Major issues with GivEnergy battery and inverter

joe956

Greetings!
With energy prices soaring to peak levels and solar technologies becoming more affordable, my family and I decided to hop on the bandwagon and invest in a solar energy system. Our equipment was installed with much enthusiasm, and everything appeared to be working seamlessly, until I started paying close attention to the GivEnergy dashboard.
To my dismay, I began to notice strange occurrences in the data. Below is a screenshot of the battery charge level from last night -  at 0:40, the battery level indicated that it was 34% full. However, just five minutes later, the level had plummeted to a shocking 0% without any apparent cause or explanation.

That's approximately 3.4kWh gone up in the air, which is 34% of the battery. And this is happening a couple of times a week. I ran a couple of tests, and it appears that 1kWh of battery charge is lost per day!

Of course, we have raised this issue with GE (GivEnergy), and initially, they told us that recalibrating the battery would fix the problem. Recalibrating simply means discharging the battery to 0% and then charging it to 100% so the software can learn the bottom and top values. However, as they are unable to schedule the recalibration (i.e. so it happens at night when energy is cheaper), we were postponing it. A few emails later, they dropped a line saying that this is a known problem to them and that the recalibration might actually not fix the problem. They pointed me towards their community forum - just Google "community forum GivEnergy" to find it.

When you go to that website, you will notice that there is nothing there:

You need to register to actually see what is being posted there - I strongly recommend doing just that. This was a real eye-opener for us.

Straightaway, you will see the two busiest posts, one with 1.6k posts and the other one with 2.4k posts:

What became apparent to us is that GE was made aware of the problem 18 months ago and did absolutely nothing about it. What's even more shocking is that they are refusing to acknowledge it:


What is more that even though their warranty specifically say:

it is worthless - our battery is less than 3 months old and they refuse to accept the warranty claim they have even removed the warranty document from their website so people don't bother them:


I am posting it here to raise awareness of this issue, as GE is actively scrubbing the internet and removing any negative feedback - for example, multiple Trustpilot 1/2 star reviews were removed and multiple 5-star 2-3 line reviews were posted in just last couple of days!

propnut

They all seem to have their nuances. I have a Luxpower inverter coupled to uHome batteries and see some weird stuff. Long threads on the issues so I won't respout here. Not as bad as your experience though.

Magnitio

I originally ordered Givenergy early last year. I thought being a UK company (albeit with Chinese kit) that the support would be good. However, a lack of available kit and early reports of issues meant that I changed to Huawei instead. Although Chinese and not popular in US, the hardware is well made and used in numerous countries. So far, I've been happy with the results. It does have its own idiosyncrasies, but seems quite reliable and other users provide generally good feedback.

I did have an instance where state of charge dropped 15% and the next day suddenly increased 15%. This only happened once. A new firmware update last month included improved state of charge estimation, but required a full discharge/charge cycle for calibration purposes. The release also stated that this calibration would occur annually, which seems fairly reasonable.

With the very high demand for batteries, I'm sure that some substandard cells are making their way into the market and causing issues. Maybe Givenergy, in their rush to meet demand, reduced their standards and are now paying the price.

ecraig

Not dismissing the problem - It's awful..
But the suggestion of recalibration might actually work. Maybe. Hopefully. 

You've just spend a few thousand quid on your solar and batteries. Even if you're on some flex-rate tarriff paying 47p kWh at an expensive time, it's going to cost you at most £5 to maybe potentially hopefully fix your few thousand quid system.

But you're right. They're aware of their problem and should have fixed it, or withdraw product from market whilst they investigate and implement a fix.

If your product is not fit for purpose maybe the fitter can be engaged to find a solution. If they are not responsive or engaging you could utilise the various protection services offered by your card issuer assuming you partially paid by credit card. 

Good luck! 

Waywardmike

Magnitio said:

I originally ordered Givenergy early last year. I thought being a UK company (albeit with Chinese kit) that the support would be good. However, a lack of available kit and early reports of issues meant that I changed to Huawei instead. 

I went through the exact same process...  I got quotes and chose GE kit originally, but then the 6 month wait put me off. I ended up going Growatt, it was much cheaper (for a bigger battery than the GE one I quoted for also) but I was willing to pay more for what seemed like better support (I joined the GE FB groups) and also I prefererred the way the GE equipment looks.

After install I had to deal with Growatt's ridiculous app and look enviously at the GE FB group discussing all the latest features on their app.  I thought "What have I done????"

Almost a year later, I have no regrets at all.  I'm still part of all the forums for both and although the Growatt one is hardly complimentary, 90% of the posts are about the terrible app whereas the GE problems seem to have snowballed.  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've had no problems at all.  My battery only got to 100% twice in the month of December, and there were days in a row where it hovered around 10% doing nothing but just carried on as normal as soon as the sun shined again.

Watching the 'fixes' being put in place for GE, it looks like they're implementing solutions my cheap Growatt has done since day one.

1961Nick

The Sofar ME3000 & Pylontech solution is pretty old tech these days but it does work exactly as it says on the tin. The addition of the US3000 & US5000 batteries has reduced the £/kWh - all three batteries can be mixed & will work in harmony.

Another advantage of Pylontechs is that the high demand for used ones means you can easily dispose of them on ebay - £750 for US2000 which is more than I paid for my original ones new!

jrrowleyws

They are hardly ignoring the issue. They are in the process of re writing the firmware to combat this issue. It's not that easy to fix so it is taking a while to get things sorted. If you charge up and discharge fully every so often the issue doesn't seem to be anywhere near as bad. 

Also, keep in mind that number on the app are not that accurate and you also get losses from conversion between AC and DC power and some losses as heat. Temperature also impacts batteries. That doesn't account for the sudden state of charge drop you're seeing but may account for some discrepancies. 

ispookie666

15 months is what they have spent.. Arguably the first six months, they refused to acknowledge the problem, till it became too big to ignore. 

Add to this the inverter boards frying and needing replacement. I have had experience with other inverters and boy GE are quick to blame everyone except themselves! 

zeupater

jrrowleyws said:

They are hardly ignoring the issue. They are in the process of re writing the firmware to combat this issue. It's not that easy to fix so it is taking a while to get things sorted. If you charge up and discharge fully every so often the issue doesn't seem to be anywhere near as bad. 

Also, keep in mind that number on the app are not that accurate and you also get losses from conversion between AC and DC power and some losses as heat. Temperature also impacts batteries. That doesn't account for the sudden state of charge drop you're seeing but may account for some discrepancies. 

Hi

Maybe it's firmware, but for SOC to change so quickly on a firmware basis there must be a very obvious code issue to fix. For a decent setup that understands their product, the root cause shouldn't be hard to chase down and the solution should be relatively straightforward and easily distributed ...

... however, the way the issue actually manifests could also suggest a hardware issue related to one or more sensors misreporting under particular conditions (temperature, load etc) resulting in the solution for units already in the field being far more complex, and expensive, to the manufacturer if/when acknowledged ... in many such cases I've found that the timing of issue acknowledgement somehow seems to coincide with both the year/period end financial reporting schedule and the level of dilution of affected units within total build quantities ...

Z

craggio1

For balance, we have 2 x 9.5kwh GivEnergy batteries and 3kW inverter and although only installed Jan this year, we couldn't be happier as they have been operating flawlessly. From what I can see of GivEnergy, when people post their issues (they seem to freely admit there are some), I have actually been quite impressed at how quick they are to sort them when they are posted on the GivEnergy Battery Owners Facbook group. 

ispookie666

@craggio1
Welcome to the forum! Impeccable timing.  
I'm glad the system is working flawlessly for you.  The sorting out has been mostly - blame the installer