So after the Portal went all dayglow with Playschool colours this afternoon. I noticed that the What’s New menu in the portal had a new item. The last time there was apparently anything new to report was in September 2022. It would seem that, after reading the update, that for the last 3 years they have been too busy making “improvements under the hood”.
My advice is to get back under the hood why don’t you and fix the many issues with the Portal Cards and the APP, rather than messing with the portal style sheet. It now looks like it was designed by the infant school art club.
Apparently we can look forward to more visual updates in the future. So I have set a reminder for September 2028.
Come on GE get a grip you have the uncanny ability to mess with things that don’t need fixing and ignoring the things that a clearly broken, Unbelievable.
According to Facebook they have invested in improving support. I don’t know if anyone has seen an improvement yet, but lets hope that it comes because the existing support as reported widely is terrible.
I also think that some effort put into how they communicate with their customers would be helpful. I have only seen this announcement about support on the Facebook group. I only knew about the Facebook group because I was alerted to it by Facebook. It seems that there are a few GivEnergy people on there as well who offer advice and support. Unlike this forum where there is nothing but silence from GE.It often feels like GE have had a look at the worst elements of BT and Thames Water customer service and built a hybrid model based on these two market champions.
As for the “updated” portal I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder, lets hope that it is just part of a bigger uncommunicated plan that goes well beyond a change in colour scheme to whole new approach to customer service.
I would love to see a British company successful in the Green Energy space, and GE could have been that company.
You are so right and it is costing so dearly. They also like a lot of the other companies make the mistake of basing their support on Facebook. I for one do not have a Facebook account and suspect many other seniors (like myself) do not engage in mainstream social media.
Their telephone support system is so bad and the new WhatsApp incarnation is even worse. A look on that famous employment site where you can rate the company recently showed a 16% rating with some experiencers describing the environment as toxic. So I guess they have a very high turnover of staff which doesn’t help.
I have multiple open support tickets going back to March that I never receive replies to when I update them with new data via email. I won’t go into the sorry details of my support experiences as I have written about them in detail before.
My installer tells me that they no longer try to sell any GE kit because the support is so bad. He rates the GE kit towards the top of the list, but the support at the bottom of the list. That says it all really.
Totally agree, customer support is non-existent, I recently had a heat pump installed by a reputable renawables supplier and when they saw the GE Kit they said they also stopped trying to sell it.
As for this latest app update, I see this morning that my house is consuming 0 and I am importing 0, however I am charging my car at 7.5kW…
I am one of those people with 2 All In Ones, therefore, the app doesnt yet fully support that. They didnt disclose that when they launched the fact that you could have 2 AIO’s, I wish I stuck with 1 AIO as there doesnt seem to be any fixes coming for the issues that I have.
All in a ll a disappointing experience with a product that could be good with the right support. I dont reccomend GE to family and friends who ask me.
I have heard via various sources GE is in trouble. Customer support has pretty much failed, product development stalled, where is the AIO Hybrid? I am hoping they sort the support situation out and do not end up with a myenergi setup.
My installer is also no longer supplying giv kit.
Difficult to recommend buy British for electricals.
Just a thought, but is your EV outside the monitoring range (e.g. on Henley blocks), to avoid EV being charged from house batteries? This might explain why inverter is reporting 0W as it will not be able to see it. Mine is like this.
Exactly, my setup is also Dual AIO’s with EV charger. Hardly any of settings work. I found out this is because dual AIO’s do not support the portal setting for Inverter Power control. I am seriously considering changing my EV charger to another brand of charger as I have had enough of having to mess with portal settings every time I want to charge my EV so it doesn’t flatten my batteries or overload the house wiring.
I have the GIV EV Charger, had it installed with the second AIO with the understanding that it would all be a seamless addition to the GIV Eco System. They are happy to sell the second AIO and dont disclose the limitations that come with it.
If I look at my system, the EV charger is not connected to the Gateway, despite their being a dedicated location for it. When I queried this with the installer they informed that this was how GE advise installation when paired with 2 AIO’s… then came the limitations which you mention.
It seems to me that the Gateway and the GE Echo system does not fully support the second AIO and they rolled it out in beta testing mode… now they leave us with the issues, with no fixes or support. In my opinion they have duty to resolve the issues, however I dont hold my breath…
I have had zappis for 4 years now. First zappi has been replaced twice and even the charge cable replaced. Support is phone/email based but they do not use their own field engineers. They post replacement parts to you and source a local contractor to come and swap the part. BUT the contractor does not take the faulty part away they leave everything with the customer to package up and post back. The entire process takes weeks while you wait for different departments at myenergi to contact you with the next steps. 1 fault log, 2 engineer books parts, 3 someone contacts you confirming what is being sent and when to expect it, 4 local engineer contacted to arrange repair (can take a couple of weeks) 5 repair work happens dead parts left with customer 6 someone else from myenergi makes contact with a returns label, 7 finally print label, box up the parts, locate a new box if shipped box damage and take to local collection point. Way too much faff and takes too long. If I didn’t have 2 chargers I would of had to granny charge or use expensive public chargers.
Mine is connected via the Gateway and still doesn’t work. With single AIO’s and the Gateway it works fine you can have option 4 activated and all the Hybrid, Solar or Grid options, along with do not drain the battery options work. These options depend on the Inverter Power Command which does not work with the dual AIO’s. So the only easy way to get the EV charger to take from the grid is to pause the battery, or charge your house batteries at the same time as the EV, but then unless you reduce the rate that your house battery is charging from 12kWh to near 6kWh you risk someone flipping on a kettle and you will exceed the 80amp limit of the Gateway. You can do this using the Battery > Inverter Charge Percentage Command in the Portal which does work with dual AIO’s. I have email threads with GE a mile long about the problems with the EV charger. They eventually admitted that the software is outsourced to a developer.
GE quote "Currently, EV charging via “Cloud” mode isn’t formally supported on parallel AIO setups. Our developers have requests in to extend EV control logic to this configuration—ultimately by giving the Gateway virtual-battery awareness for the charger. Until that’s released, the charger will default to drawing from the batteries. I realize this is far from ideal, and I’ll keep you updated on the beta and production timelines for full cloud-mode support in parallel systems. "
They sent me that reply 3 months ago and every week I ask them again when can we expect new firmware, they don’t even reply anymore. One level 3 support agent told me he couldn’t find out who is ultimately responsible for the EV firmware. Its a sorry mess it made me ill for a while earlier in the year.
I have an EDDI which has been very reliable. I did needed to speak to them on two occasions and their technical help was excellent. What you are describing sounds like a time consuming nightmare. I was considering a Zappi to replace the Givenergy one that I hate. Do you have one of latest models that have the thicker tethered cable and can be installed on either, single or 3 phase supplies. What are the faults you have experienced?
Main board replacement twice which lead to 2 new entire zappi’s. Kept getting RCD trip’s with various error codes. I could charge from solar ok but as soon as I grid charged I would get maybe 2 - 3kw into the car then it would trip and need a reset before I could use it again. The second zappi went in 18 months ago and has been totally find. My first zappi was the original v2, then got a 2.1 and now they swapped it with the newer built in wifi version. Second zappi is also the latest wifi version. I wonder if/when one of these die if they will swap it with a glo.
Whats up with the givenergy one? I was debating swapping my zappi’s out but my ev doesn’t support octopus IO but the zappi does.
For me as I have the Gateway with Dual AIO’s the GE EV charger does not support Hybrid Operation, So none of features such as Solar charging combined solar and Grid charging and the all important don’t take from the Home Batteries options do not work. These facts are not widely known and GE level 3 support in some cases don’t know either. If I had known this before I ordered it I would have had the installer install it so that the house load doesn’t know about it. My installer wants about the same as a new Zappi costs to modify my wiring and so that’s what I have been considering.
Other users tell me if you have a single Gateway and AIO or some of the latest inverters then the GE EV charger does actually work. However, having said that there are problems even then. You can save multiple schedules but only one can be active at a time. Others report that if you switch the Don’t Take from Batteries option on before you start the schedule it sometimes doesn’t work and needs toggling once the schedule has started. So the GE Software is not set it and forget it. The GE 25 & 26 ground fault errors are also very common I had numerous of these. You start a charge and then part way through it errors and stops the charge. If you have a lot of solar being produced at the same time as you are trying to charge the EV more than likely you will see the 25/26 errors. When you contact support they blame the installation and want your installer to place voltage recording equipment on your system to prove what was happening when the 25/26 error is generated. here is what they sent me when I raised a support ticket for that error.
"Error 25 indicates an N-PE voltage higher than our threshold. Could you measure and report the N-PE voltage during an event? That data is vital for us to confirm whether it’s an installation grounding issue as the N-E cannot exceed 10V or the error will flag "
The other really annoying thing is the delayed starts, let me explain. Say there is a Octopus free energy session for a set time on a set day. So you set the GE Charger to take advantage of it and have your EV plugged in ready and waiting . The session arrives and you check on progress say 5 minutes into the free period and find that the EV charger isn’t charging then 2 or 3 minutes later whilst you are figuring what has gone wrong the charging will start. It starts and stops to its own schedule not yours. Another annoying thing is that lets say you have had you car plugged in overnight and you 50% charged your car before your cheap period had ended. You haven’t been outside and unplugged the car and you decide to change a setting in the EV software. The minute you do this it automatically sets the Plug and Go option to on and the car starts charging again, which can get very expensive if you forgot the car was plugged in. The software needs a total rewrite but that is not going to happen any time soon. My advise is Don’t buy one until they get the firmware / software sorted out. Now that I have reminded myself of all the problems with GE EV charger I think I will buy a new Zappi.
I couldn’t agree more. It has been impossible to get anyone to respond to issues first reported last week. My battery is not discharging and remains on 100% until a random time in the evening.
Endless telephone calls, what’s app messages and still no response.
This is unacceptable, I had hoped to increase my battery capacity but will now look for a more reliable company.
It seems that the announcement about a extra support staff and a new phone number that they planned to answer ( 01377 252 874) isn’t making a lot of difference yet.
Well that is disappointing. The idea of a single eco system has always been the dream. When my kit starts to die I guess I’ll be swapping to Tesla or Sig!
For note I am a beta tester for firmware. My Giv set is 3x AC3’s 2x 9.2kw batteries 1x 8.2 with an EMS device. Works fine until there is a power cut. Then dual zappi’s and 3 different pv arrays all with Solis inverters. I guess its a miracle my setup works at all I choose to ignore the conversion losses in this setup!
GE is a victim of its own success. It has very good marketing and very very poor documentation and support. One without the other will cause a failure in the system at some point. When you first have a battery system installed it is very daunting for even customers who are tech savvy, let alone those of us who struggle with current technology. I couldn’t believe the scant documentation on the extremely important commands in the portal for instance. The Youtube videos are OK but have continuity errors, and often skip over important points. Having self help videos is one thing, you need written documentation too. If you live in a poor mobile reception area like I do, and you have a total system failure (like I have had), you need some written documentation in a wallet near by the system for such situations. In those situations a self help video is of no use. After the stress of last time my Gateway shutdown and the numerous convoluted procedures to get everything back online (entire afternoon on the phone with support (those were the days)) I sat down and wrote step by step instructions with pictures for the next time.
My son has a PhD in UX design (User Interface Design) and does University research for companies like British Aerospace, Boeing and the Department of Transport. I can still hear him laughing when I showed him the GE system portal and the App.
Getting back on topic here, with the recent update to the portal colour scheme as an example. GE want to micromanage you and your system, Why cannot users choose their own colour scheme? Why is there no local control of your inverter? I noticed on the other GE Forum on a similar topic to this thread, that a user with colour blindness was having real problems with the changes and wanted the old colour scheme reinstated. GE will not have thought about anything like that. Someone will have brought up in a GE meeting the fact that there has been no What’s New Items for the last 3 years. So what you end up with like most things GE is a ill thought out, untested mess.
Well let’s hope not. For all our sakes I hope GE can turn this around and I can start to post some positive comments. Though it is going to take quite some time to filter through.
My Givenergy system, Gen 1 Inverter, 9.5 battery is just over 2 years old and have had no issues. Added a car charger in Feb this year, and now wish I had gone for Zappi, mainly for integration with Octopus Smart Charging. I get the EV charger going offline errors many others get, even although the light on charger shows connected to wifi, and my inverter dongle which is right beside it remains connected.
My main gripe is that if I do a timed export, from Eco mode, sometimes it goes back to Eco mode at the end and sometimes it does not. This should be very easy for Givenery to fix in the firmware with an option to always revert to Eco mode after timed discharge or charge.
I will probably add a battery to my system, was considering the AIO but a bit dismayed to see that installers are turning away from a British company with good products due to lack of support.
I can see both sides here though, many people install solar/battery/car charger but have no understanding of how they work, and through no fault of their own, lack ability to figure out technical problems or come to online forums for advice and support. Sometimes I visit the Facebook pages - but much harder to follow than a forum like this.
I choose to ignore the conversion losses in this setup!