how this was caused but it was a change in how the % was calculated on the batteries. Now after a number of cycles this percentage will drift further and further apart until we occasionally see this big jump in SOC %.

The reason the jump occurs is because the battery is programmed to figure out its % again when it alarms as its either hit the upper or lower voltage limit.

You will see a recovery charge in most instances when it goes too low, this is because the battery has inbuilt protection at a cell voltage level on both the upper and lower limits so as to not go past this - its not going lower than it could in standard operation with this in mind, how low or high the battery goes in normal operation is based off the percentage figure but if it ever hits this low/high limit on the voltage itself it will recalculate.

The issue is already fixed as far as I'm aware and from what I've seen - it's just we had found another issue since on testing. My current version is on test and seems to be OK from first testing surrounding this particular issue on our AC coupled test rigs, Hybrid will follow after. will feed back next week updates with how we're getting on with the testing and hopefully get on some early adopters for testing

So how come - with a battery charged to 100% every night - and then discharging to no lower than 50% each night - it suddenly decides it's not 57% but 0% ? Clearly the charge to 100% doesn't reset anything. This is getting frustrating now - with day rates so high it meant an hr importing at high rates when the dish washer was on - I thought there was plenty of battery left to support it before the 12.30 re-charge / cheap rate.

Perhaps I'd be better letting it discharge alot further each day - i.e. not charging to 100% every night (and letting the solar do more of it during the day) - but then that also causes drift it seems.

(roughly 18 days since it was last at 9% - so I assume 18 days of SoC drift. I'm assuming the effectively what it thought was 100% for the last few days actually wasn't but more like 45%).

Looks like it's time to buy a Shunt, at least it will let me know if the drift is at the bottom end, at the top end or both.

I'm not qualified enough to comment on SOC derivation but cannot see how any fix is going to work.

"It's not going lower than it could in standard operation"
Think @TheDragon (GivEnergy) may disagree! It shouldnt be hitting any voltage alarm level in normal operation.

Waiting patiently for the call to test.

It happened again. That is twice in 10 days. The frequency is increasing. When is the patch coming to fix the problem?
I have only had my system since late June, so I am seriously considering invoking the warranty (or similar). I find it odd that only a percentage of customers are experiencing this problem. It makes me think it is a hardware issue, not just a software issue.
I will call Givenergy tomorrow to see what they say and report back.

Robin_perry Just read back a few posts....................

To be clear the system is working well the rest of the time - and I've been very please. But this sudden drop issue is frustrating - I look forward to the firmware version upgrade.....

wilfleek Yeah but i am not convinced this is entirely a software issue. Why is everyone not experiencing it?

Well not entirely sure what the safety cut off voltage is - One of the cells in my battery pack hit 2.7V and the lowest in the second pack was 2.75V.
Which leads me to question the actual capacity of the battery, which according to Givenergy is derated.

I haven't been seeing apparent drops. Have had jumps from 71%, 72%, 76% and 47% to 100% in the last month.

I guess where the drift occurs might relate to what the nominal SOC is during times of partial charge/discharge.

I keep meaning to get CivTCP working, but havent yet.

Robin_perry Why is everyone not experiencing it?

Only Givenergy with their remote data logging know exactly which batteries and when. I suspect there are a number of people who've had installations and are blissfully unaware of whether their batteries are even charging, let alone how much impact the installation has had on their consumption. It's only those with half a notion to understand what grid import/export and battery charge/discharge means to their grid import and hence energy bills who may be motivated to monitor the portal. Obviously, the portal does tell you how much energy you consumed from the grid (mine says 5.46kWh for August whereas my smart meter tells me it's actually 25.33kWh) but if you budget energy bills on that value, you're heading for a nasty shock.

Let's get some perspective; these systems do work and mostly they work well. They will work better when the BMS issues are resolved. The portal is useful for comparing one thing with another but not so good for the "right now" where the app (in local) wins out. The issue for me is that something that you feel ought to be able to be relied on (ie reported SoC) isn't.

Tim Funny - I invited my neighbour who is considering Solar + batteries for a chat about it - he was very
interested in the GE portal and the reports you can get off it. We both agreed that the majority of people with solar probably have no idea what their system is doing, or even if it was working at all.

Let's face it, and I am not being critical here, most folk are very non-technical. Seems to be a prerequisite for politicians, too. (that WAS critical, lol)

ispookie666 those are below the safe limit.
I had similar 2.6 on a couple of cells.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Yep. I have given up on any potential solutions from Givenergy. I'd really like to see how they will honour 10 yr unlimited cycles with those cell voltages.

@Tim if other manufacturers have managed to get this to work, I wonder what's the issue. I can pretty much guarantee my battery is not going to last 10 yrs if the cell voltage drops to 2.7V with just 1/5c discharge current

ispookie666 I agree. It would appear that there are some batteries that are destined to fail early. As long as the rate of failure is within the assumptions Givenergy are working with, they should be able to cope with a few in-warranty failures. It's a bit like motor insurance companies assuming that there will be so many accidents each year and as long as that number is right, the premiums should stay there or thereabouts.

GrahamRead Nope the charge to 100% does not reset anything, that is just the 'perceived' 100% that has drifted from the 'real' 100% first established by a calibration. I believe if it did reset each time 100% is reached then we wouldn't see this issue as much. However in winter when 100% is rarely reached for most people, we would still see the SOC % drift and see the sudden drops to 0%.

Tim Don't forget its a sliding warranty if the battery is say 5 years old and it dies they only have to give you 50% of its value (or something like that, check the T&Cs). So if it fails at 7 or 8 years its not such a financial concern to GE as it would be if they had to give you a brand new battery.

Kryten Don't forget its a sliding warranty if the battery is say 5 years old and it dies they only have to give you 50% of its value

Does that mean that after three years you get a replacement 5.2 and after 6 years you get a replacement 2.6?

😀

Or a repair or refurbished unit, according to the battery warranty document.

Suppliers liability under this Warranty
shall be limited to replacement,
repair or refund using either new or
refurbished goods at its discretion
(refer to section 7: About Service
Products and Parts”). Any replacement
parts / products will be subject to the
remainder of the original warranty
period. The warranty applies to each
battery pack.

UK consumer law provides more protection during the 1st year, especially when the device has never worked properly from the date of installation.

mrand31 Surely they have to actually fix it or replace it. Money is no good to anyone!!

Ra Well it depends, if in 7 years time for example when battery prices may have continued to drop/greater capacity per £ then an offer of cash vs a refurbished model might be of greater benefit - especially as the new model would come with a new warranty. Also might give you opportunity to switch manufacturer too (of the whole kit, not just battery of course)

chris_p Very true, just can't see them offering money tbh. The mark-up on these products has got to be ₅₀% so something you pay £2K for only costs them £1K to manufacture, I'm sure they'd rather you stayed within the GE ecosystem than give you money to potentially spend with a competitor.

Either way, hopefully I don't have to worry about it, unless this firmware issue isn't sorted of course!!

Ra Yeah absolutely, very unlikely. Well I've already had my 8.2kWh replaced and that was after about 6 months of install.

chris_p Wow! What was the reason for that if you don't mind me asking?

Ra Essentially the same as what everyone in this thread is experiencing but even with a calibration it was not charging 8.2kW to "full". https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/301-battery-charge-discharge-figure-in-the-portal

That's an interesting one @chris_p. Certainly looks like what's going on with my system. One cell reading on one battery reading well below the rest even after SoC calibration. I had thought it might be a balancing issue. Emailed the details to GE so hopefully someone will get in touch soon.

givtcp_extract.py | grep Voltage
'Battery_Cell_10_Voltage': 3.135,
'Battery_Cell_11_Voltage': 3.142,
'Battery_Cell_12_Voltage': 2.317,
'Battery_Cell_13_Voltage': 3.135,
'Battery_Cell_14_Voltage': 3.14,
'Battery_Cell_15_Voltage': 3.142,
'Battery_Cell_16_Voltage': 3.13,
'Battery_Cell_1_Voltage': 3.13,
'Battery_Cell_2_Voltage': 3.14,
'Battery_Cell_3_Voltage': 3.142,
'Battery_Cell_4_Voltage': 3.137,
'Battery_Cell_5_Voltage': 3.145,
'Battery_Cell_6_Voltage': 3.142,
'Battery_Cell_7_Voltage': 3.138,
'Battery_Cell_8_Voltage': 3.14,
'Battery_Cell_9_Voltage': 3.14,
'Battery_Voltage': 49.385},
'Battery_Cell_10_Voltage': 3.134,
'Battery_Cell_11_Voltage': 3.129,
'Battery_Cell_12_Voltage': 3.137,
'Battery_Cell_13_Voltage': 3.121,
'Battery_Cell_14_Voltage': 3.093,
'Battery_Cell_15_Voltage': 3.138,
'Battery_Cell_16_Voltage': 3.096,
'Battery_Cell_1_Voltage': 3.077,
'Battery_Cell_2_Voltage': 3.105,
'Battery_Cell_3_Voltage': 3.103,
'Battery_Cell_4_Voltage': 3.103,
'Battery_Cell_5_Voltage': 3.101,
'Battery_Cell_6_Voltage': 3.103,
'Battery_Cell_7_Voltage': 3.095,
'Battery_Cell_8_Voltage': 3.098,
'Battery_Cell_9_Voltage': 3.098,
'Battery_Voltage': 49.732}},
'PV_Voltage_String_1': 237.0,
'PV_Voltage_String_2': 0.0,

New owner here, 2 x 8.2kw. commissioned on 12th August 2022, running 3008
Have had a 15% to 0 drop on 3.9.22 and another 13% to 0 drop today.

@kai that cell looks really bad. It would be nice if Givenergy were able to confirm if the batteries are able to cell balance?

It was like watching a crash in slow motion

https://ibb.co/F5N2jdB

danerf

Mildly irritating today, battery dropped to 4% just as the sun was almost enough to meet house demand then boom, down to 0% forcing a grid charge. Thankfully the sun helped with that but still annoying.

kai

What firmware do you have now? Pre 3005 cell balancing was a nightmare. 3005 solved it 98%

3007 didn't change much.

danerf oh that's low

So before we commit to buying a GivEnergy inverter and battery system, can anyone confirm if this looks like it's getting fixed, if it's a batch of batteries with bad cells or something else entirely?

kram

It is being fixed. Its affecting most if not all batteries, people just aren't noticing it

kram If it wasn't for the battery issue I'm seeing I would be more than happy to say go for it. I am being told it is being worked on/tested so am hopeful it will be fixed.

Fingers crossed.

Having being shafted by one installer, a system exhibiting this behaviour without a rapid fix would likely put me off solar/battery for good.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) 3008 on both

Interestingly = after a sudden drop the other day - and recharge to 100% from 0 which should reset the SoC. Today the system stopped discharging when showing 9%. So does this mean it's already "drifted" by 5% - it thinks it's at 4%. I'm not clear why it would stop at 9% if the logic is based on SoC % alone. (2 x 5.2 batteries); or this could be more a balancing error. (Firmware 3005). I like the system otherwise, so I do hope these glitches can be fixed.

GrahamRead Charging to 100% does not reset the SOC to 'real' 100%. It charges to what it thinks is 100% which would include any drift. The only way to reset the SOC to the 'real' 100% is to perform a calibration.

We had a drop from 20% to 0 today sufficient to cause it to import, which is I think the second instance. Firmware 3008, 9.5 battery, about two weeks old. Otherwise the system is working very well indeed.

Still getting this issue more and more as winter approaches, I get to around 34% and then drops to 0%

Is there actually a fix coming for this?

Is there a workaround in the meantime for example can I downgrade to the previous version of firmware where I didn't get this issue?

KeithB Not that I'm aware of, I think this would have been offered by GE support by now if it was a working temporary solution. The best thing for you to give you that capacity back (for a small period when drift will start to occur again) would be to request a calibration but obviously that would need decent solar to save any grid cost and to be timed right by GE support. That would at least get you back to 'true' 100% for a while and reset the 'drift'.

Force charged mine from grid to 100% from 5%.
It took 14.6kwh.
Which is a bit over what was expecting. For 3 x 5.2s.
95% DoD.
Seems a bit much as the label said 80%. Not grumbling.
Today is sun y, so wife had better be doing washing to use it up. As grid charging costs me 26p kwh

chris_p When my system suffers a sudden drop to 0% SOC the low voltage alarm automatically initiates a recalibration. I get a full bore grid import charge to 4% SOC after which it flips to user charge settings and will eventually get to maximum battery capacity. This first recharge to 100% SOC sees my later model 8.2kWh battery take on board around 9.6 kWh while subsequent recharges initially take 8.2kWh and then less and less over time until the next sudden drop to 0% SOC.

Woodstock

When my system suffers a sudden drop to 0% SOC the low voltage alarm automatically initiates a recalibration.

A recalibration to 100%? Or to 4%?

Woodstock

That sounds pretty serious and at nearly £3 per recharge I would be pretty p*ssed off.
If they can't fix this pretty quickly, then it really sounds like the battery isn't fit for purpose 🙁
Battery economics are borderline at best, so when you're spending £3 every so often on a full recharge then that kills any benifit of the battery.

Woodstock This is why I think this issue could be having a more long term negative impact on the battery as when it crashes to 0% im guessing thats not the protected 0% so this is why you are seeing a much larger value to charge, in your case 8.2 requiring 9.6kWh to charge up to 100%

Kryten

I agree, it must be having a negative effect on the battery. Warrant or not, I would rather it work as intended.

Last night 5 hours to recharge my batteries 15x26p + vat every couple of weeks.
Hence Im keen to test and get this fielded ASAP

My 2 * 8.2 batteries just went from 20% to 100% now idle now exporting to the grid. On 3007.

Extremely unimpressed as this is the 2nd time this has happened and its the best sunny day in a week or so.

Id rather have the ability to run the calibration myself. GE aren't the most responsive. Not quite sure why we don't have this capacity in our portal...

TonyStewart I'd like this option as well. Not because GE have been slow when I've had to contact them, but more because then I can time it better for either sunny days or off-peak pricing,

kai exactly. Seems a pretty obvious item to have available if you ask me eh.

It was available until about 6 months ago.
It was removed for “reasons” (of which no one knows why) along with the ability to see what all the cell voltages are from inside the normal portal.
You can read as little or as much into that sudden removal I guess…

hoggy hmmmm a flaky product by the sounds of it. There is no reason I can see to remove a function like that that could save us all so much time.....

chris_p A recalibration to maximum battery capacity. The first 4% as forced grid import and the remainder in accordance with whatever user charging settings are in place. The way I know that a recalibration is taking place is because during the first recharge after a sudden drop to 0% the battery loads significantly more than its nominal 8.2kWh. Subsequent recharges first stop at 8.2kWh and then at lower and lower values as 100% SOC drifts downwards.

Woodstock That is not how mine works. It drops to 0%, recharges at 2.5kW and stops at 4%. Only when there is excess solar doe the battery start to charge again. Do you have it set to a different mode or something because yours is the first I've heard do that, everyone else's experience that I've read is the same as mine, stopping once reaching 4%.

kram Only the first 4% is forced grid import. The rest follows whatever user charging settings are in place (eg: ECO). For me the major concern is the loss of battery capacity as the 100% SOC value drifts downwards over time, closely followed by having to second guess how much charge is actually in the battery when setting an overnight cheap rate top up to cover the following day's use.

chris_p "I get a full bore grid import charge to 4% SOC after which it flips to user charge settings and will eventually get to maximum battery capacity." Isn't this the same as what you are saying? If I have ECO set and there is no sun then charging stops at 4% and starts again when the sun comes out. The critical point is that until the battery eventually recharges to its maximum capacity it is still in a recalibration cycle. In the winter this could take some considerable time (days/weeks?).

Woodstock

Woodstock The critical point is that until the battery eventually recharges to its maximum capacity it is still in a recalibration cycle.

Is this in the documentation somewhere? I've not heard that from anyone else and as such I was under the impression it is just charging as normal, using the previous full calibration figure for the dispayed SOC. I mean what happens when it gets to 10% say and then demand takes over and the battery starts to drain again, what kind of use is that calibration? Unless yours never discharges any battery until it reaches 100% in this scenario?

Kryten The sudden drop to 0% is to the low voltage alarm, which IS the protected 0%. Normally discharge would stop at the 4% battery cut off but because this is compared against the displayed SOC % (and the displayed SOC has drifted and is over-reading by more than 4%) this check is bypassed and discharging only stops when the low voltage alarm is triggered. 0% is 0% and the reason I see more than 8.2kWh going into the battery on the first recharge after a sudden drop to 0% is because a recalibration is taking place and the battery is being charged to its true (as opposed to nominal) capacity. In the case of the later 8.2kWh batteries this is well in excess of 8.2kWh. Subsequent recharges following a recalibration should take the battery only as far as its nominal 8.2kWh capacity.

chris_p Precisely the point I raised when recalibration was changed from being forced grid import all the way to battery capacity to being forced grid import to 4% followed by reverting to user settings for the remainder of the charge. I think GE were trying to be helpful at the time and responding to customer complaints about suffering 0-100% battery charges from the grid at times not of their choosing!

My reason for thinking that a recalibration cycle takes place after the sudden drop to 0% is because the first recharge (however long it takes to get there) takes the battery to its true capacity while subsequent charges only take it to its nominal capacity.

My understanding is between 4% and 100% of say an 8.2kWh battery = 8.2kWh of usable power. So really 4% is the safe protected lower limit you don’t want to be dropping bellow in order to keep the battery healthy. So in dropping to 0% it’s bad for the battery and the battery triggers a low voltage warning forcing a charge back to 4% this is what I find worrying about this issue. Unless GE can explain it otherwise?

To me the whole discussion about battery being derated so that it can have unlimited cycles sounds patsy.
If the BMS was any good it would not let the cell voltages drop this low!

A manual initiated calibration will charge to 100% ALL from grid.
It has to. Otherwise theres no point it's not a steady charge that the BMS shunt can monitor and recalibrate.
I've done it 3 times in 9 months, each time it charges from grid regardless of solar. So it is best to do in a morning on a sunny day, so the grid draw is less, either way it will charge at the full rate regardless of source.

A firmware one may be different, having never done a firmware via the portal I wouldnt know. I do mine manually via USB, saves the risk of a dropped connection

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I'm not sure anyone is disputing that is what a calibration does. I'm questioning what happens when the BMS detects actual 0% is hit and forces a recharge to 4%. @Woodstock says he thinks that the subsequent charge from 4-100% is a recalibration. I thought it was just regular charging, not reset of the 'perceived' 100%. Also a firmware update by the portal also does perform a full calibration.

chris_p that is indeed just normal charging.

My mistake thought we were discussing calibration.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) No worries, it is all very confusing! I hope we hear something positive from GE soon so this thread can become a distant thing of the past!

Initial testing is going well - I'd now like to open this up to a small community of users for testing.

This is for AC coupled users only currently

Please email me support@givenergy.co.uk with the subject of FAO - ADAM REYNOLDS - "INVERTER SERIAL NUMBER HERE"

This is for users who are ready to provide feedback in this first version of this software, and will require a inverter AND bms update. The purpose of this to feedback any errors you see.

Adam-Reynolds sent you an email.

Hopefully hybrid inverters not far behind!?

Ra It will almost be a copy and paste logic scenario for hybrids, AC coupled will release first and then hybrid test logic shortly after and then a full release

No pressure AC Coupled guinea-pigs!

Adam-Reynolds email sent

hoggy Cheers Hooggy.
And cheers for the heads up

Adam-Reynolds can you give an indication for how long testing will take on the AC units and therefore when we might expect a wider release?

Adam-Reynolds Hi. Would the updates trigger a calibration cycle and if so, would I be able to delay that till our off-peak hours?

LeiChat

It will likely be a manual update via the USB keys in the battery and inverter dongle. ]#
Last time I did one of these tests, GE then kick off the full calibration when you email them back the firmware is updated. Unless you are one of the self install club.

Adam-Reynolds
I’ve emailed too, Adam.
Hope you want to test on multi -inverter plants?

Sykes
@Adam-Reynolds
Im sure he will, if your willing. The broader spread of setups the better.
Single battery, dual, triple, multi inverter etc

Sykes Not for plants I'm sorry yet. This early version is single inverter only. We do have some exciting news about the plants though coming very soon.

I'd be game but do need to change a few things in my setup before I join the beta testing.

Adam-Reynolds

Would you like(be permitted) to share an idea of what it might be, as it will affect buying decisions for a lot of us.
Last time I looked at a GE system, then Gen2 was coming but no details, so I went another system.

The installer shafted us, however now we're looking and basically it's a problem due to the low input power for the Gen2 inverter 5kW can only support 6.5kWp of panels, which isn't great. supporting 7.5 or 8kWp would be lovely, even if it clips at 5, because east/west arrays exist. Since that doesn't happen, a plant with a 2 inverters and AC batteries would be a nice option, but it can't charge from solar when in Island mode (which I'm told the hybrid can)

Essentially I'd love to know what my options would be to stay with GE, rather than hanging on the never never it might come, then going elsewhere because I've not idea what might come.

kram In short, with the EMS we've fixed the known occurrences - we're doing phase two testing very soon and will be readily available for purchase soon.

I'll also likely be closing this early phase testing tomorrow, and I'm only looking for about 20 or so systems for now. I'll be in touch either tomorrow or over the weekend with what to do.

Adam-Reynolds

Thanks... really apprecaite you replying 🙂

When you say EMS, I'm thinking EPS, but I probably don't have a clue what I'm looking at.
Could you clarify for the unknowing (at least me) what the EMS is?

kram Energy management system. The device that sits in-between dual inverters for logic control.

Adam-Reynolds if you don’t mind me asking (and can say) how large is the EMA unit?

Smk82 about 15cm by 10cm

kram How much are you putting on the East and West faces? I'm waiting on an install with 4.4 on the west and 5.5 on the East with a single 5kw gen 2 hybrid and two 9.5 batts.
My Solcast simulation suggests a max of around 6.5kw when the sun is coming over the top - so some clipping under ideal solar conditions but GE tech support suggest no issue with that (other than losses). Plus we won't see those optimum conditions most of the time.

sponev

Between 3.4 and 4.8 on each side.
Is that ok as I got the impression it was 6.5kWp maximum connected between the two sides. As such noon would be a massive problem.

I would imagine 4kWp on each side=8kWp and multiplied by 80% = 6400W.

Is that a confirmed supported amount as other DC amounts for some manufacturers are kWp connected. If it’s 6.5kW load (590V at 11Amp) then that’s much better than I thought.

Question though, what happens if the DC exceeds this? Does MPPT drop power to clip or are there problems?

Also is that 6.5 per string or in total?

Adam-Reynolds will it support 3 x AC plant setup? Thanks

kram I'm far from expert on this and still learning but I ran my specs past GE and they said "no issue" other than peak time clipping. My installer has also checked although I'm not totally confident with them - hence why I checked with GE. My understanding is that it's the max voltage from each string which can't be exceeded. My panels are somewhere in the low 30s so even on the side with 14, then I'm still below the max 550v specced for the 5kw gen 2.
Others on here have way more knowledge and experience than me and should be able to advise. I hope I'm right at this late stage!

Getting back on track in this thread regarding drops rather than other technical problems.... (suggest the other comments get moved 😉 )

Had my biggest drop this morning from 48% to 0%, last drop I had was on the 7th so just over a week ago 🙁

I seem to be okay so far (gen1 AC) since the 3007 patch. Fingers crossed for me.

Lowest my battery has got to is 20% though, so can't 100% guarantee the issue has gone for me.

But sounds like more good progress, fingers crossed for the testing of the latest build.

Ra Managed to beat that. Mine dropped from 58% to 0% last night. Decent solar day today which will make up for it. @Adam-Reynolds Can you add me to the list of Hybrid testers if possible?

cbowen Wow, you have beaten me although its not something either of us should be boasting about unfortunately 🙁

Your battery drift seems similar to mine in terms of level / time. Still can't work out why some people aren't seeing anything unless they're completely blind to it and never look at the portal?

Adam-Reynolds

Is this only for Dual AC inverters or can it be used to control two hybrid systems too?
Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Ra I’ve noticed that it only happens to me if I don’t fully utilise the battery. When I don’t need to charge overnight, the battery in the morning is down to 20% by the time it starts charging again from the solar. This seems to keep the calibration in check. As soon as I start charging overnight, the battery doesn’t drop below 50% and this is when the calibration really moves and I see my big drops. I’ve seen it happen at the other end of the battery as well where I didn’t get to 100% over the summer for a few days and it jumped from the high 80% to 100%.

My system is 3.5 months old and not seen this happen yet (have checked back over the battery graphs for every day). 8.2 AC running 3005. Runs in eco most of the time ranging from about 40-100% most days. Has been down to 5-6% a couple of times. Have only paused or forced cheap night rate into the battery 3 times. Is this a factor. Are systems that are regularly forced to charge rather than just left in eco more likely to wander off I wonder?

There have been 3 x weekly spells where we were away and the battery was going from 80 odd % to 100% every day and this minimal cycling didn’t lead to any issues.

cbowen My battery usage so far (installed end of June this year) normally goes between ₁₀₀%-40%.

If I've had a particularly heavy day of dishwasher / washing machine etc and not a lot of sun the battery very occasionally doesn't reach 100% so the %value in the morning is ₃₀% but normally if I get to this kind of level if drops to 0%

Jim
That may be because you are on version 3005, whereas I think most people are on 3007. For that reason, you may want to stick where you are, until the new version has been tested and released.

ToothyChris I think people were having issues on 3005 too, and updated to 3007 in the hope it would solve it. I actually tried to update to 3007 when it was released, but it failed to upload (possibly as so many people were trying to do it at the same time). Although it failed the button to update then disappeared, so the only way for me to update now would be to ask GE to do it. In the end I decided to leave it alone given it was working fine and the issues were still persisting on 3007.
Next time there is an update I’m going to hang fire for a few weeks to see how people are getting on before hitting update!

So I was on 3005 and have been waiting for the proper fix before updating. However I have been getting these SOC jumps very regularly on my 5.2kWh battery. So I thought perhaps I could do with a recalibration. You are supposed to get that with each battery FW update. Since it was sunny today I decided to take the plunge. The update went OK, however, after the inverter restart there is no recalibration! The SOC jumped to 100% and has stayed there ever since, with the battery in idle. Anyone else have this issue and if so, how did you solve it? I can't see any way of triggering a manual recalibration.

@Adam-Reynolds Cheers for the update
I have took a screenshot of the last 7 days SoC readings of individual batteries.
After the upgrade I will do the same and compare the drift if any. Hopefully all 3 batteries remain locked in sync

Sorry - just a quick update.

We've just found something today and we're pulling an emergency meeting with the R&D teams tomorrow morning to go over this data, we're holding off on the update for the test users for now but I'll update you as soon as I know anymore.

Adam-Reynolds oh no.

Hopefully nothing bad

Adam-Reynolds thank you. So the EMS provides a communication/control point between inverters? Does this mean that the batteries/inverters will be in sync properly if this in installed? (I.e no discharge into each other/one charge whilst one discharges, and say a 2kw load required , 1kw supplied from each battery inv?)

My turn to have another battery crash, but this time at the bottom end. Crashed to 0% this morning (outside of the GO window and minimumal solar of course). Only had a full battery recalibration 7 days ago to try and fix the top end SOC % drifting. My usage pattern hasn't changed.

Fingers crossed the fix comes out soon.

JaseSpace after the inverter restart there is no recalibration!

Don't fret, it's in the pipeline. It'll wait until one random morning, spend all day dumping your battery to grid and once the sun has gone down, it'll start to charge, finishing just before your off-peak tariff cuts in. Only joking! Seriously, the recalibration does start some time after the inverter has been updated but not straight away. We have asked before if the notifications or logs can have an entry to tell you the current status of recalibration, but I guess that's a nice to have for Givenergy although essential for the people frettting.

It would be good if we could be alerted that the system needs recalibrating and given the option to kick it off ourselves, at a time of our choosing(!), within 24 hours. After 24 hours it happens anyway for users who don't actively monitor what's going on.

SimonP That's ultimately the problem, if the system knew it needed calibrating then this whole thread wouldn't be needed.

Adam-Reynolds

How did the meeting go?

Tim Thanks for the info. I got GE to trigger it in the end.

Regarding notifications, I now see 2 on the portal via the sidebar "Notifications" (which is different to the "Notifications" tab on the "Inverter" card!) - one telling me that calibration was started, and another that it has finished. This is the only acknowledgement that I can see anywhere of a calibration having been done. BUT the timestamps of these notifications are such that they must have been sent immediately after the FW update (i.e. well before GE triggered the recal), and the "finished" one was sent 2 seconds before the "started" one! So they don't actually reflect reality! I didn't get any notifications associated with the times of the actual recal.

Another issue I had with the recalibration. It took a while to dump the battery charge (purely because the battery was 3/4 charged by the time recal was eventually triggered). Then started to charge back up VERY slowly. Had to contact GE again to work out why. Despite me not touching any settings (although I did go to the battery settings page to check both the charge and discharge rates were at max), I was told that I must have reduced the charge rate to some small value and that is why it was taking so long. I can categorically say this must be another FW bug because I did not change the settings (and the portal logs prove this). I've seen other comments on FB from GE telling users they must have changed settings to have caused their issues, and the majority of those users claim to not have touched anything. So I think there is a phantom setting corruptor somewhere. I presume this may be why I have also seen quite a few mentions of - "try resetting to defaults", "thanks, that fixed it".

Anyway, my system seems to be operating OK so far - no sudden SoC jumps in 24hrs so far! Hoping to be better than 1 every ₃ days now I've applied the 3007 update, and have a recent calibration.

Just pulled up the data to check the SOC100% battery voltages just as the charging finished. It’s gone from 57.07V to 53.49V over the course of the battery life (3 months), which is 3.56 V to 3.34 V per cell. The only way I can think of to sort this mess would be to limit charging at a defined voltage.
Anyway, I have added a Victron smart shunt to keep track of and will see how this goes.

Just had my second battery dump this month. two 8.2kW batteries at 37% so 6kW of power, 5 mins later 0% and then they start charging from the grid. Not impressed now, I know people have suffered more, but its drawing power at 40p/ kW right now when it should have carried me through until tomorrow. I don't want to lose faith here as this is 6 thousand pounds of batteries meant to be saving me money. 1kw now, is 5 kw in my cheaper period, ignoring the lost battery from generation today

Another drop this morning from 25% this time, last one I had was 4 days ago so my drift is going to be about 6% a day!!

Not experiencing this first hand, I know I could be very wrong, but I get the impression that the charge/discharge could end up costing a lot of money.

I am guessing that if the battery discharges at £ cheap export rate, then charges at high import rate you are going to end up with at best the same as if you're just using it. At that point you might as well save yourself a few thousand pounds and not bother with the battery.

Am I missing something big here.

kram depends what you get for your export. Those on Agile Outgoing can get paid more than the price cap to export, so might be worth timing the calibration run around the higher prices.

Or try and do it first thing in a morning when battery capacity is lowest so you're not dumping loads to the grid and then try and charge using PV?

kram Are you talking about just during calibration?

Yes just during calibration.
It seems to me that this can be quite frequent, which is obviously related to the drift of max/min.

Once it’s fixed all good, but until then it’s looking bad.

kram Well yes it is a symptom of the issue, hopefully will soon be a moot point and irrelevant.

So whilst I'm not trying to be a pain, until the firmware is fixed, this issue is costing money every time the battery needs to recalibrate?

@Adam-Reynolds / GE Do we have any updates on a fix since the issue you needed to call an emergency meeting for?

Adam-Reynolds This is something that hasn't worked as it should have done and we were advised by an installer to purchase. You have created a solution but are asking us to pay for it? If it's only providing the functionality that was previously promoted, that should not involve any extra cost for people who bought a plant setup in the misguided belief that it would work. Does it have any benefits in addition to bringing the plant system into useful operation?

kram Under the wrong timing and conditions, yes. But it is possible that the export could be timed when the battery has less charge, the export could be used by an immersion for example to minimise the amount going to the grid and the charge could start just as solar become decent. Also the charge rate can be adjusted to suit the incoming PV. I appreciate it isn't likely to get all that aligned each time (especially as GE support are the only people who can start the calibration) but it isn't all doom and gloom either. If it has to be performed frequently because GE fail to find a solution then I'll not be very happy, but until then I'm trying to put faith in the GE devs to resolve this.

The word "could" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that post. Calibrations can't be specified by the user, so it can happen randomly. People are reporting drops to zero and then using peak rates to import.
I'm fortunate that I don't seem to be experiencing this, but having 16kW batteries recharging at peak rates (£6.40 a pop) multiple times would have me a tad annoyed!

Zakalwe Yeah and I've qualified that with "it isn't likely to get all that aligned each time". All I'm saying is there isn't much point complaining about having to perform regular calibrations until GE fail in fixing this. If that happens then I'll be complaining as much as anyone else.

GE really do need to come up with a solution to this, as in this state I'd definately say the batteries are not fit for purpose.

Can I request GE to open up the BMS option under advanced super user interface. So that I can limit when the charging stops - in short please give me the option to choose when I can go from CC to CV and be done with the SOC

Just for context, this month I've used _15kWh in battery calibration and 0->4% charges. That's 1/3 of my total.

kai 15kW is a third of your total for the month? I've consumed 195kW this month so far from 249kW solar generation.

We've got gas CH/water and I don't use my EV to commute (so it usually just charges from solar while I'm at work). 229kWh generation so far (4.6kWp panels with 5.2+8.2 batteries).

kai I was just wondering how you got to "1/3 of my total"?

chris_p 1/3 of my import total (should have been more specific). Total usage is ~ 240kWh.

kai Ah I see, thanks for the clarification.

Had my instance of this today. 29% suddenly dropped to 0%. On firmware 3007.
Fingers crossed the next firmware puts this to bed.
Just my luck it happened on a rainy day. Wouldn't have been as bad if it happened yesterday 😆

I take it those on the Beta test list haven't started yet (or are you sworn to secrecy - blink twice if you are!)

hoggy Its quiet.....too quiet.....

Mine went again last might from 48% to 0%. Mine seems to lose 50% of it's calibration in a week so my 8.2kwh battery ends up being around 4kwh usable. Quite disappointing to put it mildly.

Ra yeah I’m only reading between the lines but going from “ready to test” > wait a sec > emergency meeting > silence doesn’t sound like a good times to me!

hoggy “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” - they are likely trying to keep the wings on at the moment, we may find out why in due course…we may not. Such is the way of GE’s communications strategy.

I know they can't give us all the details, but some regular communication would help a lot. And when we do hear stuff, things like "Emergency meeting" was maybe a bit too honest! Sent alarm bells ringing in my head, that's for sure.

hoggy No secrecy.

It's not happened yet. 🙁

So where are we on this as I’m quite confused.
I’d like to not be spending my hard earned on buying a brick…

As there seems to be no fix anytime soon.

Anyone with HomeAssistant and GivTCP.

This is what I'll be doing. A weekly charge to 100%. To prevent the silly low cell voltage coming back.
Hopefully help the life of the battery.
I have already a scheduled charge time of 0030 to 0600. This just enables this once a week

alias: Weekly 100% correction Charge
description: Do a full charge on a Sunday morning. Sunday will then run on Battery
trigger:

• platform: time
  at: "00:30:00"
  condition:
• condition: time
  weekday:
  • sun
    action:
• service: switch.turn_on
  data: {}
  target:
  entity_id: switch.givtcp_enable_charge_schedule
• wait_for_trigger:
  • platform: time
    at: "06:00:00"
• service: switch.turn_off
  data: {}
  target:
  entity_id: switch.givtcp_enable_charge_schedule
  mode: single

TheDragon (GivEnergy) How does charging to "100%" make any difference? Only to avoid it getting low I suppose but if you charge to 100% (which is really 80% say after drifting for a while), then when you get to 20% it will crash to 0%, no? I guess what we need is a "when you get to the 'perceived' 35%, then charge to '100%'" routine?

chris_p I normally in the non summer rarely charge above 50%. So the battery swings between 5 and 50 at best.
The actual SoC is slowly dropping so a charge to 100% helps the battery voltage.
Also 1 of my 3 battery lags behind the others. So when the cell voltages drop this pack is actually below the safe level. Have seen 2.6v per cell once. Which will cause damage.

The charge to 100% helps to get them back in Sync. Till the new SoC reporting firmware is released

What a mess

Edit:

I really feel GE need to say something before people start jumping ship. The silence leads to assumptions, which can lead to (more) repetition damage.

If the products get a bad name, then people don’t buy and the company will start having problems.
I’d rather just see an honest update with what is actually wrong.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) I'd love to do this but have no idea how to go around implementing this.

On another note - I'm going to somehow try to integrate the Smart shunt onto home assistant. I have noticed a few % variability in SOC reported between Givenergy and smart shunt. Need to collect more data.

kram I agree. I have 2 x 9.5 batteries due to be installed in around 5 weeks and wondering whether I've messed up. I deliberately chose not to go the Powerwall route but now I'm somewhat concerned. Is it solvable with firmware or is there a major underlying problem? We need some feedback. I could still cancel the order and I probably would if the supply situation elsewhere was better. The word is starting to get out unfortunately. Communication is essential with an issue like this.

ispookie666 The smart Shunt is probabaly more accurate than the shunt in the inverter or batteries.
This is what this firmware is supposed to be fixing

TheDragon (GivEnergy)

Yes we’re are going to beta test can you sign up

oh no we’re not we’re having an emergency meeting

Oh silence

Doesn’t fill me with confidence it’s fixable as that doesn’t sound good.

TBH id be tempted to just get solar without a battery rather than put thousands into the will it or won’t it fix it pile. If I do that it won’t be with a GE inverter as I’ll need options.

I’m almost tempted to get an IP rated rack and stick a pile of pylontech batteries in it, which is a very old design.

kram We've had some rubbish weather this week and our batteries struggled to charge to 100% each day. All summer, the batteries have been starting charge in the morning at about 60% SoC. Over the last few days, it was dropping to 50%. On Thursday, charging took all day and by 5pm when the oven was switched on, it hadn't reached "100%". Yesterday morning, the batteries dropped to 30% and 11% SoC before charging from PV started. They consumed 6.5kWh and 8.5kWh respectively to fully charge. I'm thinking these 8.2kWh battery's SoC had been drifting but I didn't see any sudden increase or drop in SoC.

I really feel for those of you whose battery SoC is unreliable, especially when it's a gamble whether to charge off-peak to get you through the day. I just wanted to add a voice on this thread to highlight that not all batteries are suffering from unreliable SoC figures. (Hope I've not jinxed my batteries now).

kram My battery was replaced in April/May and only had two crashes since then. Some get it much worse but like Tim, trying to add a bit if balance here. From what I've read from people who know more than me, it seems to be that the software is the issue, not the hardware.

My issue is constant get to around 34% SOC and it drops to 0% only started to do this when I was upgraded to 3007 firmware, never occurred with version 3005. Whatever the issue the battery is only 2/3rds useful now, with winter approaching fast the more and more this will happen. Would like to see a firmware rollback option in the future in case of issues and would like to see more communication from GivEnergy with some understanding of progress, or not as the case may be.

How's the beta test going?

Experienced another jump to 100% this afternoon with our AC 3.0 and 2x 8.2 system running 3007.

@Adam-Reynolds Will 3008 bms version improve on 3007?
Something has to help everyone seeing more and more issues as the batteries arent being fully cycled now summers over.

Sadly, my battery discharged again last night. A givenergy technician visited the property 9 days ago to check out the installation (I cannot say what the technician did because there has not been a report back to me). My system worked for 9 days then we got a discharge again. When the system works, the voltage sits around 52V. If the battery voltage drops to 51V, it is a prelude to a charge dump.
I do wonder if they can solve this problem. If not, what happens?

TheDragon (GivEnergy) @Adam-Reynolds Will 3008 bms version improve on 3007?
Something has to help everyone seeing more and more issues as the batteries arent being fully cycled now summers over.

No it doesn't. I'm on 3008 and experience jumps. 65% to 100% on Friday.

Mine has never jumped to a high charge instantly - but I do see an occasional drop from 5 or 6 % to nothing and a recharge back up to 4% - but that to me seems normal. Did it last night funnily enough.

As it happens I run my inverter in eco mode all the time and don’t (yet) mess with forced charge and discharge.

Mine also only charges to 100% when the sun is well out and we have a low load.

Our daily house load is about 9kwh when nothing is on. I need to properly work out what. I know the big stuff which is about 1/2 but not the other half. Nothing I can do about the big stuff. But hopefully I can find the rest and get that off.

mrand31

Ok. Thanks. Wont bother with 3008 then.

anglefire similar here.

Our battery now floats between 5 and 50%. On Eco.
Once week we now do a grid charge overnight and use that during the day the next day.
Noting the losses, this is costing me around 50p a week lost power

I wonder if a short term action should be to set the minimum SOC from 4% to something like 40% to at least protect the battery?

chris_p I will try this. I have set to 30% minimum. Let's see what happens.

Crash from 26% to 0% this morning. Please @Adam-Reynolds give us an update

Had a thought this morning, when mine drops to 0% (8.2kWh battery) it takes approximately 10kWh to fully charge it so the buffer that in theory enables me to discharge to 100% has been depleted so I'm actually hitting the hard stop rather than being in the 'safe zone'. This occurs fairly rapidly (within a week normally) so even though I'm only supposed to be using 8.2 my system is using more than this everytime gradually eeking away at the buffer at about 5/6% a day.

That’s about 20% extra, essentially 8.2 x 1.04 = 8.5, then multiply by 1.2 is near enough bang on 10kWh.

Essentially that’s totally flat as you’re using up the 4% safety margin and the 20% buffer between full capacity at 100% dod and truefull capacity.

I wonder if there’s a pointer error or similar in the lookup table, which means the protective 20% buffer amount isn’t being included in the SOC calculation. The SOC then dumps when another safety check kicks the battery as flat.

I really hope it’s a case of firmware bug, but we do need some statement even if it is just we are certain it’s firmware but it’s going to take a few weeks to fix. Weekly updates on a Tuesday?

It's been mentioned further up by GE that their BMS recalculates the SOC when it hits either ALARM setpoint.
From FW 3002> This has been:

the overall low voltage alarm is changed from 41.6V to 45V, and the overall high voltage alarm is changed from 58.4V to 57.5V

That equates to (divide by 16 for each cell) as 2.8V per cell if you're hitting the bottom stop (crash to 0%) or 3.6V if your getting the SOC Jump to 100%.
I'm not going to pass judgement on if this is seriously damaging as that's up to GE but it is running them pretty hard.

Some outliers that also need considering:
A: BMS 1041> stated the individual cell limits (remember not all cells act the same so you may have one cell drift in the pack as well) as below. It's unknown if these are still trigger points on a per cell level or not.

1. High voltage alarm: two cells up to 3.65V or one cell up to 3.7V, protection value: two cells up to 3.7 or one cell up to 3.75
2. Low voltage alarm: two cells up to 2.6V or one cell up to 2.4V, protection value: two cells up to 2.3V or one cell up to 2.0V
3. The under voltage or overvoltage time was changed from 15s to 3s

B: Will this sort the other problem of multiple pack systems where they all go out of sync with each other or is that another revision.

C: Can we not just have the ability to re-calibrate ourselves back while this is being worked on.
That or "Hot Fix / Fudge" - Move the Overvoltage alarm trigger down to the normal 100% full voltage. If the BMS truly recalcs on this alarm as stated then sure you'll get a ton of alarms but atleast you know where you are (you could do it on the lower side but it's a bit more risky I guess)
I know this is less than ideal to those that don't charge to 100% but going into Winter this may help the majority.

EDIT: Oh and for those wondering what's inside cell capacity wise I did this a bit back

hoggy

3 Seconds for a voltage drift isn't that long?
Are you saying it looks for any case where voltage is below the threshold for 3 second?

If so a .1V drift isn't unexpected on reading equipment, as it's a large chunk of the total voltage at 3.6%, .1V is a 3% voltage drop and as I don't know the quality of the measuring hardware we don't know how accurate each reading is.
With that in mind wouldn't it make sense to make it a series of readings rather than just a single point in time reading (Assuming this isn't already done, as I'm just guessing with no actual data on how it works).

kram This is the thing, nobody (until now) has needed to care what the BMS is doing to really dig deep into how it works. If it wasn't for the fact mines running constantly & even the 2.6kWh battery is a joke price now I would have happily bought one and dissected it. (I'm curious if it's a fully bespoke one or some sort of Pylon/Seplos etc... variation)
For the thresholds I suspect the original reasoning was that in normal operation including the huge buffers it would have to have gone way out of line to hit them even with some voltage droop at high loads. So 3 sec seems a reasonable value as it should have stopped a while back. (The presumed expectation being that the pack runs in the flat part of the curve rather than the sharp "knee" of the curves either end)
They do auto clear (should the reason for the alarm cease to be there) so in a way it takes multiple readings and carry on after.

I have a set of 7 year old Pylons that also run 80% buffers (same as GE in theory) & (glossing over the fact that they had SOC values nailed back in 2015...) although the ultimate alarm is 42V it's impossible to hit that even at full discharge unless you go beyond 80% DOD limit as it's sat in the flat part of the curve still.

hoggy I agree with the re-calibration button need, seems like a relatively easy fix for GE to implement as a temporary workaround until the BMS is fixed.

@hoggy
All this would be too easy.
I'm hoping, they would open up the portal and let me chose the voltage ceiling and discharge floor voltage.
Or at least, provide the framework for the communication to their BMS, so that other inverters can be used!

I have hit a brick wall trying to integrate the smart shunt into HA via ESP Home.

ispookie666 I can't see it personally but I wish you good luck! Your probably best just buying cells from Fogstar and a Seplos BMS if you want that fine control over it (or if your happy with the price of the GE battery just yanking the cells out of it!)

I did ask if I can have full control of the buffer after 10 years warranty expires. I've currently about ₅% degradation which once the warranty expires, I can see no reason why I shouldn't be able to move the DOD from 80 > 90 to claw atleast some of that (presumed larger by then) deficit back at the expense of lifespan.

Finally managed to get the shunt to HA, I'm hoping to track the SOC ![https://ibb.co/L1pRPXj]

ispookie666 how does it work out SOC (presume you have to give it some parameters as a start as to size of pack and DOD?) or does it just learn as you cycle over time?

If that’s valid data your pack is already going below the 45V lower alarm level (although they’ll be some voltdrop between where the pack measures and wherever this is fitted.

hoggy
The variable you can enter are battery capacity, Maximum charge voltage, Tail current.
I reset the SOC to 100% manually when the Givenergy reported it as such. This is still a work in progress, but the shunt does pretty much live stream values to HA. The shunt is supposed to reset the SOC to 100% once the tail current drops below predefined level.

I used a ESP8266 nodemcu board, used a sort of jumper wires to connect this to the smart shunt VE Direct port. The code is available on github. I already had M10 ring terminals and other things for battery connections from a previous diy project.

I had a Loss of SOC (probably call it LoSOC) a few days ago and that's the lowest Voltage it went to.
The shunt goes between the negative from the DC Breaker and Inverter, there is usually a difference in voltage of 0.2V with Givenergy being the lower one.

It would not surprise me if my warranty become invalid as I have installed a smart shunt!

ispookie666 Interesting. Do keep us informed of how it compares.
(You can join the club on Warranty - I force feed my GE Hybrid those Pylontech batteries I mentioned through the PV strings, suspect first finger pointing will be that should mine ever pop)

Decided to up my 4% cut off but found two entries in the inverter settings which are set to 4%, which one do I need to change:

• Battery cut off % limit
• Battery reserve % limit

The reserve will keep some power in the event of power failure. EPS can use the last bit.

If no EPS. Set them both to a higher value of your choice.

As the sun is starting to hide away / cloudier days my battery hasn't been getting fully charged so the ability to mask the SOC issue has diminished.

Getting drops from 15/20% every 3 or so days now.....

Are there any other manufacturer batteries that would work 'off the shelf' with my inverter? I'm still well within the 6 months needed to reject the goods so want to exercise this option if absolutely necessary.

Ra I saw a tweet the other day of an installer fitting a GE battery with a Solar Edge inverter, but not seen the other way around (doesn't mean it isn't possible of course) https://twitter.com/TethysEnergy/status/1572573328036208640?t=-9hd0-Q2_yfI4yU9qCm2pg&s=19

chris_p

Couldn’t that just be an AC coupled GE battery?

Any AC battery would work with a GE inverter, but tbh I’d bin the lot.

kram No idea, but I agree I'd get rid of everything GE, saves "compatibility issues" being used as an excuse for any future issues too.

So, are they still "suck" at the meeting then? Not a peep squeak from GE.....

EdinH

I mean if there isn’t at least something on here soon then it says a lot…

I’m sick of solar suppliers and installers. It really is like upvc double glazing all over again. If you have access to a TV series called “white gold” there are IMHO too many parallels.

kram Great series, well worth a watch for sure!

kram
Without communication to BMS, this would become a dumb unit with manual input to set the voltage and current limits

Patience young grasshopper...

I'm wondering if any fixes will be the equivalent of filling the gaps with sealant and running away 😉

Seriously though, a week after the emergency meeting, not a peep?

mrand31 I have patience but only so much...

I really feel for everyone effected by this - this is a selfish question but do we know if this affects systems using the Gen 2 inverters in the same way?

My situation is that I’m just about to place an order, but due to Givenergy’s inability to resolve this issue and (more importantly to me) the lack of updates I think I’ll be placing my order with another vendor.

Haddock

In exactly the same position as you.

Unhappy existing customers and potential customers being put off, I sure hope the director(s) of GE have taken a nosey in here...

chris_p
I'd seriously doubt they have if I'm honest, although I'd love to be proven wrong.

The whole farce between installers who are not being honest or don't know the products they're selling and suppliers being unable to do what they claim is really making us consider just not bother with solar at all.

The industry has now got a really bad reputation amoungst those I speak to and I imagine the number of people with with 10-20k to spare is a shrinking target. We got one through where the price per unit calculated for the solar is almost 30p per kWh when you divide the price by the amount generated over 25 years. What on earth is the point in investing in that?

My neighbour has just cancelled his battery part form his contract, just solar panels for now which will be installed next month on his property and he is looking into getting some of those Bluetti portable ones apparently. Well done GE you are slowly loosing costumers.

We've just had another solar installer pull out. They discussed, quoted, had a visit for final measure up and when I try to pay the deposit they won't confirm the quote, then can't do an install so won't be able to help. Even better is that they were a listed GE installer that I'd contacted after find them on the GE website and explained if it was a problem please say so on day 1.

So since I'm going to have to start again for a third time, or just give up, the question comes should I bother considering GE at all? Is anyone aware if GE might actually have this fixed?

It is getting very worrying. What with lack of transparency about availability and potential technical issues, it makes you wonder how to proceed. I have 2 x 9.5 batteries and a gen 2 5kw hybrid inverter on order and don't want it to be a debacle. Installation is a month away so a switch may still be an option even if it means a longer wait and more expensive. I really don't want to go that route but it becomes increasingly likely the longer we don't hear anything. The solar journey is proving to be an arduous one!

sponev

Indeed, combined with the prices of the kit now...
They're asking 8-10 years energy bills at the capped prices, what's the point.

As an existing customer I was encouraged by the recent testing and the initial call for testers. I thought we were on the road to a solution, but the "emergency meeting" and subsequent lack of ANY information is worrying me greatly. It has been 10 days since the last post by GE here and frankly that is disappointing to say the least. I've already had my 8,2kWh battery replaced due to an issue, now with this my confidence is dropping quickly. Don't think I could recommend GE at this moment in time.

Might ask them to look at other inverters and sod the battery at this rate.
Sadly if it was the inverter that was the issue, I'd worry less as you could stick the battery on the AC inverter and just use it as is with another inverter.

If the battery might be faulty (but we don't know as nobody is saying anything), what's the point.

I think Adam is away on leave, George was running with it. But agree, no news is in this case not good news

Can we stop a calibration or force it do it and a better time?

Hash67 No, currently GE support are the only ones who can do anything with calibrations

chris_p Or installer with engineer login

While we wait for this fix. I'm going to set a reserve of 25%.
With less sun, I was managing only 50 to 60% charge. So if I set the base to 25% it may help.
Will see how it goes

chris_p Similar to your position and in response to several people who know I have an installed system, I am at a point where I am actively steering them away from the GE products because of these issues. I am currently pursuing my installer to resolve this, which feels a bit harsh but that's the rules of engagement, but don't know what they can do! I want to like the equipment, but....

Mine was at 13% a few minutes ago and has now dropped to 0% which means my battery is now recharging from the grid.

Come on Giv Energy, whats being done? Where are you with fixing this?

As with everyone else I've paid a lot on money for your system and it's broken.

I've contacted my installer now too.

Stevef1964 As Tonycooper said, the installers are quite powerless and I guess some are reluctant.
My installer is very good; they paid the deposit to GE for the engineer to come out and check my system. I never received a report from the engineer so I can't tell you what they did. Sadly, another BIS (Battery Incontinence Syndrome) incident occurred ten days after the visit. That said, everyone should contact their installers; it should help apply some pressure on GE to speed up the fix.
In other news, I am trialling 30% minimum SOC to see if it helps with BIS and also protect the battery.

Another day, another crash, getting beyond a joke now. I work in the tech industry and sometimes things don't go to plan but I've learnt its exactly when things don't go to plan you need to communicate more with your customers, not less. So having no communication and no updates from GivEnergy, at all, is very concerning. Maybe you can't fix in software maybe you have a massive hardware recall on your hands, I don't know but as no one is communicating I only assume the worst. I will now have to go back to my installer and return the equipment as not fit for purpose 🙁

PS I also tried setting the reserve to 36% higher than my known 33% SoC crash point yet for some reason this didn't stop the battery discharging below the reserve and thus the crash occurred.

KeithB Doesn't matter what value you set the reserve to. If the displayed battery SOC is over reading by more than the reserve value set then the battery will keep discharging in normal use until the low voltage alarm is triggered. When the low voltage alarm is triggered the displayed SOC resets itself instantaneously to 0% which is the "sudden drop". The battery is not suffering a sudden discharge it is just the displayed SOC catching up with reality.

The problem is that the battery stops charging when the displayed SOC reaches 100%, so if the displayed SOC is showing 100% when the actual SOC is 50% then an 8.2kWh battery becomes effectively only a 4.1kWh battery. This is in addition to the problem of trying to schedule cost effective grid charging when you have no idea of the actual state of charge of the battery.

KeithB PS I also tried setting the reserve to 36% higher than my known 33% SoC crash point yet for some reason this didn't stop the battery discharging below the reserve and thus the crash occurred.

So you mean you set the reserve to 36% but it continued below to 35%, 34%, etc then crashed?

Woodstock
So in essence the upper and lower limits are currently bug*ered? This is really strange that GE is completely silent on this. Beta testing first then "emergency meeting" and since then total silence. Imagine how many ordinary people are unaware of this issue, simply thinking that their batteries are working normally. Through my line of work I know of few installations where they used GE batteries, but I can bet you that they are totally unaware of this.

chris_p hi yep that what happened last night 🙁

KeithB I don't think the reserve value will help as mine has crashed from 70%+ on a few occasions!

KeithB So that is a further bug if the reserve limit is not being respected.

Woodstock Thanks for the clear explanation of the difference between actual SoC and displayed SoC. It doesn't take away the headache of scheduling off-peak charging but at least it helps to understand that there is no sudden voltage drop, just a sudden realisation that the actual SoC is lower than the algorithm has calculated.

I've now got a quote in place for a non GivEnergy System, which doesn't rely on everything being from one system.
I'll be pulling the trigger on an order tomorrow, so unless they can give some answers ASAP around the battery incontinence being fixed, it's a big worry.

Mine was charging from this morning, started at 8% (sun was coming out and going), full sun and really clear for the last 2hrs or so. Steady and nice charge most of the day reached 85% and then in 5min jumped to 100%. Battery recalibrated 2 weeks ago. Now idling (at 100% @ 53.68V) and Portal is also indicating that battery had a charge of 3.5Kwh today. So now 1.8kw going to the grid nicely as there is no much load in the house at the moment.

Tim SOC seems to be just a random number. At least for my setup the maximum voltage reached is 3.45V per cell last week and it has dropped to 3.42.
At least within this range the SoC from GE and Victron are tracking each other. I suspect, once I do the calibration run I'll have a different story to tell.

EdinH

So basically it hasn't got a clue what the state of charge is. Is it firmware or hardware or something else.
That's the bit they really have to answer.

kram Its strange all this silence from GE, i wouldn't be surprised if its something bigger and they initiate a re-call (hopefully not) but silence leads to speculation and cancelled orders (my neighbour for example). So currently my battery is idling on 53.3V so what would be a true % in this case then?

Nearly two weeks since the "emergency meeting", no idea what action we should all be taking but I feel very frustrated at the lack of communication from GE. All of which is massively hitting my confidence in a company who's products should be sat operating in my house for the next 10+ years.

In IT when people go quiet like this, it usually means they’ve found a hardware bug and they are hoping they can work around it with new firmware.

kram putting my limited experience - all you need is access to BMS and the ability to change the voltages for the constant current and the constant voltage. I do know that other manufacturers provide this as standard option.

I suspect, once GE provide this information, then it becomes an open system and people can use any inverter with their batteries(as long as limitations are accepted).

The hardware problem - Cell balancing does not exist in the normal working mode. There are a few cells which have significantly different internal resistance and their voltages deviate from the others.

Reminds me of Apple Vs Android battles

EdinH If by idling you mean that it has charged to a displayed 100% SOC and then sat for a period during which the battery voltage drops back and stabilises, then I would say that you are in a pretty good position. 53.3V is consistent with the battery being fully charged. My own system, at best, stabilises at 52.8V when it is showing 100% SOC (and often much less when the SOC is over reading).

Woodstock

This is the readings after it reached "100%". Do they look ok to you?

2022-09-29 17:09:59 53.18v 100%
2022-09-29 17:04:58 53.17 100
2022-09-29 16:59:56 53.25 100
2022-09-29 16:54:54 52.95 100
2022-09-29 16:49:52 52.75 100
2022-09-29 16:44:50 53.58 100
2022-09-29 16:39:49 53.05 100
2022-09-29 16:34:47 53.32 100
2022-09-29 16:29:45 53.37 100
2022-09-29 16:24:43 53.36 100
2022-09-29 16:19:41 53.27 100
2022-09-29 16:14:39 53.28 100
2022-09-29 16:09:38 53.38 100
2022-09-29 16:04:36 53.28 100
2022-09-29 15:59:34 53.39 100
2022-09-29 15:54:32 53.39 100
2022-09-29 15:49:30 53.3 100
2022-09-29 15:44:28 53.31 100
2022-09-29 15:39:27 53.41 100
2022-09-29 15:34:25 53.42 100
2022-09-29 15:29:23 53.32 100
2022-09-29 15:24:21 53.44 100
2022-09-29 14:52:48 53.51 100
2022-09-29 14:47:46 53.68 100
2022-09-29 14:42:44 53.9 100

chris_p that's fixed. I tested a few months back. AC coupled 535/535.my reserve is 25%.
Stops discharging at that

EdinH equates to 3.33v per cell.
90% SoC

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Just set mine to 20% as today has been terrible for generation, should hit 20% in the next hour

TheDragon (GivEnergy) aha, is that ok?

EdinH if 100% yes.
As top 10% isnt used

chris_p mine may get set towards 50% as we get into winter. As I dint have a cheap charge window, may aswell keep battery full ish. For reserve

Steady discharge today as no sun at all, and it's down to 7% and idling with voltage of 52.08v.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) good plan. Mine did stay at 20%, should be a good day tomorrow so will be interesting to see how many kW it takes to "fill" lol

EdinH divide by 16.
3.255v per cell.
So 30% real. Given the buffer your SoC is reading low. So you will soon hit the jump to 100% if you fully charge

Are GivEnergy going to give anyone anything on this at all?

TheDragon (GivEnergy) yes, I remember you saying it before. Which explains when it's charging and gets to 80ish it jumps to 100%. Just hope it gets sorted soon, but loosing my confidence with GE with this silence.

kram silence - yes, answers - no.....

41% to 0. Logging this here to keep the Devs aware this isn't going away.

Ideally an update on Monday and would be ideal to see this in known issues so it's logged openly.

Only alternative I can see to a software fix is that GE provide an additional inverter for each battery....?

I must be the lucky one. Not seen this since upgrading to 3007. Fingers crossed as I type this. 😁

Got down to 15% charge yesterday before the timed charge kicked in.

I'm not a lucky one. Since upgrading to 3007 I get a SOC drop to zero at least once a week - normally twice. Usually from 20 to 30% to zero. Had a BMS undervoltage as well.

Lmcde3 it affects single battery/inverters too

TX200 I wouldn't so smug, I thought I wasn't affected but then it happened...and happened again...

chris_p not smug, just adding some balance.

I had it a few times on the older firmware too.

TX200 Yeah no worries, sorry if it sounded mean, meant to be more of a 'you'll soon be one of us, one of us, one of us' kind of joke 😆

Emails direct to GE about this issue are also going unanswered.

sponev temped to write a letter to the CEO if there isn't any update soon.

I am another to join the SOC drop club. I have one 8.2 kWh battery (100% DOD) with AC 3 kWh, installed on 28th August.
System has worked well with sun and decent light on most days (10-25 kWh daily). Min SOC each day was 55-65% and I always got battery back to 100% before midday on next day.

Then came yesterday (30th Sept). Dreadful weather and only just over 3 kWh generated during the day. My max battery SOC was 75% which dropped down to 44% after late pm and evening use. Just after midnight, the 44% plummeted down to zero. The battery then 'recovered' to 4%, then 5% but the inverter then hung with status of 'waiting' until first solar about 8 am this morning (1st Oct), when it started to charge and stays changed to 'Normal'. is now nearly 1 pm and I have nearly got back to the 44%. My inverter has run on eco mode throughout.

I am on battery firmware 3007 and inverter firmware DO.534-A0.534.

Having spent the morning reading back through the grid, I am starting to regret having the GE inverter and battery installed. My PV is on 3 S, E and W, with optimisers, and goes into a Solaredge inverter which has been faultless. I will try speaking to GE on Monday.

Rob

I've been affected too with the 5.2kWh (80% DOD) model, though not as much as some by the sound of it:

1. 30/07 - Battery firmware upgraded to 3007
2. 30/08 - 17% to zero
3. 14/09 - 8% to zero
4. 01/10 - 15% to zero

Since starting this thread on 29th July my system has suffered no further sudden drops to 0% or jumps to 100% and the stabilised 100% SOC voltage has remained at around 52.8V and not slowly declined. Weird or what?

There, I've gone and jinxed it now! 😆

Woodstock My system was stable for many months. Then drops twice per week. It is very random.

I have looked further at info within the Inverter card.
2 days ago, on 29/09/2022, when the battery % was 100%, voltage hovered around 53 V
At 00:14 am this morning (1/10/2022), battery 44%, voltage 44.95 V
At 00:19 am this morning (1/10/2022), battery 0%, voltage 46.61 V
At 00:24 am this morning (1/10/2022), battery 1%, voltage 49.06 V
At 00:29 am this morning (1/10/2022), battery 4%, voltage 52.22 V
At 00:34 am this morning (1/10/2022), battery % was 5%, voltage 51.27 V

The then just hung with flashing light in centre. I tried to restart inverter from portal but I had an inverter 'time out'. Nothing happened till solar appeared in the morning when the battery started to charge.

At 15:35 pm, I am up to a battery % of 86% with voltage of 54.81%, higher that 100% 2 days ago.
But for the past 1.5 hr, the battery has stayed at 86%. Perhaps my new 100%?
Luckily sun and a light day with 12.6 kWh generated so far, Thanks sun.

On the side of the battery, the operational voltage range is 46.4–57.6 V.
So it looks as if the battery fell to 0 V because 'the voltage was below 46.4 when recording 44%

The battery had only been installed 5 weeks before and it went through the initial calibration using grid electricity.
Has the battery recalibrated itself today?
Do I have any faith in these values?

Quite shocked.
How can a recorded 44% really be 0%?
..... and 86% be perhaps 100%?
Hope GE gets this sorted.

Rob

The battery voltage is temperature sensitive, current sensitive and state of charge sensitive, so a first view doesn't neccessarily make sense.

Robin_perry Yes, one thing that I have noticed (3007) is that the stabilised 100% SOC voltage can remain the same (52.8V in my case) for many weeks; but once it starts dropping it will continue to drop day on day until an inevitable "sudden drop". At first (December 2021) I thought that there was a slow decline in 100% SOC battery voltage immediately following each recalibration but this is not the case. Rather the system runs normally for an indeterminate number of days/weeks until an unknown something kicks off the SOC drift which then gets progressively worse over time until the "sudden drop" occurs.

Hi, I have 4x 2.6kWh Gen1 batteries. Not really what I wanted but took what was available. All four of my batteries are on 3008 and seem to be behaving. How come this isn't available for everyone? Is the 3007 firmware the latest for Gen2?

Using GivTCP I've seen some strange values where there is a 10% difference in charge values, however the voltages are pretty much identical. I've even seen one battery on 1% when the others are on 100%. The only way to get it to read true was to delete the battery pkl file and restart the add-on.

chickengeorge I'm sure someone in this thread is also on 3008 but seeing the same issue as others. It affects multiple firmware versions but also seemingly doesn't affect some owners too, regardless of firmware version.

Well, if we don't hear anything from GE this week then there is something much bigger than firmware update and they are hiding it.

I have 3008 with 2 X 8.2s and a Gen 1 5Hy. 3008 was available via the inverter settings when I had a single battery. I did have some drops to zero when on 3007, but (touch wood) haven't seen it since loading 3008

chickengeorge I've got a single 8.2 that's on 3008. I do get step changes. All of mine, so far, have been jumps from some level to 100% rather than drops to 0%, but that might relate to the way I've been operating the battery.

Just for the record - I’ve been charging to 100% each night for the last week as solar is dropping. I’ve had drops before, last one about 2 wks ago - we discharged down to 15% today for first time in weeks, as large use of oven today; and yep - sudden drop to zero. If it wasn’t for this I’d have probably just made it to 12.30 and 7.5p / kw; as it is it’ll be the rest of the evening on grid at 39p/kw.

GrahamRead Not sure you would - as I understand it, the drop is due to the reported SOC getting out of kilter with the actual SOC.
Unless the real issue is something else. But I doubt it personally.

Lmcde3 I've given up reporting my drops as I haven't got the spare time unfortunately it happens that often 🙁

Woodstock My system has constant drift and doesn't need something to kick it off. I can more or less predict when its going to happen and at what level. Its about 5-6% a day.

Adam-Reynolds Any news on this?

The is no consistency in the issue as mine is now generating BMS Over Voltage alarms whereas the norm is for no notifications. Even spotted that the SOC went from 81% to 100% in the 5 minute block and the reported battery charge value does not stack up!

More on my experience. I spoke to 'George' at GE this morning. He told me that GE are aware of this issue and have several fixes being tested. He mentioned 'Firmware' and told me that a fix would be downloaded to customers affected. I asked him 'how long?' and his reply was 'a few weeks'. I referred to this very long community thread. So we will see, I guess.
My system is working fine now but better weather gets my battery up to 100% now by late morning.
Looking back again at my drop to zero just after midnight on 30 Sept/1st Oct, the voltage hovered around 52 V until 4 pm on 30 Sept, when the 'light' wasn't enough to charge the battery any more (only 3.3 kWh on 30th Sept). As the battery started being used, the voltage steadily dropped down to about 49 V at 11:30 pm. It then dropped quicker and seems to dive down to 0 V after getting below 45 V. Voltage had rarely got below 52 V before.
My battery is indoors in a steady temperature environment of 15-17C. Temp seems rise several degrees when battery charges and then falls when being discharged. On 30th Sept - 1st Oct, the temp rose a few degrees during evening discharge so this was atypical.

Rob

Rbor How will they know who are "affected costumers" do I need to formally lodge my battery issue with GE, and how? My 5.2 batt is affected on the upper end, it jumps from 80% when steadily charging to 100% within 5min of reaching that 80% mark (prior to re-calibration two weeks ago, it was jumping from 60% to 100% within 5min of hitting 60%. When discharged it goes down to 7% (which is clearly not a true DoD).

There’s that “2 Weeks” phrase again…
I’m not the only one thinking they’ve employed that decoy head from the film Total Recall am I?

Back in the day I used to do a lot of radio controlled car racing and as such they used batteries capable of discharging at fairly high rates. You could buy cheap battery packs which were just assembled using cells straight out of the box or you could buy the more expensive packs (or assemble your own) which had 'matched' cells, thus ensuring your battery pack would discharge at the highest possible rate for the longest possible time rather than the odd crappy cell dragging down the performance of the overall package.

I suspect that the batteries are the first instance I mention. Therefore, some people are lucky that their cells are all matched so don't see this issue but the majority are affected (if they realise) due to that 'rogue' cell dragging down the others.

I'm don't claim to be a battery expert, just someone who is affected fairly often by this issue and am offering a point of view.

EdinH I did ask 'Have you logged me as an affected customer?' and got the reply 'I will do it now'
So do I have confidence? Surely a fix would need to be sent out to everyone as updated firmware.
I have nothing in writing and may email also to flag my problem.

Rob

hoggy How do you know what the level of degradation is on the system? Do I need to use the API to get all the details, including the cell voltages, through HA or can it just be read from somewhere? This is getting far more involved than having a battery that charges and discharges to minimise the grid imports!

Ra Or possibly whatever is kicking it off is permanent or occurring every day?

Woodstock Possibly; if it is, its out of the box as I have no automation / scripts / code / whatever running. Mine is all vanilla so definitely not something I've done.

Tonycooper Sorry I'm not sure quite what you're after? If you're talking about degradation through long term usage, then I have a thread running here
Spoiler - I've apparently lost about 5% over nearly 2 years of usage.
Measured purely from the portals "Battery Charge / Battery Discharge Today" values - which although may not be 100% accurate as to the value they are repeatable so works fine for figuring out a % loss.
Note: Mine is force charged to 100% daily overnight no matter what so has done 8.8MWh to date.

Note: I don't actually suffer this bug personally but I am very curious as to why my (admittedly rather old tech) battery doesn't and all the newer ones seem to be struggling (and i was thinking about adding another but now I'm not obviously)

If you want to go deeper then Home Assistant is the only way to get individual cell data and all the other goodies like that. The portal & API had all those things removed barring the app which does now tell you the Battery voltage total Live (divide by 16 to get an average cell voltage)

Edit: As an aside that merely helps validate the cell chemistry I did last night do a full run on my dusty Pylontech stack and i've only lost 0.5kWh in 7 years (5.7kWh vs 5.2kWh now)

Ra That's what worries me too along with the thought that there is (apparently) no active cell balancing. Is the kit cheaper than other batteries because it's made of cheaper components? We're all speculating here which is why it's essential that GivEnergy tell us what's going on. If you saw similar issues on EV forums you certainly wouldn't be buying the cars I'd guess.

I would like to be proved wrong. This cannot be fixed with a firmware update, it's a fundamental flaw in the BMS and there is no balancing of the cells.
@hoggy likely you have Grade A cells, as the demand increased the quality could have slowly suffered.

No active cell balancing would be inexcusable in the larger battery packs. 16-20 cells need to be balanced.

ispookie666 I hope you're not right but it's the most credible explanation to date. If this is the case, then it's a big problem! With my install now 3 weeks away it's tempting to cancel the whole thing. Dismal. Hopefully GivEnergy will be along asap to prove us wrong and we can all move on. If they do have this problem, they also have a massive business issue.

Whatever happens now this is to be expected with very little communication. Speculation becomes rife and panic starts to set in.

FWIW most BMS will have firmware, so there is no saying that cell balancing can’t be added if it really isn’t there.

More important is a statement from GE before a lack of information and the ensuing speculation leads to a loss of confidence in the business and cancelling customers.

EdinH How will they know who are "affected costumers"

Their database will log every battery that drops to 0% and then recharges to 4%. It logs on your portal; it's visible to them. They know how many batteries are affected, and which.

hoggy Home Assistant is the only way to get individual cell data

It's Givtcp that's the only end-user data access, but accessible via HA as well as other sources. (eg MQTT Explorer).

sponev it's tempting to cancel the whole thing

Not all batteries exhibit this behaviour. It's a pain and unacceptable for those that do, Everyone wants a "copper bottomed" guarantee (which at these prices is not unreasonable). It's a bit like getting vaccinated; being the one in a million (or thousand or hundred) who is affected badly by side effects doesn't make it OK. It's just bad luck, but ultimately, it's your choice whether to go for it or not.

Tim will those affected at the upper limit with incorrect SoC be also "flagged up"? Mine hasn't started to drop off yet, but obviously it's not showing the correct SoC. This morning mine was idling on 7%, but God knows what was the true %?

This is all really strange, the silence from GE is really unprofessional to be honest. Imagine how many people are affected by this but totally unaware of the issue especially if they are not technically minded. My friend who is in armed forces has cancelled his battery part of solar PV system installation (he is often away and can't keep an eye on this nor he has any time to faff with it). Well done GE you are slowly but surely loosing customers.

Tim Not all batteries exhibit this behaviour. It's a pain and unacceptable for those that do, Everyone wants a "copper bottomed" guarantee (which at these prices is not unreasonable). It's a bit like getting vaccinated; being the one in a million (or thousand or hundred) who is affected badly by side effects doesn't make it OK. It's just bad luck, but ultimately, it's your choice whether to go for it or not.

I take your point but I'd disagree with the vaccination analogy. There is data surrounding that and good indication of the (very low) risk. Here we know very little other than an increasing number of folk on forums reporting an issue and minimal feedback from the supplier. So the magnitude of the problem is unknown, it could be minor or actually quite significant - and hence the concerns. The key now is for Givenergy to communicate and then we can make an informed decision.

Hey, I'm not worried. Our new PM and chancellor have cost my pension investments more than the battery cost in the last two business days. 🤣

@kram
As much as i'd like to believe in miracles, cell balancing is not a firmware fix for BMS. I cannot recollect if the batteries have cell balancing, I would hope so.

Used to run Active cell balancing on a DIY battery pack which was significantly derated and hell, that pack was more reliable than this.

@Tim that is putting a lot of faith in this company. My own experience has made me wary. I guess most of us would probably accept if GE come up and say this cannot be fixed and we f****d up

to dispel some fears, I had a look tonight, they do have balancers (well at least my 80% DOD 8.2 does) -
The chip is
Lapis ML5238 Link
This has no real brains though so the captain of the ship is:
STM32F105RCT6 Link
A magnificent 72Mhz might I add!

The board itself is G00A-14S0001-0, all the daughter boards share the same PN but increment the 2nd to last digit (G00A-14S0002-0..... and so on) and no they don't show up on Google nor anything that looks remotely like them.

Message from hoggy he is fine now, after electrocuting himself trying to shed some light on this issue.....

I can see the cells within my batteries are within 0.002v (ish) between each cell. I assume there must be cell balancing... I appreciate these readings probably are not that accurate.

Edit: And between 4 batteries there is 0.5v difference.

EdinH absolutely not live footage....(jokes apart I spend half my life fault finding in control panels before anyone asks)

hoggy hahahaha. I didn't doubt you at all. I thought that you knew what you were doing. So, in your opinion in plain English what's your thoughts what you saw inside the "box" and what you reckon is the possible issue?

EdinH i need to have a bit more of a dig through the Lapis full manual here but the chip itself doesnt just appear to give out an SOC it relies on the ST controller (and hence someones code to interpret the data the Lapis returns) to calculate an SOC so this would appear to hold true to what GE reports - that its a firmware fix.
What i dont know is if the Lapis chip actually reads everything as accurate as is necessary for an application like this (the brochure mentions UPS applications but also power tools and ebikes so im not sure if there is an upper limit as to how big of a cell bank it can reliably handle)

I need to digest the bit about cell balancing, it appears to work in banks of 8? so i think the upper 8 cells can balance amongst each other, and the lower bank the same, but not sure if the two 8s can balance each other...

Mine has just dropped to 0% again.

1st occurance on the 14th Sept
2nd occurance on the 28th Sept.
3rd occurance on the 4th Oct. (today)

Looks like it is becoming more frequent for me now.

I guess I should point out that I don’t know why my old 2020 batt doesn’t suffer the drops hence me sending pictures of a BMS that on the face of it works fine is not much help to those that it doesn’t.
Chip shortages, revisions etc may all have forced a different selection of components since mine was built….

Very odd how Adam Reynolds is not responding at all for some time now, especially after that "emergency meeting".

hoggy

I would have a look at mine, but for fear or invalidating the warranty, I'm not pulling it apart. If the pack fails prematurely as a result of this fiasco, there will for sure be many others in the same boat, costing GE a ton of replacement packs

Mine is dropping to 0% now every couple of days from around 30%. In HA, I've now setup a battery voltage meter to compare the voltage to the SoC. I estimate that the actual 'real' SoC is around 40% looking at the pack voltage but the Givenergy SoC is 84%. This is after 3 days.

Mine is getting worse, if it manages to go a week without crashing to 0%, it will crash from 70% giving me just 30% of my 8.2kwh battery.

I also phoned Givenergy 2 weeks ago and was told a couple of weeks for a firmware update. To be honest, I'm more angry with the total lack of communication than the inconvenience it's caused me. Doesn't cost anything to say they are on it even if there isn't much progress. Come on Givenergy.

The Lapis claims 16cell balance function and typical voltage accuracy to 20mV or 0.02V.

Where are you seeing that it will only balance 8 cells against 8? There appears to be a 16 cell switch on the data sheet.

I note some people mentioned cell drops of 0.2 or 0.3V, but that would be less than the accuracy claimed by the Lapis device data sheet. As such they could just be noise or anything unless I’ve missed something obvious.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) yeah I don’t for one second expect people to pull their packs apart (shouldn’t have to anyway that’s kind of the point of buying a package system not a bag of bits)
Only did Mine as it had none of the red shrouding like the newer ones seem to have, this was literally what you see when you take the lid off mine to get to the usb. I guess after GE discovered installers can’t be trusted with crimps it was the time to fit shrouds so they don’t end up fried!

I was expecting some heat sinks which I guess are on the back / use the battery housing as a heat sink or it’s doing true cell balancing without bleeding off (which I guess it might as I’ve never noticed mine use any further power once it hits 100%)

@kram it was just a quick glance mate I’ve got better things to be doing. Something along the lines of them being described as 8 higher and 8 lower - or along those lines. I’ve not really picked through the details.

hoggy I need to digest the bit about cell balancing, it appears to work in banks of 8? so i think the upper 8 cells can balance amongst each other, and the lower bank the same, but not sure if the two 8s can balance each other...

It's working in two banks because the registers are eight bit, electrically, it's one chain of 16 switches. The controller needs to read the voltages from the balancing IC and decide which individual cells are too high and discharge them through the switches and external resistors, bearing in mind the limitations of total IC heat load and the restrictions on adjacent switches etc. being enabled.

mrand31

An 8 bit register can deal with 0-255 eg 256 values.

I’m clearly missing something obvious, but can’t see a mention of 8 but on the spec sheet.

Hang on.. you mean 8 but register, storing 8 Boolean on/off values rather than a binary encoded value that states which cells to discharge.

kram Hang on.. you mean 8 but register, storing 8 Boolean on/off values rather than a binary encoded value that states which cells to discharge.

Yes, that. One bit for each switch. More than one cell can be dischrarged at a time, but the device does have limitations (which the data sheets say in inhibits) on discharging cells next to each other at the same time

@hoggy @kram @mrand31 you guys are awesome. Maybe some one will neeed to comeup with an off the shelf fix for this stuff.
Reporting from Victron Smart shunt - the gap has increased to 6%, but boy does it swing wildly!

ispookie666 That I don't think we are far from, someone hacking the firmware and creating custom versions before GE have got their act together!

Has anyone noticed the battery information has disappeared from the App display?

I wonder if the GE lot are in the middle of abit of a rework!!

Stevef1964 Battery info is showing on my app

Stevef1964 still showing on mine in landscape tilt tho.

Latest update was 3 days ago on my Iphone and Ipad.

Rebooted and info has not reappeared.

Stevef1964 i am on Android

chris_p

@hoggy can you have a look and see if there’s a jtag or serial header on the board in any of your pictures.

Obviously it’s not safe to just play but I’m curious if that data can be got at either through a serial, a console or even better givTCP.

ispookie666

I’d be interested in seeing what you mean by swinging wildly means with some example figures if possible.

kram there’s one 8 pin one to the left of the ST Chip, labelled CN3. Think the traces head over to it which would make sense for flashing purposes. You can see it in the pics if you enlarge them.

Mine idling now on 7% according to the app with battery voltage of 52.14v (which should be 25-30% in real terms). Battery charged a bit from solar today as it's been crap weather, so now it's drawing from the grid.......

hoggy

Thanks

There’s a fair bit of either rough soldering/rework or bits that could have overheated a bit on that ST board. That or it’s just an artefact of the picture.

Is it rough/cooked or just the picture?

I might have a dig through GivTCP see if there’s anything you can get low level.

ispookie666 I'd like to think it will be GE coming up with the fix!! 😃

kram Likely just the picture (these two I turned up the exposure as far as it would go on my phone to read the chip PN's)

GE have seriously gone quiet with this. Absolutely nothing...heloooooo anyone there?

Can't believe nothing has been posted in here for 2 days now so I'm giving it a bump. My issue definitely hasn't gone away!!

Ra i agree, just can't believe that GE have not provided absolutely no update whatsoever on this. They have simply gone quiet especially after the "emergency meeting". It's getting rather worrying now to be honest will they be able to sort this issue at all or is it more to it and they are not saying?

Adam Reynolds hasn't even logged on to this forum for 3 weeks.
https://community.givenergy.cloud/u/Adam-Reynolds

The other day I wrote that the battery details on the main screen of my Iphone and Ipad app had disappeared.

Now I've just noticed that the battery indicator colour on the main screen does not turn green when the charge reaches 20%. I'm currently at 44% and it is still at yellow.

I've rebooted both devices and restarted the apps on both but it still remains at yellow.

I check for app updates on a daily basis and the app was last updated on the 29th Sept

I cant see any indication on my PC using the cloud version that says the invertor has been updated or altered.

I assume the information on the app is taken directly from the invertor via the dongle and my wi-fi.

So why have these changes occured?

Could GE be making changes that we can't see?

Stevef1964 My app shows green at 50% I think but not really paid that much attention to it. Maybe start a new thread and maybe a GE dev might throw some light on it.

The point I was trying to make was "With these little changes are there things going on in the background to fix this SoC problem?"

BTW - I'm now at 50% and mine has turned green like yours.

Stevef1964 Even if it is related, until we hear from GE then this is all just speculation.

Stevef1964 GE can do little things to the portal & app here in the UK but it's only cosmetic in respect to the hardware.
The battery firmware mods that are needed are done over in China, so GE UK are essentially stuck in the middle waiting on a fix, which they then need to test over here before issuing.

As an aside (and purely speculative), they will at some point very shortly need to shift from their current unit to the new factory (if they want to get the EV charger going out of there by Christmas as they intended) - I have a feeling that is going on right now as we've not had much input on here, the app & portal weekly updates have slowed, all their Demo Portal plants went offline earlier in the week then came back up and so on...
That will likely involve disturbing/moving the firmware test units as well which will be another delay.

They also haven't answered my email requesting to know what they are doing to resolve this issue. With an installation now just a couple of weeks away (and likely a gen 1 inverter rather than the gen 2 I ordered) it's very difficult to go elsewhere now. If there were alternatives with sensible prices and leadtimes I'd be off like a shot. GivEnergy have proved to be fairly dismal to be fair - there is no excuse for ignoring customers, fast expansion or otherwise.

hoggy

Which has been sent back 3 times for rework, bug found. So I read into this that they want it done right before they issue it, and it a dud.
Trying to remain positive

TheDragon (GivEnergy) The old adage of no news is good news is a difficult one to abide by at the moment, but I agree, if/when they make their next public announcement, it needs to be "we need testers as we believe this issue is resolved" and that it really be resolved, it has to be.

Zakalwe I think someone said he was on leave. Not sure for how long. Hope it's not sick leave!

Well thats not how you want the long forum thread to end as a soon-to-be new customer!

I have 2x 9.5 kWh and 2x AC3 on order for delivery sometime soon, not entirely sure when. I'm fairly technical myself having built a little off grid solar setup with a 12V leisure battery and current sensors with an Arduino, and can confirm it's really hard to work out how much energy is left in a battery! However this thread doesn't really fill me with confidence and wondering If I should cancel and look elsewhere.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) Have you had much success with this?

elsmorian I set mine to 20%, and of course sods law that earlier in the week it got to 21% and crashed to 0%

chris_p Hah, of course 🙁 Am I right in thinking there is no way to kick off a calibration locally?

elsmorian Nope, GE support or I think an installer can do it but mine had to ring to get GE to do it when first put in

A week of charging and discharging but never hitting 100% (2*8.2 battery) the error has steadily increased ![https://ibb.co/9hRHgXJ]
I'm hoping to reset the Victron SOC when I do a calibration. The weekend plan is to redo the wiring connecting ESP8266 to VE Direct.

ispookie666 Oh cool you are using an ESP to read the VE Direct serial from the Smart Shunt? Do you have charts for the difference in reported SoC over time?

I wonder if the drift is worse when the battery is under higher loads

Sadly I have lost faith and have pulled my order for 3 x AC and 3 x 9.5 batt plant setup which was due for install any time now. The plant setup issues were worrying enough but the battery SOC issue with little positive communication is to much of a risk for me to sink £20k into. I’m now going with a Victron and Pylontech setup witch has more flexibility for my needs. I hope this issue gets resolved for those with existing installs.

Kryten eek, yeah I'm a bit worried.

Haydj

Bad news matey: I got mine about a year ago and it's been doing this ever since. It even started slamming to zero at 44-8% instead of 20-24% at one point.

Reported it via the portal whenever it happens, and always 'the next firmware' is going to sort it, always it does not. Deeply unimpressed tbh, even more so now I've found this thread and realised just how many other people are having this issue on effectively brand new batteries, and just how fobbed off I've been - quite clearly I've been getting a stock answer, they haven't bothered to look at my actual battery. Pretty sure given the nice even 24/48% split that this is a problem with the battery modules themselves since you buy them in 2.x chunks and I have the 8-9 battery, the maths is just too perfectly aligned I'd want to see evidence now that it isn't a dodgy battery pack.

I don't believe it is not 'charging to full' because it takes the exact amount from the grid I would expect it to overnight so as to charge back up to 100%. The issue is it then sometimes only discharges about 75% of that energy - you can see from the main portal graph - before going 'ah, no oops I'm out of power now'.

I wanted to get a second GE battery but I'm seriously rethinking, wondering if I can just get my money back and go with a different battery company given I've got so many error reports submitted in yr 1. Honestly, the batteries and portal are very sexy and clever, but what's the point when you can't rely on the SOC?

hoggy
It does seem to me that it has to be problem cells. The figures line up too well:
I have an 8-9kwh GE battery.
Drops, when they happen, happen from 24% and 48% or so. Roughly in chunks of 25%.
There are four cells in a 8-9KWH GE battery

You can't tell me that's firmware. Not after a year of dropouts at those %s and multiple firmware updates.

I'm at the point of cancelling my large Givenergy installation even though it's 2 weeks away and a long time coming. I don't want the risk of 19kwh of storage and inverter sat there not working properly and an unresponsive supplier.

I was recommended the GivEnergy equipment a while back and didn't really research anything else other than Powerwall. What are the recognised "best" systems currently available please (technically)? If I have to pay more and wait longer, so be it. I've been told to look at SolaX, Huwawai and Puredrive - anyone got any experience of those please?

elsmorian

Yes.
Setting reserve at 25% last 7 days the lower battery SoC is bottoming out at 26%. The higher one is some 20% higher. The actual SoC at the set reserve is approx 35%, using the idle cell voltage of 3.26v. Which tally with the set point of 25+ the internal reserve .

I also havnt done a full to 100% charge for a week either. To see the effect. The drift between low and high reporting reading seems to have stopped drifting any more now.

TheDragon (GivEnergy) interesting. Are those three readings because you have 3 batteries? Or are they the internal cell SoC?

dunklezhan I'm not sure where you're getting 4 cells from, there's 16 in every one of GE's battery products.
I know the likes of Moixa, Aton Storage and so on just bundle up multiple Pylontech 2.4's in a pretty box to get to whatever storage capacity they need but GE ones don't work like that.
You get 16 cells every time - all at 3.2V each and the only change is how "big" each cell is in AH - 51AH for the 2.6kWh to ~ 220AH for the new 9.5kWh)

Thats an 8.2 one.

Edit: do you mean you've got 4x small 2.6kWh batteries fitted on yours? This forum really needs a signature line adding to know what peoples installed kit is!

elsmorian 3 batteries yes.
All in parallel so impossible to be at different charge levels.

But they report different

Given all this silence from GE, I really wonder if this will ever be sorted or could it be sorted, and also what options we as the consumers have? Can we simply return the product as obviously is not performing as it should? Will the installer accept the return?

I really don't understand why people on this thread are beeing so needy/whiny/impatient. The batteries are still working, even if they aren't always working as well as they should. They're still saving you money. I get the odd jump in SOC, but I don't get my knickers in a twist over it.

In time, we'll hear from GE. Until that time, live with it!

Poor business practice and customer service.

mrand31 When you're about to drop a considerable amount of wedge on something which appears to have an underlying problem in an increasing number of cases, it's not unusual to have some concerns. Particularly where the bl@@dy supplier fails to answer reasonable questions!

mrand31 maybe because we spent rather large amount of money for the product that is not working properly. I sincerely hope that it will be sorted out soon. Surely anyone who bought a brand new product that has developed a fault would be entitled to have it sorted.

mrand31

Because the maths of a battery is borderline at best when it comes to paying for itself. So when the battery is dropping charge, that swings it firmly into the doesn’t make financial sense area.

Those who have paid are reasonably peeved and those who are thinking of paying are reasonably thinking of avoiding.

kram Guess you are basing that on today's prices? I'm due for full ROI in 7 years of ownership.

chris_p

Solar definitely does, but 4K on a battery means you need to save 33.3p per kWh for 12,000kWh.

That battery holding 9.5, but let’s call it 10kWh means every day where you can fill it you could save £3.33, but inverter losses let’s call it £3.

Say it’s 75% of the year you can fill it for free 280 days a year or £840 savings. At that it’s paying for itself in 5 years. But degradation means that’s going to be longer as each year it holds slightly less. At current high prices it’s realistically 6-7 years. But if prices drop down to 16-20p, then you’re up at or beyond 10 years, which is your warranty.

I’m not saying they can’t make sense, but if you lose 25-50% of that and the charge isn’t reliable then obviously it’s make the battery quite questionable.

Just my opinion and I’m still looking at a battery for other reasons, but you can see why it not being reliable for backup purposes can put you off that too.

kram Yeah I've done the maths, I just wondered why you were as concerned and I guess I'm less concerned because I didn't pay £4k for my battery.

I got mine to avoid export from solar. It does that.

Load shifting from overnight to daytime is a fine balance I agree, but will recoup its cost before the 10 year warranty is up for sure.

I've saved 1400 since install. Granted solar has been here for a few years now and has already paid for itself, so can include this revenue to offset battery cost.

Add in the EPS option and threat of blackouts, set a reserve, configure EPS sockets and buy a couple of extension leads.

Job done

Yes, since the (8.2kWh) battey was installed, we've only exported on very rare occasions other than a few times when the Agile Export ratrs were enough to make a deliberate charge and export worth the faff. Not having to import that energy is saving me enough that the system as a whole will pay back in 5-7 years. A few percent here or there on battery usable charge makes little difference to the sums.

Don’t get me wrong, I want EPS functionality and like the battery for being able to run day and a good chunk or night without import.

But when that is unreliable I can get peoples frustrations.

It seems very much the case in the UK that high prices and poor service are the norm these days. Not just for solar by the way.

Stevef1964 Mine has just dropped to 0% again.

1st occurance on the 14th Sept
2nd occurance on the 28th Sept.
3rd occurance on the 4th Oct. (today)

Looks like it is becoming more frequent for me now.

Now happened again this morning dropped from 17% to 0% and cost me about 30-40pence to recover to 4%

However, I made more than enough yesterday to cover what it cost, so as long as that continues I'll wait it out.

But the silence from GE really is not helping!!

That's bloody expensive 'leccy, unless you're talking about three or four batteries. 😀

If this system wouldn't save me so much money long term I would have requested my money back from the installer. Another 2 battery drops from 45% this week.

mrand31

It’s 35p per kWh now.
4% is probably 500Wh or nearly 20p.
2 batteries = 40p

mrand31 Perhaps you're not getting your knickers in a twist because you're getting the 'odd' jump. Myself amongst others are getting it fairly frequently. If you were driving your car somewhere and it told you that you had 100 miles left in the battery and then it just went flat leaving you stranded you'd be pretty annoyed.

I'm going to be contacting my supplier this week to give him a heads up that I will be returning my equipment before the 6 months are up as it is down to the supplier to prove that it is working correctly in that timeframe compared to me having to prove that it was after 6 months.

The absolute lack of communication from GivEnergy is what is killing this. It doesn't take 5 minutes to give a quick update of what is happening, what is going well, what is going not so well.

I am guessing that @Adam-Reynolds has been dragged off to Siberia by the Stasi for breaking the GivEnergy code by telling us that it wasn't going very well and they were having an emergency meeting. Not been heard from since, coincidence? I think not.....

EdinH you do have certain rights enshrined under the CRA 2015

Ra If you were driving your car somewhere and it told you that you had 100 miles left in the battery and then it just went flat leaving you stranded you'd be pretty annoyed.

I think that, after a few times, I'd be bright enough to reckon that it was empty when it said 100 miles and plan my charging accordingly. If you get a drop to zero consistently from 20%, plan your charging and discharging to suit until it's sorted. Just like I'm assuming that mine will jump from 80% to 100%...

mrand31 Shouldn't have to is my point. If I was told I'd have to do this before handing over my hard earned cash I'd have gone somewhere else.

Ra Completely agree. I'm 11 months into ownership so my options are becoming more limited.

mrand31 I should also have added that mine is not consistent in dropping from 20% to 0%, it has occurred from a number of values ranging from 20% to 50%. No way of planning if the value is variable!

It's certainly not ideal, and seems to be affecting people in different ways and of course some people will be using every last Wh of their batteries while others will only be using a bit, and different styles of use sounds like they are able to mitigate things or not to a varying degree.

It might also be the case that @Adam-Reynolds no longer works at GivEnergy, or at least no-longer has a forum account - I turned on email notifications for this thread, and in the email updates when people tag them, the text of the tag looks to be @Adam-Reynolds so maybe for whatever reason they no longer are on the forum- or maybe thats me reading too much into things!

Hello everyone, sorry for the lack of updates regarding this. Firstly, Adam has been on annual leave the last few weeks hence his radio silence, He's not left or been silenced for speaking out, rather been tanning himself and playing video games.

Following on from the meeting Adam eluded to, the firmware devs have come through with a few possible fixes but none that we think would be viable going forward sadly. As of today, we've had a breakthrough with a possible solution, and have started testing. we will keep you updated how that goes. Cheers.

Looking at their LinkedIn page, in the last week they've announced a new CEO and new FD! https://www.linkedin.com/company/givenergy/posts/?feedView=all

@GeorgeRawding Thank you for the eventual update. As you can probably see from reading this thread that most people are more concerned at the lack of communication rather than the fear that GE cannot fix the issue. Please, please, please learn from this a don't keep us in the dark going forward. It will keep speculation and frustration to a minimum and may have saved you a few potential customers from the looks of those that have said they have cancelled orders on the back of this very thread.

GeorgeRawding Many thanks for the update. As Chrisp says ^^^^ please don't keep us in the dark, I'd rather hear any update good or bad rather than radio silence as it just feeds the paranoia.

GeorgeRawding Thanks for the update. I'm one of several people at the point of cancelling unfortunately - mine is a large installation and it's very frustrating as we've waited months. Please keep us updated.

My concern is that the issue isn't trivial and if it was, you'd no doubt have fixed it by now. Can you confirm what it is please and if you think it can be resolved via firmware - or is it a more deep-seated hardware issue? We can then make an informed decision. We would really appreciate this feedback and it will prevent a lot of angst which is spreading here and on other channels.

Ra Indeed! It's laughable to even consider trying to manage an EV battery where you have no confidence in the charge level.

Thank you for the update. It is incredibly frustrating - Givenergy SOC is showing 100% but my Victron is stuck at 92%. This is not even accounting for Victron smart shunt not having fully gone through calibration.
The resting voltage of 3.3V per cell is pants!

@GeorgeRawding Video games!? Outrageous!! 😉

Thanks for the update, it’s definitely the main thing I and i think many others were missing- this stuff can be tricky, and while we wait for the fix an update of “we are still working on it” is appreciated even if it’s not a big change from what it was.

GeorgeRawding to those that suffer from this quite a lot (rather than the odd drop once every few months) can you offer them any advice at all to help mitigate - charge to X once a week, discharge to Y once a month...?
That or list what running regimes cause the highest likelihood of drift so people can attempt to adjust operation going into winter? (Which should be known if your testing / forcing the circumstances right now to prove a theory)

@GeorgeRawding cheers for the update.

Some news, even bad is better than radio silence.

GeorgeRawding

I don't suppose you'd be able to give a summary of the options that didn't make the cut and if you're premitted to give a very high level view of what's actually wrong and how you might fix it?

Essentially I've got money down on a GE inverter and battery but having been messed around more than once by solar companies I'm considering just putting in old school victron kit that has proven reliable in off grid systems instead.

I do appreciate that there's probably a limit on what can be said, but in a time where a large premium is being charged for products, I imagine many of us are very cautious about paying for something that will probably work.

chris_p
Yeah, prices are definately attracting a real premium at the moment :/

kram Might sell mine then 😆

hoggy how often is it happening for you?

GeorgeRawding it’s not, I’m on an old seemingly immune 8.2 (although I don’t know why) it’s more of a general question for those not so lucky.

kram I can't go into the specifics sadly. I think it's important to note that this issue is affecting a relatively small amount of our customers if you factor in how many systems are installed. Factor in as well, that the majority of people who do have this issue aren't that badly affected by it. I hate this forum for that reason, all of the (justifiable) complaints about this issue just become a bit of an echo chamber, when the vast majority of customers aren't even aware of this as a problem.

Thanks @GeorgeRawding

I understand.

On the echo chamber, I do know what you mean, but an official statement from GE that can be referenced stating some small number of battery packs are having issues, that it will be resolved or they will be replaced etc would be good. Detail of which models the issue has been seen in etc would be nice, so people are not assuming everything.

Also as @hoggy said what can be done to avoid/minimise it until such a time would be really useful for those who are getting hit with peak rate recharges.

GeorgeRawding I'm just unlucky then 🙁 I think I've gained a sixth sense as to when a drop is coming, normally its when we've had a few days of sun so the battery gets charged fully so by the time morning comes around I've still got ₄₀%. Eventually though it will drop from above this figure to 0%.

If I have a bad days generation following a few good days so the battery doesn't get charged I know I'm going to wake up to a completely flat battery/drop from >20% and the house pulling from the grid 🙁

I don't think I've ever seen my battery functioning in the 4-20% range unless it has been charging immediately after a drop.

GeorgeRawding . Well you could have stopped this "echo" as you call it, by simply keeping people informed. Escpecially the people affected!

I am now one of the "relatively small amount" of people affected by this and to find out this has been dragging on and made worse by your silence is not amusing.

My system was installed in June and I seemed to have no problems until September - so what started it and why?

Plus I have raised this issue with your support dept, but as yet I have not had a repsonse.

And lastly, why is it not on the knowns issues page? Or is it under a specfic title?

Stevef1964 I'm in a similar situation. My battery was installed in June and work fine until about 6 weeks ago. Then it started dropping from 60% to 0%. My colleague and neighbours with the exact same system haven't had any issues. I rang last week for an update and at the same time, GE did a calibration but its not resolved anything. Dropped from 25% again. Rang again today and been told 2 weeks again 😞

cbowen just to be clear, you were told to wait 2 weeks for a fix? Or 2 weeks for a calibration?

GeorgeRawding Thanks George. However the lack of feedback is not great and has caused a lot of concern and lessened credibility unfortunately. There are clearly a good number of folk who do have this issue and failing to help them quickly isn't acceptable, irrespective of how busy you are or how minor you perceive the issue to be.

Folk affected in such a way are entitled to be hacked off and send the kit back, which I'm sure could be avoided with some decent communication or post installation support. Hopefully it is fixable and please keep us updated - it will save a lot of grief.

elsmorian Sorry, 2 weeks for the firmware to be released. However, I was told 2 weeks 4 weeks ago when I rang then.

sponev communication seems to be a common denominator in our cases!…...

This can be a problem when you don’t control all the software developers and your supplier says next week for a fix. Then when it’s not ready next week you hear it again, and again and again. As you don’t directly pay the staff it’s much harder to force the matter.

It might take 3 months and they might know it too. With a lot of places in Asia it’s culturally rude to say no, so often they avoid saying no if they can. If you ask the right questions in the right way you’d probably be told 2-3 months rather than next week until it’s ready.

Whilst the result is the same one allows you to tell people three months and the other ends up in much frustration for all involved.

I am not sure I believe what they are telling me. All evidence suggests that this is a serious problem that they cannot fix. I will revise my position should they provide a solution. But as of now, I do not have much faith.

Robin_perry

Trust is easy to lose and a lot harder to restore once lost. I do agree GE will need to go the extra mile pretty soon if I’m not to change the battery/inverter system.

GeorgeRawding Do you guys run reports to see how many units installed have percentage drops greater than 10% - 60%?

I'm happy to run tests if they tell me how. However, I don't think this is one of the reports I am able to run.

An email from Giv support this morning says it is definitely firmware related (not hardware) and that a fix is in hand. No timescale however. On the basis of that and the battery warranty, we intend to proceed with the installation. If there is a problem in future which goes unresolved in a sensible timescale, we'll use the warranty protection and return. But hopefully all is resolved soon. Let's see.

sponev Sounds positive, I'll reserve final judgement until I see at least a month of no crashes to 0% ha!

sponev How long did you have to wait to get the response back from support?

Stevef1964 12 days.

sponev won't hold my breathe then!!!

If anyone is interested, there is a set of videos on Youtube from Stafl Systems that describe the BMS and the various components of the software that are monitored / derived. Not too geeky and relate to L-Ion battery types but the general concept must be similar.
Hopefully, if the alarm and protection levels that were described previously on this channel then the hardware should be okay and the firmware will sort the issue. Might consider adding another battery to the system after a period of stability.

Lots of useful information here >>> https://lifepo4.com.au/lifepo4-soc-and-everything-else-you-need-to-know/ that I was reading the other day.

Interesting graph showing the discharge voltage being fairly linear until 20% where it drops off a cliff. This is why I assume the 100%DOD battery packs are oversized approximately 20%

Ra if you watch a calibration you can see the sharp rise above 95% and below 20

I've just had a sneaky thought...
I wonder if the current algorithm works by integrating charge and discharge values to estimate the SOC rather than battery voltage. If it does, how would it allow for the charge lost when balancing cells?

Note:- this thought is worth almost as much as you paid for it. 😆

sponev I do not believe this. If it is this firmware, then why is not everyone experiencing it (remember: Givenergy told us that these are isolated problems to a few customers).
I think this is down to random battery/cell quality. Some batteries are simply not up to standard.
I will be invoking my warranty before the 6 months run out. I think everyone should do the same.

Robin_perry I agree Robin, it just doesn't add up. There are plenty of people here with different combinations of hardware, inverters, batteries etc. If it was software then way more people should be affected, not the "isolated few" they claim.

P.S. Do leave you opinion on trustpilot etc. People need to know what is happening and how we are being treated.

Robin_perry I'm preparing mine to post once the next firmware is released... or by the end of October, whichever comes first (as if we need to guess!)

3rd battery dump from 40% in a week. What do I win?

Robin_perry I think this is down to random battery/cell quality. Some batteries are simply not up to standard.

I've been keeping an eye on the individual cells in my bettery with GiveTCP. They're all tracking together within a few millivolts. When there is a jump in apparent SOC they're all at the same voltages. So I'm not seeing any battery/cell issues. I'll go with firmware that needs tweaking.

Robin_perry I share your concerns and I'm still not convinced. This is why I asked some specific questions to make sure we're covered legally in the event of problems down the track. I have an email stating clearly that there are no issues with the batteries and that it is definitely firmware related. So with that and the battery warranty, I'm going to proceed. Frankly I don't have much of an option at this stage other than to wait even longer and pay inflated rates for alternative kit. Hopefully our scepticism is ill-founded and all is good!

I might be the only one eagerly waiting for the SOC to drop to 0, so that I can charge to 100%, this will hopefully make things easier for my Victron Smart shunt. ![https://ibb.co/5WL68vJ] https://ibb.co/0n7Rd6z
Still a work in progress - Need to solder a few wires on to the ESP8266 and reduce interference.
First chart is trend over 36 hrs (fair bit of noise in the Victron SOC chart - trying to get to the bottom of this, likely as the data polling in every few seconds and occasionally the current flowing reverses when loads turn off or on) . The gap narrows and widens between the two SOCs

Since I asked the question on a previous post "What started this and why?" I have been giving it some more thought.

On the 9th Sept I installed a MyEnergi Eddi to run my water heating. This kit itself is nowhere near the solar stuff, but the CT clamp is on the same live feed as the solar one. The clamp has been placed the other side of a connection boxed and is at least six inches away.

So, shoot me down if totally absurd, but could there be interferance between clamps which could cause the firmwre to throw a wobbly.

For me this could answer my system starting to experience this problem from the 14th Sept.

Also, could it explain why some systems are affected whilst others are not? Other peoples systems have a number of different bits of kit added to them using CT clamps. GE would have no site of these either.

I'm due another crash in a few days, so, after it happens I will assume the system has reset itself and I'm going to move my Eddi CT clamp to the neagative side (and reverse it) to see if this does the trick.

Going to hide behind the sofa now!!

danerf You win my sympathy, I just had one this morning from 34% and sods law the sun is nowhere to be seen 🙁

Stevef1964

No, the Current transformers won't/don't interfere with each other, so you're ok on that (was part of the day job many years ago at power stations).

What I (in my ignorance) just don't get, is why this is such an issue. The 'fully charged' state (90% of the true 100%?) is indicated by a resting voltage of 53.5V or so (and that is presumably further refined by the calibration run). The fully charged voltage while charging is also a 'known'. The inverter knows the capacity of the pack and how much has been used or replaced because it's measuring it all the time. So why do the actual and real available kWh get so far out of sync? I'm sure there are other variables or calibration points that can usefully be incorporated as well, and smoothing obviously required to ensure that a sudden high load at low state of charge doesn't trip the under voltage, but surely that's all implemented by default. Enlightenment appreciated.

SimonP

Maths/rounding errors, using incorrect types, pointer errors in software can easily cause that and are but a few examples.

However once identified they shouldn’t be a slow fix.

@SimonP unfortunately voltage is a poor surrogate marker for SOC in these batteries. Hence why we are in this mess.

If we are using the full capacity every few days, I doubt we will see these drops. A lot of us have multiple batteries and have not been emptying them due to solar generation helping out. Likely we will see less and less of this as the days get shorter.

ispookie666 My battery only charges when the sun is well up - hasn't got above about 60/70% for weeks now - its a 100% DOD 8.2kWh battery - and doesn't seem to have the issue it only drops from upto 6% or so to 0% and does a 1kWh recharge to get back to 4% once every week or 3.

I've got a feeling that the dev team are playing with my battery (I've seen 2 recalibrations in the last few weeks). Unfortunately doesn't seem to be making a difference and the drops to zero seem to be getting more frequent.
18/9 39% drops to zero
21/9 31% drops to zero, and there was a battery recalibration later that day
23/9 14% to zero
27/9 48% to zero
29/9 22% to zero
2/10 15% to zero
4/10 25% to zero
5/10 battery didn't recharge much and gracefully went to zero overnight
6/10 seems to have been another forced battery fill
9/10 29% to zero
10/10 11% to zero
13/10 35% to zero

I can't see any pattern apart from a drop every 2-3 days.
[Running an AC coupled inverter + 9.5kW battery and solar panels]

ajcrewe Similar performance to my battery although I haven't seen any battery recalibrations. Bit naughty if they're doing it covertly in the background imho

Another drop over night, 8.2kW battery AC coupled inverter and Solar Panels, try to keep above the 33% SoC level otherwise I get this issue. last night my planning didn't work out. Currently paying for a battery thats lost 1/3 of its capacity 🙁

danerf

An electric bill?

Edit:

You almost think the battery SOC is being pulled from a random number generator they way things are going.

@GeorgeRawding

Can we get a regular update, even if it’s a still working on X on say a weekly basis?

There are of plenty of us waiting on installation and g2 inverters etc and I can’t be the only one losing faith and ready to change inverter/battery suppliers.

I've reported sudden drops before on this thread - but interestingly after many days of partial discharge, we had a "full discharge day from 100%", and tbh I was fully expecting a sudden drop - but nothing happened, it behaved impeccably and discharged down to 7% and stopped (OK should be 4%,, but it didn't show a sudden fall).

Even more interestingly - with ref to a comment above - I don't have a solar boost clamp on the tails any more (the iboost+ broke - different story, not impressed after only 3 yrs of use). Can't for the life of me see how this would be related, but as it was mentioned above....

just had yet another SOC failure, 38% to nothing. We have had a high use day, but the product is starting to concern me about its readiness for market. I have spent over 6k on two batteries to keep my costs down, with them failing once to twice a week. Without confidence it is all ok, I now get charged extra for the electric I couldn't plan around. The costs while trivial, just £2-3 each time mean that on the days it fails, my electric costs exceed the sum of the rest of the week. I emailed them again last week and never even received acknowledgment.
I am not going to lie, I am starting to consider whether to make a formal complaint and take action. This is not the brand I was sold on for the previously great service

mrand31 How and where do you use GiveTCP, i would like to start monitoring mine also

nicholasbooth I wrote an article on Hoggy's wiki https://wiki.terravolt.co.uk/docs/givtcp-installation-version-2-0/

It does require some knowledge - I also believe it can be done as an addin to Home assistant - but I've never done it!

anglefire Have installed it into HomeAssistant tonight. Thanks anyway. Am sure it will just give me more to worry about now 😃

Hello everyone, just to try and structure this all a bit more for you, I'll put an update out every Friday, barring any major breakthroughs.

As of today, we have an option that is looking promising on single battery systems, however doesn't seem to be working the same for systems with multiple packs. We've fed that back to the firmware team, who should hopefully be able to rectify that in a timely manner.

Unfortunately, I can't commit to being able to answer all of your questions on here, but like I say, I will going forward be putting out a statement every Friday regardless.

Cheers,

GeorgeRawding Thank you for the update, George. Just knowing that someone will keep us updated is helpful in itself - it is very much appreciated. Good luck with finding a solution for the problem with all setups.

Yes. another drop for me. I wish I had bought a powerwall.

GeorgeRawding Thanks George, this is appreciated. Hopefully the fix is sustainable and also something along quickly for us folk who have invested in more than one pack.

Robin_perry I scoped Powerwall and was at the point of ordering before being persuaded to go with Givenergy. On paper, the Giv gear looked at least as good, better leadtime and more cost-effective - but here we are. We have to hope that the fix that has been discussed above comes good very soon or there will be some hefty lumps winging their way back to Stoke. Fingers crossed it doesn't come to that and they can get it sorted.

Thanks @GeorgeRawding

General question to all - is the drop real? By that I mean, is it the battery(s) just reporting the wrong SOC and actually are taking the full capacity or that the SOC is stopping any more charge to be taken by saying its full when its not?

Actually not just the drop - but the spike too. So going from 80% to 100% in a step for example

anglefire My understanding is that when the system reports 100% and stops charging, the battery is really only 70-80% or whatever at capacity. So when it gets to 20-30% or whatever it really is empty and that is when it reports 0% as the voltage alarm goes off.

I never seen anything going back to grid, so never any actual loss, how it gets to thinking its 100% when it not is beyond me. I have two batteries so no immediate fix for me. The annoyance is they were specked to ensure in summer they cover all the nights use and car charging on a slow rate and in winter, charge at night off grid to cover of days usage. The days they just give up, well it costs a damn site more as they rarely go over night on the cheaper tariff.

anglefire , this has been covered in another thread.

It is not possible for that much energy to transfer in or out of the battery in the timescale of the SOC% jump, unless something got very hot which is not happening. The statement below equally fits the sudden drop to 0% when a low battery voltage is detected.

https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/818-sudden-jump-in-battery-to-full

The battery %SOC is only accurately known at 0 and 100% charge based on the battery voltage, so any other %SOC is always an estimate which potentially gets more inaccurate the longer it has been since it was at 0 or 100%.

What you are seeing is a resetting of the %SOC when the battery BMS realises it is not actually 79% charged but 100% instead. There is no sudden spike in energy in or out of the battery, just a change in the reported %SOC value.

There is ongoing work by GE on this to improve the accuracy, but it is worth checking that you already have the latest battery BMS firmware installed.

Battery firmware revisions
22 Adam Reynolds June 27, 2022 Firmware revisions 109843
This article will provide ongoing updates with any mass firmware releases with fixes, it will list the latest firmware from top to bottom.

BMS(3007) 07/04/2022

    Improvements made to battery state of charge jumps in where in some rare cases you may see the percentage jump.
    Resolves an issue with misrepresenting data of some cell level monitoring
    Improved balancing for dual battery packs on single inverter setups

GeorgeRawding

Thanks George, the updates will be appreciated.

Would you consider releasing an update to fix it for single batteries, then following up to fix it for multi battery if the latter might take some time?

Today (15.10.22) is the first time this has happened to us since installation on 12.08.22 (PV 4.32kW, GivEnergy Hybrid 3.68kW Inverter, 2x Givenergy 5.2kWh Battery)
SOC% 77% at 00:14:32, 29% at 00:19:34, 0% at 00:24:36 (from the Portal) before drawing from the grid to take it back up to 4%.
Do I need to report this elsewhere or do I just wait until there is a firmware update ?

img[/img]

Just noticed - from the Portal - drop from 13 to 3%. Look at the time - where has the missing 50mins gone? Also note the change in voltage. I assume it is because it's charging at full power to get back to 4%. If it is trying to use rhe pack voltage to estimate SOC then it's doomed ...
2022-10-15 08:49:37 53.17 -2472 19 3
2022-10-15 07:59:59 50.03 109 18 13
2022-10-15 07:30:14 50.55 53 18 15
2022-10-15 06:42:59 50.59 137 18 17

For the time part, I think its their server side as we have the same gaps of not updating.

Just add mine to one of the, ahem, small number of people affected - 2x 5.2 kWh AC coupled dropped from 33% to zero. Knew it was coming as the recorded voltage at 100% charge was dropping. Normally bob around in the 50 to 100% region.

Just noted on FB that one member had his battery installed two weeks ago with firmware version 3009.

30% to 0% this morning, happy to start beta testing when the firmware is ready.

I should really like to know why some people are experiencing regular, large, SOC drops and others are not, despite being on the same firmware.
I am not getting this.
AC3.0, firmware 3007, and our 2 x 5.2kWh batteries are regularly run up to 100% with Solar input, and back down overnight to 25% or less, depending on the final SOC when the Solar stops generating.
Always in ECO mode.

What are others doing differently that cuases their systems to report major SOC drops?

wilfleek My Gen 1 3.6 inverter and 8.2kW battery are set to eco and has never been changed. I would say this is the most "typical" setup in terms of hardware that I hear from other forum members?

Today I forced my battery to get really low. Managed to get it down to 18% and then 0, voltage was 45.28V.
The AC coupled inverter was stuck between 450-480W charging for a bit of time (0% SOC) with solar generation of 2.5kw, restart of the inverter seems to have fixed this.
Does the inverter go into a limp mode after the drop?

The Victron was reporting 7% SOC, have had a few manual adjustments as I have been playing with the wiring.

Last night I actually went pack over the graphs of SOC for every day since I got my 8.2kWh battery in June. It appears that I've had a jump from some level (96% down to 60%) almost every time the battery has been fully charged. There were about three times where this didn't happen. It does appear to get worse when the battery hasn't hit 100% in a while, but isn't neccessarily fixed after a full charge. I'm guessing that either the present SOC algorithm isn't learning and adjusting the SOC graphs when an over or under voltage event occurs or at least, not adjusting correctly.

This speculation is somewhat pointless, since I'm sure that Adam Reynolds and George Rawding know roughly what the problem is and are completely pissed of with us maundering on about it and the factory putting them in an impossible position by not having fixed it before anyone ever saw it.

EdinH

Wonder what 3009 brings to the party

TheDragon (GivEnergy) 3009 Release notes:

• Increased version number

chris_p I can go one better with version 3010 on my 9.5 battery that was installed a couple of months ago. I've got a feeling it came with that version, but I can't be completely sure, and it still does the battery level drops. Maybe 3011 will be the one that fixes everything.

ajcrewe

Haha. Yet nothing past 3007 is mentioned in the firmware section of the KB

Hello form the future, firmware 5274 still hasn't resolved the issue 🤣

Waiting for Fridays update....

Fully charged battery yesterday straight from the previous days drop and this morning it went from 8% > 0%

So it would seem my battery can't even last 24hrs without it drifting off :/

I've got alternativesd using victron and SMA off grid kit to enable a tied/backup system.
Friday will be interesting to see the update as that might well swing it one way of the other.