It may be a temperature thing - I think I read that the battery won't charge when it is below 0. Can you see the battery temperatures on the portal ?
Could try putting some insulation around the battery, to keep some of the heat in? (But don't forget to remove it as/when the weather improves.)

 

Put the old duvet on mine last weekend when I saw the temp of the battery getting below 10 last week.

Same as us, detached garage that's not insulated.

i have battery temp monitors on the inverter and battery itself and with the duvet on it keeps it around 10-20deg.

I monitor it, but more than likely be kept like that until March.

 

It didn’t charge at 3 degrees and the app shows the battery temperature.

 

I will try the duvet trick to see if it helps. The dog may have to manage without her bed though!
The trouble now is that it has snowed which makes the trip to the garage a bit of a hazard.

 

Might be worth getting an oil filled rad in the garage to see if keeping it above 5°c makes a difference.
One assumes with all the power in there that there is power in there.

Gaz

 

It's -4 here today, so the battery charge at night just about keeps the temp on ok range, I've got mine sat on a 100mm bit of PIR insulation, but 2 sides are next to block wall, albeit the block wall is retaining against earth about 1.5m below ground level.

 

I don’t think running a heater in there is a good idea as the garage is very big so the heat would just disappear. I will try the duvet method when I can get to the garage without slipping on the snow!

 

The strange thing is that this morning with a bit of sunshine the solar started charging the battery when it was zero degrees, so it may not be temperature related, but I will try the duvet method.Also a few days ago the Givenergy support man did remotely a full discharge and charge successfully and it was cold then. I suppose it was like rebooting a PC.
My brain hurts!

 

A fast discharge would put some heat into the batteries, if them are then warm enough to allow charging then charging will put more heat in.

 

Mine has also been behaving very oddly since Sunday. I had a couple of failed firmware updates which probably didn’t help and ended up with a red status light on the battery. GivEnergy did a reasonable job of fiddling with it remotely and getting it back online, and my battery did charge last night, but the app is still reporting nonsense data (my car is currently charging at 7kw):

Plus my inverter seems to cycle randomly between Operating/Idle/Offline. I’ve still got a support ticket open.

 

My battery is currently reporting it’s at 5 degrees, so temperature might have something to do with it.

 

No Error Codes ?

My Sofar Inverter has one "battery low temperature protect while charging".

And another as above but ".........discharging".

 

i cannot do a fast discharge as the battery is at 3%.

 

Might it be related to the 3 mobile network? Three network down for tens of thousands across UK

 

Interesting… mine communicates over the house WiFi though.

 

Nothing to do with the three network, I think there is some sort of fault. The report from the inverter is it cannot detect any connected batteries! The last time I checked the battery was at zero percent, despite multiple attempt by me to charge it up from the app. I will have to ring Givenergy tomorrow to pester them to take action. The gear is all under their warranty by Givenergy, which is good, but the company that installed it , First4Solar went bust this year so I cannot even get them to come and sort it out.If the snow melts I hope to get to the garage to inspect it all tomorrow, but there is a limited amount I can do apart from switching it off and on again.

 

Is the status light on your battery red? Mine was until they remotely restarted it. The app is still reporting total gibberish though and it looks like my battery charged itself as normal last night then immediately discharged:

 

Maybe warmer weather could trigger it to burst into life, we will see.

 

Last time I went down to the garage the indicator lights on the inverter were on but the green lightning shaped light was flashing . Givenergy have tried three times to remotely fire it up again unsuccessfully and I was told to call back in the next few days if it did not re boot itself.
how did you get the display of condition on your post I have tried several ways to lift my app display but with no success?

 

That page is what comes up when I press the battery icon on the bottom right of the screen.

The other thing they asked me to do was remove the WiFi stick (you have to take 2 screws out first), plug it into a computer and send them a screenshot of the contents. They then got me to delete everything other than MSN.txt (apparently a failed update can leave problematic files stuck on there?) and reinsert the stick. That did at least seem to bring the system back on line and stopped the flashing lightning bolt (which I also had).

 

Update : they have tweaked some more settings remotely this morning and the app now seems to be recording correct data. The battery charged as normal overnight. I suspect my terrible WiFi (stone walled house) isn’t helping much.

 

I ended up putting an access point in the garage, which is also handy for streaming music on the patio. Initially it was mesh connected but I supplemented that with a Powerline adapter for resilience. You can get Powerline adapters with a WiFi access point built in.

 

As it was warmer today I went to the garage to find the inverter green light was now on permanently but the battery had switched off. I pressed the button on the right hand side and it beeped and lights came on. By the time I got back to the house the inverter was charging at 2.4 kw , the battery power was increasing and the temperature had risen . After a short while the inverter stopped charging when the battery was back up at 4% ( it’s normal minimum) and it went into idle mode. I will check tonight that the scheduled charge starting at 2330 goes ahead. I think the batteries need some sort of thermostatically controlled small heater at the base to avoid this cold weather problem.

 

I would be thinking about building a removalable insulated surround for the inverter and battery, as the inverter should give out enough heat. In summer you don't want anything keeping the inverter hot.

 

I’ve been sent instructions for updating the battery firmware manually as they reckon my network connection is too unstable (which is why it keeps failing). Won’t be able to try that before the weekend though.

 

updating the battery firmware manually

I had to do that a few weeks ago. Beware that the USB you might have to take out might be "glued" in. I needed a knife and about 10 minutes to remove enough to eventually pull the USB out with pliers. If the battery is in an awkward spot it ain't easy.

The original battery cover had the screws over tightened by original installer and they also needed a power tool to get them undone.

Apart from that the firmware update went ok.

 

I've noticed there's a firmware update available for mine. Presumably if you start the update when the battery is already depleted to the lower limit, the calibration process just has to charge it back up again?

I accidentally did the calibration process at a stupid time last time so it cost money so I'm trying to avoid doing it again

 

just has to charge it back up again?

Yes.

 

The story continues!
After Givenergy convincing me yesterday all would be well last night and my battery would start charging at 2330 as scheduled. It didn’t. I went to my remote garage where everything is this morning as the sun was charging the battery from solar. I tried again switching everything off and on again with no success, though the Solar did charge up the battery to around 15% so that suggested temperature was not an issue. I returned to the house and rang Givenergy. It was then suggested that my series one inverter needed a firmware update which would take twenty minutes so I came off the phone and waited . Sure enough the firmware was updated and solar continued to charge up to 20% at mid day but I could not schedule an immediate charge after trying several times. So I rang back and a different man said he could see the reason my inverter was not charging from mains and altered a setting not obvious to me. Well sugar me the inverter started charging on top of the solar charge. So I turned it off and reset the schedule for 2330 again tonight to coincide with IOG cheap rate. We shall see what happens then !
In the meantime I had ordered some aluminium/ plastic insulating material to wrap around the battery to help keep it warm, thinking temperature was the issue. I will still fit that anyway.
The Givenergy man said I may need a reboot ( full discharge and full charge cycle to optimise the battery) but we decided to leave that for later. He said cold temperature makes the system appear as a smaller battery capacity than the 8.2kWhours and will charge therefore in less time.
Again ,once more into the breach dear friends, and hopefully a positive report tomorrow. It is going also to be wet and warmer then so no solar probably.

 

OK a further update!
The system fully charged overnight on cheap Octopus IOG. However this morning it did not start discharging to my house . I rang Givenergy ( again) and was told I needed to do a re calibrate , which means a full discharge and then a full charge, which is happening as I write. So the battery is sending power to the house and the rest to the grid , which is suppose is good news as the power being sent was bought at 7.5 p and will export at 15 p . However the battery will then recharge at the day rate, which is not good news.
I was told my charge tonight starting at 2330 and ending at 0530 should go ahead, though last night it started charging at 2330 and stopped at midnight( is it confused by it being over two days?) . I re programmed it to start at midnight and finish at 0530 and that worked fine . We will see what happens tonight!

 

However the battery will then recharge at the day rate, which is not good news.

You can adjust the max charging power parameter to drag out the recharging during the recalibration until the cheap period.