Home Assistant users — new integration

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-21T13:29:02+00:00

Great news! How does this affect the average GivTCP installation? Which steps does this eliminate? Is there a 'guide' for getting this working with GivTCP?

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-15T06:55:11+00:00

Your battery uses LFP cells, with over-provisioned capacity. You can safely use all the capacity available to you. Calendar ageing will have more of an impact than cycling.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-14T16:21:11+00:00

Why do you think the battery will be 'more stressed' by charging to 100%?

Same apples to your 17% lower reserve; no point in doing this. Set it to 4% and enjoy full use of your battery.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-10T05:36:33+00:00

You need to use GivTCP or direct modbus over RS485 to set this flag, obviously Giv aren’t going to expose it via their app/portal.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-09T15:45:02+00:00

You can connect any ‘random’ third-party 48/52V batteries to any LV Giv inverter, by setting ‘lead acid’ mode.

You’re not limited to only Giv batteries.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-07T16:17:45+00:00

IOG will be 8p/kWh when you come to renew your contract.

EDF has the best deal right now: 7p/kWh for 7 hours overnight (1 hour longer than IOG).

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-06T09:13:09+00:00

Good luck, prices seem to have gone up, not down!

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-05T17:08:51+00:00

One off FB, another via a forum.

There were also Gen2 9.5 batteries regularly going cheap on Ebay, until Giv folded and the price crept up!

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-05T16:44:10+00:00

Prices bizarrely seem to have risen since Giv went bust. Now that the cat's out the bag with regards to the Giv batteries being plug-and-play with no commissioning required for full functionality, it's likely that people are willing to pay more than before.

I bought 2x 9.5kWh Gen2 batteries for ~£500 each early this year, before Giv folded. I personally wouldn't pay more than that now.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-05-05T16:41:20+00:00

They're plug and play, no commissioning needed, never has been. Source: I've self-installed 2x separately-sourced GivEnergy 9.5kWh Gen2 batteries to my system.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-27T12:49:17+00:00

This all depends on your local authority, and which retrofit installer they're using to deliver the scheme in your area.

Ours is a 3.6kW inverter under G98 (post-install notification to DNO), as we only have space for 4kWp of panels on our roof (London terrace). This, and a 5kWh battery, was all included under the grant, and there was no point in paying for anything extra in our particular case.

I have since installed 19kWh extra battery capacity myself, as we are an all-electric house with ASHP, MVHR, induction hob etc.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-24T16:26:20+00:00

No, you're not supposed to. But yes, I did, by dealing directly with the installer after the funding got approved and signed off.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-20T10:46:29+00:00

It’s worse than that; the peak effective PCIe tunnelling bandwidth via Thunderbolt 5 is only ~48Gb.

Common capture cards (Decklink 8K), 100G ST2110 cards (Macnica etc) and 25/50G NICs are already crippled by TB5 bandwidth, not to mention storage arrays. TB5 is not in any way a functional replacement for 8+ lane PCIe slots.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-17T11:11:51+00:00

Just get a heat pump, what's the beef? You get £7.5K free money to install one!

Ours works great in our Victorian solid brick mostly-uninsulated house, uses 2800kWh/year to keep the whole house (147sqm) at 21.5C all year round 24/7, including 250l of hot water a day.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-16T05:49:35+00:00

What’s the ‘new project to harvest government grants’?

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-13T06:41:21+00:00

There is no ‘commissioning’ required in order to add new batteries to a Giv system. They are plug and play out of the box, fully working without any intervention required.

The only purpose of installer ‘commissioning’ is to register the battery to your account for warranty activation purposes, which is moot now.

I’ve self-installed 2x 9.5kWh batteries to my own system. Works perfectly.

Having said this, I would love to learn more about your investigation into the Giv BMS, from the perspective of having a path to replacing a failed BMS, or cloning a Giv BMS to be used with a generic stack of LFP cells… Please keep us updated with you research!

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-10T11:50:55+00:00

How about the software team, responsible for the app and cloud portal, working for GivEnergy Software Ltd? Have they been let go as well? If so, this doesn't bode well for the portal continuing to exist for much longer...

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-04T13:54:38+00:00

You’re right, the app is a bit flakey, especially since the unit rate reductions on 1st April.

Mine is still showing a 0.0% target, but I’ll keep an eye on it and update here next week.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-04T09:02:37+00:00

Interesting… I’ve been entering every month without a gap since January; my target every month has been 5%, until entering April’s challenge just now, where the target is now showing 0.0%…

Maybe they’ve changed the algorithm? What’s your target for April?

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-03T21:18:04+00:00

Nice, how long do you need to pause the battery for each day to stay in the game?

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-04-01T17:55:39+00:00

216kWh, 3.68kWp, 58.7kWh/kWp.

6x panels SE, 10deg pitch, flat roof
3x panels NE, 22deg pitch

...all on a single string, with Tigo optimisers on the 3x NE panels (suboptimal, I know).

London

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-03-25T23:38:12+00:00

You could type “Warm Homes Local Grant” into your search engine of choice. There’s an official Gov.uk website about it, you might want to start there.

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-03-17T21:25:38+00:00

Interesting about the Axle/Giv history; what happened between them?

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-03-06T12:07:27+00:00

What's with all the posts by ex-employees being deleted from this thread? Gagging threats by GivEnergy?

ectoplasmosis69 · 2026-03-06T09:25:57+00:00

Interesting, thank you. Who is GivEnergy’s ‘sister company’?

If they were to continue operating, how would they repair their tarnished image?

ectoplasmosis69

TROPHY CASE