Hey All,
Background Info. Sorry for the essay.
I had a gateway and 13.5kwh AIO installed in November.
I have 7.2kwh 16 panels of solar on 5 different roofs, NE, SE, due S, SW, NW, capturing solar throughout the whole day from sunrise till pretty much sunset. 6kwh solar edge inverter and optimisers.
During winter draining the AIO hasn’t been an issue as I have air to air heat pump for heating.
However since the temps have been nice, despite moving high load stuff such as cooking, washing / tumble drying etc to later in the evenings, I have struggled to get the AIO below say 75-80%.
After double checking my warranty I can’t participate in grid stuff such as force exporting without losing unlimited cycles cover down to 10mwh BTT which is a massive hit in warranty and will reduce coverage. In 6 months I’ve used 2.6mwh BTT according to the portal.
I do fill the AIO overnight generally about 4kwh currently for 8.5p each night so I can export solar from sunrise to get the 15p export to hopefully pay off the investment asap. (Also why it lasts as I don’t see it lasting forever with the big renewable push).
I’m hoping for higher usage in summer for real hot days to use Aircon in evenings.
Issue. I’m not actually draining my AIO barely and from what I’ve read / understand it’s quite bad for the battery.
I’ve had a play with the settings regarding grid first, eco mode off and combinations. Ideally I would power my house off the AIO throughout the day on cheap energy and just be able to export all my solar generation but can’t find a way.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Bob
I believe the warranty is for 10MWh per 1kWh of storage capacity, so 135MWh for a standard 13.5kWh AIO.
See https://givenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Residential-Product-Warranty-13.02.2024.pdf top of page 3
@Bob_Bobbings and to be clear, the restriction is ‘when controlled by a 3rd party or used for grid trading’
So if you subscribe to something like My Energy Optimiser or Wonder Watt then these are 3rd party services so that fair use policy would apply, or if you enrol to Octopus Intelligent Flux where Octopus control your inverter.
But otherwise if you are managing it yourself then that clause doesn’t apply.
It’s good practice to regularly enough discharge and charge your battery over its full range. There are lots of other people taking advantage of the rate differential on the EV import vs export rates, exporting to empty before the cheap period and filling overnight, and exporting everything the next day
Hey,
I completely misunderstood that section. I didn’t realise it was 10mwh per 1kwh.
That is kinda a game changer.
Thank you so much for clarifying.
Thanks
Bob
1 Like
I’ve always been a bit iffy about their definition of “Maximum Consumption Usage”
One reading is that if you ever export even a single kWh from storage after the sun has been shining then you are booted out of (i).
And you are certainly booted out of (i) if you use a 3rd party software or use Intelligent Flux , as you suggest. Interestingly, if you have a GE car charger then arguably using that controlled by Intelligent Go or even the car itself would boot you out too!
But what about if you use GivTCP controlled locally. You are probably ok to stay in (i), but it’s not certain. If you use eg Predbat locally it’s probably the same, but if - theoretically - you subscribed to a cloud version of Predbat then that could easily be interpreted as 3rd party.
However “grid trading” and in particular “offer services to the grid” is SO broad as to make the whole question academic. Pretty much any time you export there’s a reasonable case for saying that you are offering a service to the grid, so in practise I can’t see anyone being anywhere other than (ii).
Hey,
I genuinely thought I was stuck within 10mwh if I even exported to the grid from the AIO. Being the 135mwh for the 13.5kwh AIO is ample for 1 full cycle a day and still receive my full 12 year warranty. It will be only really in spring, summer autumn when I was struggling to discharge the battery I had concerns as it hadn’t drained down much in the last few weeks with all this glorious sun we have been having and didn’t want to cause damage to the AIO.
Drained down last night to the 4% and did a full recharge
I’m happy to manually discharge or use the givenergy tools to automate discharging.
it does seem to have thrown the app stats off completely today though. Whilst octopus app confirms taking in about 15kwh this morning in cheap hours in total the givenergy app says the battery took in 26kwh. Which is impossible.
The app stats have always been pretty good until this first export.
Very odd.
Thanks again for your input.
Thanks
Bob
To further this. The Webportal stats seem to be correct. Reflecting 15.4kwh Grid input.
So it seems exporting does mess with the Givenergy App stats. My export is showing as 42.5. When in fact its about 25kwh.
Might explain why i have seen many other people commenting about different stats in the app compared to portal.
Definitely something to do with exporting though which is throwing these stats off.
I have tried clearing cache / app data and signing back in fresh but yea no joy and app data is still broken.
Not sure if its worth reporting all this info to givenergy to try and fix it. I know they dont come on the forums very much.
Thanks for your help gents.
Bob
while it’s 10MWh per kWh, I think it counts BTT (battery throughput) i.e 1 cycle would be ~28-29kWh (15.5 in, 13.5 out)
Even so, it’s still masses, I was on IOF last year and Cosy over the winter, and BTT is 5.6Mwh after 11.5 months (9.523 battery, 95.23MWh), about 6% ‘used’ 16.5 years under that warrenty clause, when 12years is the gaurantee.
