Cold Weather Effect On GivEnergy Batteries 

EVM was in part why I went for Givenergy equipment. Good to see a British company growing

You are now the face of home battery storage. The Mat Watson with an Earth Rod of Truth! Try avoid dry info videos and do 0-60 style vids against the competition. You'll be on breakfast tv before long. Good Luck, coz You're Andy, the grumpy Northerner and this is Givenergy. 😁👍

Great to see EVM on board 👍 - personally not found any issues with regards to temperature outside, albeit using Pylontech / Victron Energy

I have an LG battery mounted in the garage. It rarely sees less than 5c but it does have a management feature that reduces the charge rate when the battery is cooler than 15c. This happens quite often in winter and it prevents it from getting a full overnight charge in the limited period available on my current tariff. To get around this I insulate the battery during the winter months and this seems to solve the problem.

Great video Andy and very informative for myself, also a GE owner which was really down to your videos when you had your first battery and solar setup. Looking forward to many more!

Fantastic video Andy!

Great stuff! Good to see you working with a great product you believe in!

Awesome video Andy

Thanks Andy. All good advice. 🙂👍

Good to see you in your new role. Very professional vid 😊

Nice vid. Popped over from EVM. Good move I think. Understand the tough decision , the ' what if' as a life model is a pain . I prefer ' just do it'

I’m looking to have a GE AIO fitted out side, I’m then looking at enclosing it with a wooded surround (insulated) I’ve also thought about having a thermostat and a heater to keep the enclosure at an appropriate temperature, this video helped me also use other tactics to assist the process.

Very informative. Thank you.

Our GivEnergy LFP battery units and inverter are installed indoors, specifically to keep their temperatures at around 25°C. The warmth from the batteries recharging or discharging (i.e. losses) is useful in keeping the house a little warmer, so the inefficiencies aren't necessarily losses. My only complaint with the system is that it cannot maintain power to the house during a power outage.

Good to see EVM as part of GivEnergy!

You have to respect the honesty of the presenter and the tips on battery management.

Great to see you here! Requests for future vids...tips on how to use the Giv Energy portal, settings etc, what they do, what addons do, anything else you've learnt that's worth sharing. I already learnt something from this vid that helped me set up the solar forcast thingy me bob. Just had my system installed on 11th Jan and trying to figure this stuff out now by myself.

Just caught up with your news, so popped over here to see what’s going on…😀 Hopefully you can answer all my detailed Home Assistant / GivTCP questions too….lol😂 Well,done and well deserved…👍

This is actually useful information. I'm going to look at lowering my charge rate.

My Powerwall has proper liquid heating and cooling of the battery cells, just the same as a Tesla car and cold has very little effect on it, when charging overnight I see the charge rate ramping up as it is warmed up. So cold weather has zero effect on how we use it. It is mounted outside on a North facing wall.

Looking forward to getting a Givenergy home battery sometime this year. Was going to get a AIO, but noticed the mew Stack 6 is coming soon! Good luck in your new job BTW.

EV man, the reason I went with GivEnergy kit

You can see the battery temperature in the app by tapping the battery icon on the home dashboard, then tap "more information". This will take you to the details for each battery connected to your inverter and then you can tap on each battery to see a time-series of the state of charge, voltage, and temperature. Or at least that's the case with my 9.5 kWh and 5.2 kWh batteries connected to a Gen 2 hybrid 5kW inverter. That might not be the case for others, potentially.

Excellent, I shall monitor my battery temperature, they are indoors but I think I'll add to their insulation. Since they don't seem to get hot I assumed they were unaffected. Good idea about maximising the charge period.

I wanted my battery fitted on the outside wall near my chimney base, the surveyor was worried it would overheat there, but it would only be warmer than ambient in winter, in summer it would be the ambient as there would be nothing gong inside the chimney

I’ve had a little enclosure built with celotex. Tends to keep it no lower than 6-7c on very cold nights. But I’d be open to an official accessory sized to the battery - bear in mind you’d likely have wires along the walls so a ‘one size fits all’ might be tricky.

Interesting video Andy- I noted your recommendation for NOT charging the AIO too slowly-- hadn't thought of that- I guess its for the same reason that the Tesla cars with LFP batteries suggest regular 100% charging. I had been lowering the AIO battery charge rate to try and take the entire 6 hrs-- will increase the amps as you suggest.

Interesting video EVM.

Down in Devon For one I'm very interested in this with the soon fitting of a Givenergy system of 18 Qcell 425w panels 8 to the East and 10 to the West and a 5.0 GEN 3 inverter with two 9,5 Battery's as the system has to go outside the house down to lack of space inside everything will be out in the cold on the NW corner of the house. So over winter temps for it will be cold to very cold alot of the time so a covering for the battery's of some type is looking like a must have

Good to see a manufacturer being honest about this. Can you get them to update the data sheet to explain the constraints of (dis)charge at lower temps? A lot of installers are adamant it's good down to -10C but clearly it's not, at least when it comes to charging. As you say, all batteries bar maybe the Tesla PowerWall have these restrictions and installers and owners need to be aware before installing them outside.

Came here from your regular EVM channel to checo out what was happening. Interesting content as usual and i learned something new, looking forward to more insights and tips on getting the best from the system in future videos. Maybe share your recommendations on insulatingbthe battery until Givenergy solution is available. The Winter setting in the portal sound sood, i assume it'll make it's way onto the app at some point too? Congratulations again in your new role

Interesting video. I've been managing my battery temperature using Home Assistant but these enhancements to the native tools will be welcome for the less geeky customers! I have to say that I started watching the video thinking it was an EVM video and it was only when Andy said "we" at 5:23 that I noticed the GivEnergy jumper. So can we assume your are working for GE now? If so, congratulations! One small point at 3:44 it was stated that the battery temperature can't be seen in the app. I can see it in mine. Click the battery icon and it will show the average of all the cells and click on "more information" and it will show the temperature of the battery electronics.

Actually, I think you can get to the battery temperature graph on the app -- keep tapping on the battery symbol or 'more information'... I only found this myself a couple of weeks ago so maybe it's a new feature.

I just found where I can see the temperature of my battery on the app! Click on 'more information' in the battery section and then click on the battery itself (since if you had multiple batteries there would be different figures for each one). Interestingly yesterday (high of about 8 degrees outside) battery in garage had a low of 16 degrees overnight and high of 72 during the saving session full export!

If you have Home Assistant and GivTCP it’s possible to track the individual cell temperatures that are reported. In my experience these are always lower than the reported battery temperature and can get close to zero degrees on a cold winter night. So be careful if battery temperatures drop below about 10 degrees as the cells may be cooler than this.

Andy what are you doing here??? Congrats on the new role.

Useful stuff, I didn't know about reducing the charge. What about the other end of the temperature scale? I have set up some fans for the warmer months, but don't know if this is strictly necessary.

give energy give the units a thermal management to the service, many brands offer this to allow charging below sub zero , granted charging still take a hit but they still work all the way to -20 allowing them to run right though the worst winters in a non temputure controlled lockup or unheated zone,

Well that was interesting about battery temperature. I looked on the App and you can graph the battery temperature on the App. Surprisingly, worryingly, it showed that the internal temperature of the battery gets to near 65C while charging. Go to the portal and it says that battery is a 16C at the same time. Something wrong there.

Iv had a Givenergy system since December and Iv always been able to see the battery temperature in the app!? So you may want to check your information…..

Err confused. Do you work for Givenergy?

Although virtually the same, the correct term is Celsius rather than centigrade.

Great video - very informative - where do I find the "Winter Battery Management / Thermal Winter Weather Management" feature in the portal?

6:08 What happened to the all round clearance requirements?

Great video, I’m definitely thinking on getting a GivEnergy battery as we got a EV last year. Would you recommend just getting the battery for that 6 hour time slot without solar. Currently with Octopus with a cheap 6 hour rate.

Have givenergy got any plans to include some thermal management system inside future batteries? My powerwall has had no issues even in the minus's this winter with its thermal management system. As the we'll make it charge when its cold solution doesnt sound like the gold plated solution especially when its during peak times.

I am looking for a calculator to be provided to prospective purchasers on the website, which can help show the benefit of a battery without solar - eg. a payback period when using time of day tariffs. I'm not fortunate to have a nice shaped roof for solar PV, but would like to know how worthwhile a battery would be anyway.

How to reduce the rate of battery charge? Is it in the portal labelled as Battery Charge Power? Or Battery Charge Power Percentage? I've yet to find anywhere a definitive definition of all the settings.

Why don't I have the temp option? I have pv power, battery charge, battery discharge, battery percentage, load power, grid import, grid export! Nothing about temp at all.

I’m getting my batteries installed outside (no other option) and I must admit this needs more guidance. So for example, if you make a cabinet, what material should it be made out of? For example would metal make the unit too hot in the summer? Also in winter can you use a cylinder jacket to keep it warm. Charging every 30 mins when the temp feels a bit counter intuitive considering you want the best price over night. I’m now wondering if I should have gone for a Powerwall!!