Givenergy Battery Capacity Problems

ispookie666

I hoping to use this post to share some experience and gather others experience.  There is a huge thread on the Givenergy forum about the problems with their battery capacity. 

Givenergy batteries are derated so that the company is able to provide 10 year unlimited warranty on it.  The BMS byusing some clever (read what you will) works out the State of Charge (SOC) and displays it between 0-100%.  Unfortunately there are increasing number of people who have had SOC of the batteries fall from 30-50% to 0% all of a sudden. 

This is a huge problem resulting in 

• Incorrect SOC indication
• batteries not being charged to their full usable potential - the 100% displayed SOC might be actually corresponding to 60 or 80% real SOC
• Batteries discharging to very low voltage. 
• Unnecessary grid draw at peak times

The lowest per cell voltage I have experienced is 2.75V which is really low for LiFePO4.  The excuses from GE have been endless and the elusive firmware fix seems to be like the unicorn.  

Fed up of all this, I installed a Victron Smart Shunt between the inverter and batteries and hopefully will help me keep track of the SOC.  I have managed to connect the Smart shunt to an ESP 8266 and then to Home assistant. 

This is the drift in SOC in 24 hours!

[Deleted User]

 I'm not a technie and don't understand most of your post but I'm curious as to what Givenergy would say about it?

ispookie666

Deleted_User said:

 I'm not a technie and don't understand most of your post but I'm curious as to what Givenergy would say about it?

About the above post or the problem with their battery?  
This has been known to GE for more than 6 months, a firmware fix has been issued which seems to have done nothing.  These SOC drops and voltage drops bring the pack voltage to levels which can cause irreversible damage.    

ispookie666

Just to highlight the scale of the problem.  The difference between the States of charge has reached 13%.  Unless the battery empties fully, this will not reset.  



Having a completely closed system, with no way of accessing or tweaking the BMS, we are at GivEnergy's mercy.  

zeupater

Hi

Considering Victron's experience & reputation, I'd be more comfortable erring on the side of their assessment of the SOC ....

HTH - Z

ispookie666

Victron seems to be tracking well. At least I can see good amount of data. I'm sure GE has all this data which can be extracted. 
The gap is getting wider, few more days!

ispookie666

And wider.......

ispookie666

There you go, it's above 20% 


Maybe tomorrow or Friday, I'll try to run it down to reset it. If I don't, the gap will keep getting wider and wider cutting out when I don't want to be pulling from the grid. 

QrizB

I realise you're not getting much engagement on this thread, but I applaud what you're doing.

My DIY storage battery runs a Daly Smart BMS and I'm often grateful for the cell-level info it gives.

DougMLancs

I’ve been taking notes. Sending it all off to my installer who was down to fit us with a 9.5 kWh Givenergy battery as part of our installation in March ‘23. My place of work, my bosses’ house and a friend all have GE batteries fitted by the same installer we’re using and haven’t had any issues but it sounds like it’s worth talking it through and considering alternatives. 

ispookie666

@QrizB I'm able to get the individual cell voltages using Home Assistant. 

What is frustrating is, the closed state of the BMS. The only way the batteries can be controlled is using their inverter and it's firmware, there is no programmability eg: defining the max voltage limit, setting when the charging stops. 

In Victron, I could set the charging voltage and loads of other controls and it used to work with a lot of other batteries! GE seems to no work with any !