Anker Solix Solarbank + GIV AIO

Hi All

Been a while since I’ve posted — lots has happened since.

The AIO is broken and has lost its serial number, so it won’t talk to any cloud server. Local access is fine though, and after a few issues it’s settled down. GivTCP control is working with the new xxxxxxx battery.

iVoltz, meanwhile, appear to have buried their heads in the sand when it comes to continuing support.

And today I got a shiny new Anker Solix Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro.

I don’t have any solar yet, and got it simply because I wanted to see whether it would work the way I’d hoped and act as a mini genny to the AIO.

And paint me red and call me Shirley — it bally well does.

I’ve got the Anker set to supply a constant 250W to the house. The AIO has automatically adjusted its own output down accordingly, and if the house load drops below 250W, the excess from the Anker actually charges the AIO battery.

That was exactly what I was hoping would happen.

I’ll continue monitoring it for a while and, assuming it all behaves itself, start adding to the Anker setup, or experimenting with V2L 🙂

More importantly, my longer-term plan to move towards A2A heating/Aircon now has another very interesting option.

Oh and setup - I do have the ability to wire it to consumer unit for 2500w but I dont for the 250w idea its just plugged into a wall socket in the garage near the consumer unit.

Also give me chance to create a new home assistant card 🙂

Mine's been running like that since yesterday but backing up two 9.5s. I'm discharging at 450w from 10am through to 11.30pm and then charging at 1kw during the IOG overnight cheap slot. Early days but working exactly as expected so far.

I'm wired in direct to the consumer unit and a bi-directional RCBO so I can ramp up the discharge to 2.5kw if required, but that's not really my main use case. It's sat in the shed in the garden with plenty of vertical space to add expansion batteries, which is tempting. However I think the extra 5kwh (prob nearer 4.5 with losses) will meet the shortfall we see on the coldest days with the A2A units.

I do need to write a Home Assistant automation to make sure it doesn't discharge when the cars are charging on IOG slots, but so far happy days. Next job is to load the official HA integration to see what entities are available. Oh and buy similar for the kid's houses! Very solid piece of kit and my pre-purchase interaction with their customer services was also good, not like Ecoflow which was a dire experience and resulted in a cancelled order. The YouTube gonks who keep pushing Ecoflow for obvious referral fees need to give their heads a wobble.

If anyone goes this route and is interested, I've now integrated the Anker Solarbank into Home Assistant with local control (no cloud). Plus an automation that pauses discharge when IOG is charging the car.

The native HA stuff is quite sparse but does allow full control. My guess is that they will also expose further entities soon e.g. temps etc, to allow more control options and data recording, but it has everything you need for now. I'm actually in a meeting with their product development team this afternoon, so I'll be pushing for new features. However it's a great piece of kit already - I don't have any affiliation, just a user.