I thought I would post this that I have ongoing on the GivEnergy forum to try and maximise the amount of feedback / thoughts from other GivEnergy battery & inverter owners
My 1st on this subject on the GivEnergy forum
I started a discussion a few days ago “Missing data / possible restart” but after a lot more investigating the subject has changed a bit so I thought I would be better of starting a new discussion.
The problem I’m having is…
EVERY night @ 01:00 my battery charges for approx. 5 minutes from the grid when it should NOT be.
for a week it was charging @ 3000w which is the set point in “My Inverter / Settings / Battery Options” but I have “Timed Charge” Disabled (with the start & end times set @ 00:00). I tried enabling then disabling this setting and restarting my inverter several times but it still happens each night.
Last night I set the charge rate down to 2000w from 3000w (still with “Timed Charge” DISABLED) and @ 01:00
the battery charged for approx 5 minutes @ 2000w
Another oddity is…
I upload a lot of data to the Australian PV monitoring website PVOutput (Great site!) and every night I’m missing a 12:55 entry (data is uploaded every 5 minutes) for my households electricity usage / solar production BUT the other 9 systems are fine (Seperate solar arrays, Gas etc…)
https://pvoutput.org/intraday.jsp?id=13236&sid=13551&dt=20230228
I’m running the GivTCP addon or Home Assistant and upload a lot of the data to PVOutput from HA (but not all of it) so I can’t rule that out as the cause of the problem
My most recent post on this subject on the GivEnergy forum
Well I feel a bit like I’ve just been fobbed off by GivEnergy!!
I’ve just been on the phone to GivEnergy about my issue and the conversation went something like this…
You currently have your battery reserve set @ 30% and during the night it dropped to 29% so it then charges from the grid (something I really don’t want it to do) to bring the reserve level back to 30%, which it did. BUT (I pointed out) 30 minutes later it fell back to 29% again but the sequence did not happen a second time. The GivEnergy gentleman I spoke to said that is because there is a known bug which he said he could apply a fix to my system to correct this.
So I checked with him that if I had the firmware fix applied, every time the battery level falls below my reserve (probably quite frequently in the winter months if I have a reasonable reserve set) the system will start charging the battery from the grid and do this EVERY time it falls below my set reserve, YES he said.
I have utilised the facility to maximise the full potential of the EPS from the batteries for the chance I may 1 day have a power outage (which in my part of the UK we are NOT prone too) so have set a healthy sized reserve (currently 30%) but I do not require it to be that exactly. I’m sort off playing around with the set point at present whilst I work out my optimum setting. So if it drifts below through the night it’s not a problem to me, But it definitely is if it ends up costing me money every night to achieve it (topping up from the grid)
So I have currently declined the firmware fix, but whenever GivEnergy roll out the next full firmware update EVERYONE will get it regardless.
Whilst this will be of concern to me I do realise that it will not be of concern to many others, I imagine if you don’t set a high reserve / do not have the EPS system fully utilised or you are on an overnight tariff then it wont bother you.
I fully understand implementing a system like this that kicks in at the batteries safe minimum level of 4% to protect the batteries but definitely not on whatever your reserve is set too.
I suggested having 2 settings, 1 factory set at 4% and 1 customer configurable (On or Off for the customers set reserve)
I not fully convinced that this is solely the cause of the problem I have as it seems very strange that it happens at exactly the same time every night
I’m very interested in other forum members thoughts on this matter