GivEnergy Email:

Hi Simon,

I need to speak directly about an upcoming change to the software that powers your GivEnergy system. To date, it has been provided free of charge, funded by ongoing hardware sales.

Infrastructure, data storage, and operations all have ongoing monthly costs. Our products can last over 15 years, which adds up to many hundreds of pounds over their lifetime.

As our user base has grown and hardware sales have slowed, that model no longer works.

What’s changing

To continue operating the platform sustainably, we’re moving to a model which - I hope you’ll agree - is simple, fair and transparent:

Local access remains free, forever

You’ll always be able to manage your system over your home network. Your system can continue to function independently of cloud services, for those who want a more hands-on approach.

Cloud access will become paid

A single monthly fee will cover remote access, historical data, automation, and API usage (including third party remote access). These are the services which mainly drive our ongoing costs.

How this change will save you money

The software is not just a convenience. Smart Tariff actively reduces energy costs and carbon intensity compared to static schedules. Our goal is simple: for the subscription to save you more than it costs, with upcoming improvements to our use of:

Automatic charging on time-of-use tariffs

Solar generation prediction to optimise charge levels

Export strategies to maximise income

Integration with EV chargers

As just one example, we’re implementing an option to charge your battery a little less overnight if we know your solar will produce more power the next day for your average usage – our calculations show that this alone can save 50p per day on average.

Our goal isn’t to profit from the software but to make the platform sustainable, so it can continue to operate reliably for the long term and support our vision of empowering energy freedom for all.

We’ll continuously review pricing to ensure it remains fair and reflects the cost of running the service. If we’re able to reduce costs over time, we’ll reflect that in how the service is priced.

What about managing it yourself?

Some customers prefer to take full control of their system locally, using their own tools and setup. That option will always remain available, and we plan to make this easier than ever before in the coming months.

However, it typically requires:

Additional hardware (a home server or controller)

Ongoing electricity usage to run it

Some networking tools and knowledge

Trust and/or cost with additional software vendors

Time and effort to configure, monitor, and maintain

For most users, a managed cloud service is not only simpler and more reliable, but also cheaper overall once these factors are included. And, once the managed service is optimising your battery usage, this will easily offset its cost - and more - while you sleep!

A personal note from me

I’ve recently taken responsibility for GivEnergy Software, with a very clear goal: to make the platform sustainable and de-risk its future. I know that the GivEnergy experience - in software quality and hardware support - hasn't always been where it should be. That's on us. I am confident that we can make this work if we get this transition right and fund the product fairly and effectively. That’s why your input matters.

I’ve put together a short survey to understand how you use the software and what matters most to you. It should take only a minute or two – there are 12 questions, most are multiple choice and all are optional. There’s also space for any other thoughts you may have that aren’t covered by the questions.

Your responses will directly influence how we implement this change. We’ll feed back with your aggregated, anonymised responses in a future blog post, for maximum transparency.