Search with Wattson

Notifications

Clear all

Joining the Renewable Heating Hub forums is completely free and only takes a minute. By registering you’ll be able to ask questions, join discussions, follow topics you’re interested in, bookmark useful threads and receive notifications when someone replies. Non-registered members also do not have access to our AI features. When choosing your username, please note that it cannot be changed later, so we recommend avoiding brand or product names. Before registering, please take a moment to read the Forum Rules & Terms of Use so we can keep the community helpful, respectful and informative for everyone. Thanks for joining!

Anyone concerned about GivEnergy?

DREI · 2026-04-02T10:13:23Z

I’ve only just become aware of GivEnergy’s proposed move to put cloud/app access, automation/API usage, and potentially smart-tariff functionality behind a subscription based service. If implemented as described, I think this raises serious consumer-law questions. For most customers, these systems were sold not just as batteries, but as connected products with app access, remote control, historical data, and smart-tariff optimisation forming part of the value proposition. If those features are later put behind a paywall, the issue is not just inconvenience, it may materially reduce the value and functionality of hardware people have already purchased. I only selected GivEnergy because I wanted access to OIF. In my view, the key questions are: Were customers clearly told at the point of sale that these features could later become chargeable? Were any such terms fair and transparent? Is it reasonable to charge extra for access to functions that many people would consider part of the original product? What happens to access to smart tariffs and optimisation if customers do not pay? I’m interested in hearing from other GivEnergy owners, especially anyone who still has original sales material, installer emails, brochures, screenshots, or T&Cs referring to app access, cloud control, API access, or tariff compatibility. If enough of us are affected, it may be worth taking specialist consumer-law advice and approaching this collectively. P.S. I am wondering if this is a last effort of generating revenue, before going into administration. I've also checked and GivEnergy has previously described its monitoring portal in marketing materials and documentation as "free forever," promising users "unparalleled data access," easy remote management, and continuous, free updates. and from the 2025 brochure:

Page 9 / 9 Prev

Energy Storage

Last Post by KevH 2 days ago

100 Posts

23 Users

56 Reactions

2,513 Views

RSS

Batpred

(@batpred)

Prominent Member Member

Joined: 1 year ago

Posts: 801

22/04/2026 12:09 pm

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

↑

I've purposely ignored solutions like port forwarding since I wouldn't recommend them, but suffice to say there are several ways to achieve the same basic thing.

You are absolutely right, though, @leeshore, that if you do pay for Home Assistant Cloud then you're effectively donating back to the Home Assistant project overall. Current prices mean that's £65 per year which is not a huge amount especially if you use Home Assistant functionality extensively.

Agree, £65 to get that functionality while supporting the HA community is worth it.

I use a duckdns address with nginx, works well and was intellectually enjoyable to set up.

On security, vpn tunnel sounds great. Even if the usual home network would not be such a big prize for anyone to breach..

I think the current version of HA makes it a bit simpler to be accessed remotely than when I looked for options, but the duckdns option (using some packages to manage certs automatically) survived those changes without any config adjustments.

This post was modified 2 days ago by Batpred

8kW Solis S6-EH1P8K-L-PLUS hybrid inverter; G99: 8kw export; 16kWh Seplos Fogstar battery; Ohme Home Pro EV charger; 100Amp head, HA lab on mini PC

ReplyQuote

Majordennisbloodnok

(@majordennisbloodnok)

Famed Member Moderator

Joined: 4 years ago

Posts: 1759

22/04/2026 1:19 pm

Posted by: @batpred

↑

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

↑

I've purposely ignored solutions like port forwarding since I wouldn't recommend them, but suffice to say there are several ways to achieve the same basic thing.

You are absolutely right, though, @leeshore, that if you do pay for Home Assistant Cloud then you're effectively donating back to the Home Assistant project overall. Current prices mean that's £65 per year which is not a huge amount especially if you use Home Assistant functionality extensively.

Agree, £65 to get that functionality while supporting the HA community is worth it.

I use a duckdns address with nginx, works well and was intellectually enjoyable to set up.

On security, vpn tunnel sounds great. Even if the usual home network would not be such a big prize for anyone to breach..

I think the current version of HA makes it a bit simpler to be accessed remotely than when I looked for options, but the duckdns option (using some packages to manage certs automatically) survived those changes without any config adjustments.

I would say you've probably chosen the most complicated of the alternatives to set up and it might well not be right for quite a few others for exactly that reason. However, your comment about "intellectually enjoyable to set up" highlights how what's the right solution for one person may well not be the ideal for another. I imagine you've learned a lot about your network connectivity as a result and there's a significant value in that.

105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and SPH5000 inverter
1 x Myenergi Zappi
1 x VW ID3
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs

"Semper in excretia; sumus solum profundum variat"

ReplyQuote

Batpred

(@batpred)

Prominent Member Member

Joined: 1 year ago

Posts: 801

22/04/2026 3:09 pm

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

↑

I would say you've probably chosen the most complicated of the alternatives to set up and it might well not be right for quite a few others for exactly that reason. However, your comment about "intellectually enjoyable to set up" highlights how what's the right solution for one person may well not be the ideal for another. I imagine you've learned a lot about your network connectivity as a result and there's a significant value in that.

Sort of, it was fun setting up the containers (as it all runs in the thin pc). As I expected, the docs are a bit limited for some of these components.

What was not expecting was it would survive the constant improvements in the HA core and OS. Always a good surprise.

8kW Solis S6-EH1P8K-L-PLUS hybrid inverter; G99: 8kw export; 16kWh Seplos Fogstar battery; Ohme Home Pro EV charger; 100Amp head, HA lab on mini PC

👍

ReplyQuote

KevH

(@kevh)

Trusted Member Member

Joined: 1 year ago

Posts: 49

22/04/2026 7:10 pm

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

↑

Posted by: @kevh

↑

@majordennisbloodnok Pardon my ignorance, but this means nothing to me.

Should it, I wonder?

Quite possibly not, @kevh.

Something that seems to be particularly important for a lot of GivEnergy customers is the ability to control their setup when away from home. This is a big plus for anything cloud-based, but Home Assistant - the preferred plan B for many - is purely locally hosted. There are several ways of making one’s local Home Assistant instance available over t’interweb and Cloudflare tunnels are one option. It so happens it’s my preferred one, too.

If you don’t have something local on your home network that you want to be able to access when you’re out of the house, this is all irrelevant for you. If that is, however, something you want to achieve, it’s a topic in itself and perhaps deserving of a thread of its own; just say if that’s the case.

Many thanks for your, and the subsequent, answers tk question.

Whilst not a Luddite I do like my IT to be a solution rather than a new hobby and I also fall into that category of GE customers who desire plug and play solutions.
So, HA is definitely not on my horizon and I suspect that the promised GE Software solution for £5 a month will meet my needs.

Thanks again for explaining although I admit that 95% went over my head 🤣.

ReplyQuote

Page 9 / 9 Prev