Hi. I had a solar install last week with GivEnergy AIO battery and Gateway. The battery has given me nothing but headaches.
I want to be able to time my charge and discharge to take advantage of cheap Agile rates, but it simply doesn’t work. For example, if I set a timed discharge, the battery does a full export to the grid as if Timed Export were set. The timings even show up in the Timed Export section.
GivEnergy support first said that I needed software update and they said they did this although no evidence of it in the logs. Then they said it is a known bug but I can’t find anything about it on any forum. If a known bug then surely lots of people would be experiencing it.
They said to turn on Eco and then use Start and Pause buttons in app, but these don’t work. Start will discharge only to house load, but Pause doesn’t stop anything, sometimes it will reduce to about 600/700W discharge.
Does anybody have any ideas? When the battery was installed it reported a commission date of July 2023 - support have now updated this to be last week but warranty is still only showing as five years and not twelve??
Battery is running D0.609-A0.609 Firmware 8 and the Gateway is running A0.005.
Apologies if I have got any of my terminology wrong - am new to this.
I have the same set up as you including the same software as you, however I have an EV so car charges from Octopus Intelligent go as does the battery at the nominated reduce rate hours, I had some issues with soc on the battery but this was resolved via the firmware 8 update, I must say the system works really well. I.e. battery fully charged at 7.5p pkw/h by 5.30am and then the solar tops this up and the surplus goes back to the grid at 15p pkw/h. I was on the Agile but switched to the Intelligent go tariff. Also I have the option to charge car via solar or the grid but not the battery, I wanted the battery for the home as pointless using this to charge the car.
I Had the same install in November of last year. My commission date also showed as July 2023, and with a 5 year warranty instead of 12 years. I contacted GivEnergy and they corrected the date on the warranties.
I did play around with the App and the Portal, of the two I found the Portal to be the better option but mainly due to usability on a laptop instead of my phone. I now use " Wonder Watt " to control my charging / Export and it works extremely well, with customer support and speed of bugfixes and updates being exemplary.
Turning on timed discharge is often the downfall of people. See the main forums (not this beta one) for more on that.
Timed discharge/timed export/timed demand etc works best with outside automation e.g. home assistant or other such tools.
I think timed demand on newer hardware with the newer firmware is okay as it goes back into eco after. But timed discharge doesn’t. Timed export I think does, can’t recall properly.
For simple use, eco on with a timed charge spanning the length of the cheap period is the best option. With a percentage to charge to (or discharge to) by the end of the cheap period as required.
I have the same issue. The way I found around for the time being. I set the discharge to Dynamic and use the Charge mode with the required Start time and set the End time to when I want it to discharge. As the battery has full charge it doesn’t use hardly any power keeping charging until you want it to discharge. I also use the Octopus Watch app to see when its the cheapest time to charge for a 2.5 hour. PS I only have the AIO no solar, im on the Octopus Agile. Eventually ill use Home Assistant
Thanks.
Giv have now accepted this is a fault and will apparently be removing Timed Discharge. There is a TImed Pause in the Remote Control settings which seems to work. Pause in the app doesn’t work at the moment but there will be a fix for this soon.
Re settings for Agile - I have been using WonderWatt the last few days and it has worked really well. I just have a schedule set from 23:00 - 7:00 where you set the number of charging periods you want (I have set to 5 at the moment). WonderWatt chooses the five cheapest and charges the battery for you.
I’ve been using onder Watt for a while now and find it does everything I need. I used to monitor what it was doing on a regular basis but don’t bother now, I just let it do its thing.
I had considered Home Assistant as it sounds like an interesting project, but I haven’t really got the time or inclination to buy the necessary kit and set it up so I’ll let Wonder Watt handle things for me.
Hi Jenna,
Can i ask if you are using the Giv Enery EV charger, and if so is it your car that is compatible with OIG, as i beleivecthe charger is not yet approved.
No I use OHME pro, my OHME and Octopus are linked so I set charge limit/time in the Octopus app and let it do its thing. I was considering using my solar to charge the car, however, it’s much more lucrative to charge the car at night on 7.5p pkw and send my surplus solar back to the grid for 15p pkw.
I also charge my car outside of the gateway as I can charge independent of the AIO system, I do have the option to charge from solar as my OHME has a CT clamp after the gateway and detects when surplus energy is going back to the grid, it then simply diverts to the car, I had my system installed in Sept last year and managed to charge at 6 kwph which was not bad given the time of year! Hope this helps
Hi. Found this when searching for answers to my recent issue.
My GE apo if i use the shortcut button or try ti set a time causes the battery to idle. I have to reset it to make it work again.
I cant also set a timed charge in my app as it also does the same thing.
If you are going to use HomeAssistant then take a look at the Predbat add-on. You do not need solar to make the add-on work with just a battery. Set it using the Control Charge option for operation and it will handle all the charging to get the best 30 minute slots through the day and even looking forward to tomorrows slots when they become available at 4pm.
Hi,
I’m having the same issue. I’ve set a timed charge on the battery to 80% at the same time slot as the cheaper overnight tariff.
Hopefully this will charge the battery while charging the car, then in the morning turn off the timed charge. Solar would then top up the battery during the day. I don’t charge the car every night so it’s a simple operation to ‘flip the switch’ for timed battery charging in the evening before charging the car.