Invertor lost comms with the Gem120CTM and battery went to no charge (4 red lights)
Phone Givenergy 4 days ago and reported the fault. I was told someone would phone in 72Hrs, No phone call yet. I have since repaired the connection on the Gem120CTM and set the battery to charge via the App using the battery plus sign, but nothing seems to happen and the battery is reported as idle. Can anyone help please
check the breaker on the battery is on, and the battery is turned on. What lights is the battery showing now?
try doing a reset to defaults of the inverter in the portal to see if this kicks it back to life. Check things like battery reserve, battery pause mode, charge rate, that you don’t have a timed discharge set, …
do you see any error notifications in the portal?
Hi Geoffrey
Thanks for your help, situation yesterday Midday
The Battery breaker was on and the battery was switched on
Inverter had green light flashing and Leds on pointing towards battery
Battery had one green Led bar light flashing as though it was charging.
There was some excess generation from my solar
Left it like this for about an hour.
On return battery had 4 red bar lights on and tripped out
Restarted the battery and set the inverter to battery plus in the app
to force charge the battery but nothing happened.
I am not sure how you access the portal. I only see things on the app.
When I try SSO login I enter my details they send me a number to input
and when I do the screen reverts to the log in page.
I have yet to hear from the call I made last sunday to Givenergy and will phone them again today.
Regards
Harry1
Hi Harryl
This does rather sound like a problem with the battery if it’s tripping out and changing to 4 red lights.
Are you able to contact your installer, they might be more able to quickly come and identify if there is a fault than givenergy support? If it’s a warranty replacement or whether there is a wiring or battery charging problem that can be fixed.
For the SSO login, sorry can’t advise. I never signed up to SSO. Might be worth you trying logging in with a different browser or on a different device in case its a browser problem, but otherwise will need givenergy support for that one
Sorry can’t help more
Hi Geoffrey
Thanks for your help.
I eventually managed to get on the portal and it shows there is no meter comms and looking at the data suggests this has been an issue for some considerable time. I spoke to Givenergy again and they say they are very busy and someone in support will get back to me ASAP ???
I checked all the wiring and settings in the meter again and they all seem ok.
I phoned the guy who supplied / commission the system 3-4 days ago but no reply as yet? ( He may be on Holiday)
I have also spoke to suppliers and ask them to quote for a new meter and CT. One says they don`t recognise the Meter/ CT and the other is yet to get back to me. I cant seem to find the GEM120CTM model on the web, all I can see is the GEM120CTP model. Maybe I could change the meter and CT and reprogam meter CT ratio etc.
The meter I have does register imported power and that agrees with my smart meter, but it doesent seem to communicate with the invertor ?
I think I need to replace the Meter and get comms with the inverter and then maybe I can get the battery to charge from the mains via the Battery Plus APP function.
Any thoughts??
Regards
Harry
Hi Harry
What inverter do you have and are you absolutely sure you have correctly connected the CT meter into the correct connection on the bottom of the inverter?
From the installation manual:
The CT clamp connection goes into the meter connection, not the CT one. I got it wrong myself once when the plug came out
It doesn’t sound like the CT needs to be replaced if it is correctly reading the same as your smart meter, its the cables from that to the inverter, or the plug in the wrong inverter socket
Hi Geoffrey
Thanks for your reply.
My inverter is a Giv- AC 3.0 with a Giv-Bat-5.12 Battery. Its been working for about 4 months albeit I have discovered now that I could see on the portal a number of meter communication errors.
I am absolutely sure all the connections are correct. These were all checked at commissioning and the only thing I have done since then is to replace the comms cable between the Giv-Gem-120-CTM Meter because of the meter comms issue.
Checking on the portal I see that meter comms was restored when I plugged the new cable in this morning.
I switched the battery back on this morning and set the inverter to AC charge for an hour or so on the remote control panel from the portal but could not see any charge taking place. I remotely restarted the inverter from the portal but this made no difference.
Maybe the battery wont charge because its got 4 red lights on it.
Its turned itself off now and all the portal says is that the system is waiting.
So it looks like I will have to wait for Givenergy to contact me in response to my call 7 days ago.
Regards
Harry
if the battery has 4 red lights then that indicates some kind of battery fault, low voltage or something. I’m afraid you will need either givenergy support or your installer to look at it
Hi Geoffrey
Once again thanks for your reply.
The battery shut down as reported and the inverter sat waiting for a day or so but has now tripped the power supply mcb. Not sure why as we havent had a power cut lately. The mcb is a C16 as GE recommended. Initial instructions could have been much better in many instances. Comm Cable types etc. and a RJ45 plug from the battery that had to be cut off to connect to the BMS ??
I have not tried to reset anything as it seems pointless before speaking to Givenergy support. I have now reported faults to support@givenergy.co.uk by email asking them to send an engineer out to look at my system, and they have now given me a ticket number but say it could take 5 days to get a response.
Laughable really because they also say in their reply if you call is urgent phone them, which of course I have already done twice. Initially 9 days ago when no ticket number was given and when asked was told you get a ticket number when support phone you back. Doesn’t seem like a joined up system to me.
However I have to wait and see. Report events later.
The service is not really acceptable In this day & age and if Givenergy
want people to buy British they have to grow the Service side of things.
I wish to add an additional 5.12 kW Battery but are reluctant to do this until
the basic issues are resolved. To this end I will be speaking to Which for recommendations.
I am an electrical engineer with many years of experience and have done a number of Givenergy on line courses, so I am pretty certain my installation complies with all the normal requirements. All I need is some help from Givenergy itself ??
Other systems I have are “Solis” and for which I have no issues whatsoever.
So come on Givenergy " Give us some support"
Re my enquirers re meter Gem 120 CTM. Supplier have told me that they don`t recognize the CT that was supplied as being one they normally supply.
I have raised this with GE and await a reply.
Geoffrey - I am sorry to burden you with some of my concerns to as Giv-energies performance but I have to say its disappointing to put it mildly.
Regards
Harry
Unfortunately Givenergy support are rather overloaded and have been for some months. Hence why they went to whatsapp only, but more recently they reinstated phone support and announced that they had a number of additional call handlers.
I believe (not spoken to them myself and have no inside line), but from what I have heard from others, these call handlers don’t do much more than take the call and hand it off to the real support teams, but at least that takes some work off the support team I guess.
Improving support is only going to take time, there’s probably no quick fix, and having a backlog of calls doesn’t help.
You didn’t say when your system was installed and who installed it.
In the first instance your support is with your installer (your contract is with them, not givenergy) and even for warranty replacements the installer should really be driving this. Of course most installers don’t want the hassle to leave it to the customer to call givenergy support - all of which can’t help the support workload.
If you have self installed it then obviously there is no installer to get to investigate and your only recourse is givenergy support. Are you registered with givenergy as an installer and have done the commissioning yourself?
I thought installers had a priority line for givenergy, but how priority that is and how it works in practice, I have no experience.
Geoffrey
Hi Geoffrey
After going round in circles for nearly 3 months, with phone calls and emails, my request was eventually passed on to one of the tech guys, who took about 5 minutes to resolve the issue I had with the low battery. I have now raised the battery low level cut out at 8 higher than the minimum of 4 (you cant set this lower yourself) so that I can reduce the setting myself, if the issue presents it self in future. I have also set the low discharge level to 10, so the battery should not go so low in future.
I have set the battery to charge overnight 02:00 - 05:00 to test everything. Its been
working ok since just before Christmas. It has also charged ok from the Solar when its available.
So issue is resolved, and I have learned quite a bit, just a pity GE could not have been more proactive.
Regards
Harry
Glad to hear you got it sorted and that when you finally did get through to GivEnergy support they were able to resolve it, but what a palaver and delay.
Thinking about what you say about increasing the battery low level cut out to 8% rather than the normal 4%, this doesn’t sound right, you shouldn’t need to do this, the inverter and battery management system should know what are appropriate high and low voltage levels in the battery and ensure that the battery doesn’t exceed them.
If you are able to discharge the battery to too low a level that it then stops working then it very much sounds like these battery levels need resetting. You can initiate a battery calibration from the givenergy portal which will fully discharge and then fully charge your battery to work out the high and low voltage levels. Once done you should be OK to operate with normal battery reserve levels.
Cheers