Beyond Solar - The Future of Energy Storage with GivEnergy
Morning, afternoon, whatever. This is Greg. This is Take It Evie. I've got with me, George from GIVE Energy.
George:Hi, Greg. Thank you very much. Lovely to be here.
Gregg:So, George, it's called GIVE Energy because
George:I I don't I honestly don't know, to be honest with you.
Gregg:And you guys do batteries, inverters?
George:Exactly. Yeah. So we do sort of whole energy management systems. So everything from the batteries, the inverters, we do an EV charger. We've got our own sort of monitoring portal.
George:Everything, basically. Amazing.
Gregg:So how does your offering stack up to, you know, compared to other companies on the market?
George:It's yeah. I mean, it's it's a it's an ever increasing market at the moment, and trying to find ways to sort of put your head above the parapet and stand out is always is always getting tricky. We are one of the only companies that own the whole kind of manufacturing process that we that we have. So we manufacture currently in China, but we own the factories in China that do the manufacturing. So everything is UK owned and all the software side that we have.
George:So all of the data and and the the app and the mounting portal that you have as part of our offering is built in the UK and is managed in the UK too. We also got one of the best warranties on the market at the moment too. So 12 years on everything. Wow. Yeah.
Gregg:So that's a that's a lot of years.
George:It's a lot of years.
Gregg:It's a lot of years, Greg.
George:Yeah. So so, yeah, I mean, that's that's our 2 biggest USBs as well as just kinda being we're one of the biggest in terms of battery storage in the UK right now. So if you've got a battery, there's a good chance you've gotta give an energy one. But if you haven't, you've probably heard of us.
Gregg:Yeah. I've noticed that the size wise, they're actually quite compact for the, what is the, what is the technical term? The the the size per kilowatt or Yeah. I don't know what it's what is the technical term for that?
George:Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think the size per kilowatt hour is probably probably quite good. But, yeah, they are. We've like I say, so we we own the whole manufacturing process. So we have real hands on and design in terms of the r and d and the the the planning of all the products that come out.
George:So over the time, we've just managed to compact that down. So if you have a look at, like, the early days of Pure Energy products, they're a lot bigger than what they are now. And that's purely just because the technology
Gregg:has advanced so much. Yeah. So why why do you control everything from, you know, finish then? Like, there's a lot of companies out there who that order sells from China usually or other other manufacturers, and they just kinda rebrand it themselves. I'm not gonna name the names, but we all know them.
Gregg:And they're usually bigger and, you know, they don't they don't control the process, and they're usually quite more expensive. There's obviously companies like Tesla Powerwall that, you know, used to have the the most, I shouldn't say bank, but like the most power
George:That's a bad word for this. Right now.
Gregg:The the most, you know, power for the, or capacity for the, for the size of it and price, like per pound or per dollar. And there's some other companies in between. I think Tesla, as far as I know, was the only one other one that I know that actually controls the whole process. Right? But was it was it the control?
Gregg:Was it the price? Was it, what what why? What was the story, like, behind Give Energy and and controlling everything?
George:Yeah. I mean, so, originally, we would we would make products. So this is going back sort of 10 10 years now. We'd go we'd make products for other companies, and then they they would be white labelled. So we were that
Gregg:sort of
George:part of it. And then we kind of wanted a bit of the pie, really, and we thought, we could do this on our own. And so that's how Give Energy, as it is now, came to be, really. And I think it's, like, it's that element of control. It's the element of being able to know ex you know, know your product inside out and know what it can do and what it can't do and how we can improve it and all that good stuff.
George:And then also, yeah, the price is a real big component of that too because we don't buy anything in like that. But it helps us keep the cost down and keeps us competitive and gives the customer, you know, as you say, like, real good bang for the buck, really.
Gregg:Yeah.
George:So, yeah, the the combination of those things, I think, really is it's often overlooked, especially in this industry, but I do think that's an important factor. Absolutely.
Gregg:It it is. I mean, not not many people will spend a lot of money on a small battery. Like, in the UK, there seems to be a lot of companies aiming for 5 kilowatt hours Yeah. For a household. I still think that's not enough.
Gregg:But what is your view on that? Like, if you look at America, obviously, houses are, you know, 4 or 5 times bigger. Yeah. And yet they get 12, 18 kilowatt hours. It doesn't doesn't add up if you you know what I mean?
Gregg:Like, you still I think average UK house consumes about 10 kilowatts a day or 10 kilowatt hours, sorry, a day.
George:Yeah. It's how It's between, like, something 9 and 13 or something is Yeah. The average or something like that. But you're absolutely right. And then you've gotta have an element of forward thinking too.
George:You know, as we're making this transition to everything becoming more electrified in the home, you're probably gonna wanna oversize what you've got anyway because it might be in 5 years' time, you have a heat pump on top of that 9 to 13 kilowatt hours that you're using. You might, you know, all of your you you might get under full electric heating or something. Do you know what I mean? Like, everything can get more and more electrified, and you're gonna need more storage and more power to be able to fulfill that. 5 kilo hours is probably okay if if maybe you're living on your own and not flat or something like it.
George:If a rented accommodation, maybe something like that. It's a good starting block too for a lot of people. So we have a lot of customers that maybe don't wanna invest too heavily because they're maybe a little bit skeptical, but they know that there's, you know, there's a good ROI on these things and they're sort of digging their toe. You can scale up our systems as and when you want to. So you could start off with a 5 kilowatt hour battery.
George:And then in in a couple years' time, go, you know what? Actually, I'm using a lot more energy now. I'm gonna add another one on and increase your investment like that, essentially. So so yeah. So it's it's a nice starting point, I think, 5 kilowatt hours.
George:But you're right in terms of probably, like, the longest longer term goals of it. It's not it's not gonna be enough forever.
Gregg:Okay. You you do have a 5 kilowatt hour or 4.9, is it? Like, this the the lowest, offering?
George:So the lowest we do is a 2.6 kilowatt hour.
Gregg:Oh, wow. That's is that just, like, from an electronics point of view, that's like a capacitor on your solar system.
George:Yeah. Just just like
Gregg:a bucket that just keeps the
George:keeps the flow. Yeah. To be honest with you, you get a lot of people that so we do so so, like, our standard domestic range is 2.65.1 and then 9.5, and then we go into bigger sort of all in one territories, which is about 13a half. And then even bigger than that, you can go stackables, 3 phase, all sorts. The 2.6 really is you've got maybe a 9.5, and you want a little bit more storage, but you don't wanna have to pay for another one.
George:You can add a a 9.2.6 on for for, you know, a fraction of the cost of another 9.5, and they'll work together in tandem fine. That's, you know, that's not a problem. And it maybe just pushes you over the line. That's realistically what that's being used for now. Or, again, you can stack those up.
George:So if for whatever reason you wanted 7 kilowatt hours or something, you could have 3, 2.6es, and then you'd be there or thereabouts. But, yeah, on on its own as a stand alone, you wouldn't you wouldn't have that really.
Gregg:Okay. Are those batteries, like, specifically, you know, give energy batteries, are there rated to be outside or they just have to be indoors?
George:Yeah. No. Everything we do, give energy is IP 65 rated.
Gregg:Okay.
George:So it's fine to be outside. We don't have a problem with that. The only thing that we say, which is, people familiar with give energy will will know this, is that on some of the products, we want a canopy over the top of it, and that's purely just to kinda protect it from snow or, like, sort of debris, like, leaves or or whatever sort of gathering on top and blocking the airflow that you're gonna get to the system. But in terms of, like, water and rain and all that kind of good stuff, it's no problem at all. Everything goes outside.
Gregg:Yeah. Because not everybody's got like, in my case, for instance, the garage has been converted into an office. Lovely. So I can't really put anything I mean, let's be honest, the the houses that were built in 17 eighties, the garage is too narrow for modern cars. Yeah.
Gregg:Yeah. You can't you can't really use it, you know
George:Who puts the car in a garage, these days anyways? Exactly. So impressive, isn't it?
Gregg:So so loads of garages have been converted. So that kinda leaves you with a with a loft, and that's a hot or a cold place. Yeah. So it's not really ideal, and it's far away from the, the, you know, the distribution board. Yeah.
Gregg:So that's why I'm always asking, like, when it comes to batteries, ideal places for it to be outside. So somewhere next to the charger, for instance. Yeah. The other question that I always have about the batteries and I have people asking is, like, okay. I already have solar from somebody else.
Gregg:Mhmm. Will it work?
George:Will it work? Yes. Yes. It will work. Yes.
George:So a lot of our systems have the ability to be able to monitor a preexisting solar supply that you've got in your property, and you literally so we have, like, a CT clamp that you clamp on to that. That's not a problem at all. That's one of the kind of real important things when it comes to battery storage, really. A lot of people might have, you know, had fit or were early adopters back in the day, and now they're looking to expand on that or that it's maybe coming to an end and then wanting to, you know, get use out of that that early investment, we can absolutely do that. That's not a problem at all.
Gregg:Another question that I always kinda hear people asking about batteries is how are how safe are they compared to, like, you know, I mean, we all know within the industry that the battery fires are not happening very often. Right? Yeah. And it's usually because of of the external factors, not the not the cells themselves that actually catch fire, but the, it's the cables between them. So for the lack of better word, like, the buses, I think they call them.
Gregg:Yeah. Or, you know, some other silly mistake that somebody made. Or somebody squashed the cells too much too much during production, but that happens very, very seldomly. Yeah. And yet they have to recall thousands of packs.
Gregg:Has that ever happened with the domestic battery? How do you how do you reassure people that it's not a problem?
George:Yeah. No. Absolutely. And it's it is something to consider, especially, I think it gets conflated a lot by the media. You you know, you see all the time about cars going up in flames than being EVs.
George:Yeah. And then, you know, actually, is that happening that often? I don't think it really is, to be honest with you. But it is it's a valid concern for some people. In terms of our batteries, we use a battery composition called lithium ion phosphate or life p o 4, and that's one of the safest battery compositions on the market today right now.
George:It has a really low, what we call, thermal runway, which means the chance of that catching fire is is virtually nothing at all. All that happens if the batteries are ever sort of punctured or damaged or overcharged or or whatever is the cells will expand and then they release a nontoxic vapor into the air, which smells disgusting. It's not very nice at all, but it's not gonna catch on fire. That being said, if if you have a fire in your home, I've actually it's not gonna help the situation, but it's not gonna be the thing that's gonna start that fire. You're right.
George:It's it's more likely to be an electric issue. It's not been installed properly. There's there's something, you know, that's sticking out that shouldn't be, and your electric's gonna have no something like that. Do you know what I mean? But the battery itself isn't just gonna cut go on catch on fire one day and go up in flames.
Gregg:Yeah. I'm asking because we we are at Everything Electric South 2424 in Farnborough. And one of the kinda themes of the show this year is battling misinformation. So, you know, getting that upfront, like, telling people, like, upfront, like, this isn't a problem. We thought about it.
Gregg:We we're we're smart.
George:There's been no fires. Everything electric, it's been great. Nothing is called fire. Everything's fine.
Gregg:I've been to one of the one of the shows, like, completely, like, this is unrelated, but, like, we've been told to set up cars in the park so that people can come around. This was for Yorkshire EV meetup in the Rotherham. And the organizers sneakingly put fire extinguishers by the, behind every tree. And, a, if there was a runway fire in a car, that would not have helped. And, b, what a cheap move.
Gregg:And, obviously, obviously, everything was fine. Like, you know, like, nobody had any issues, but, like, yeah. It's funny, like, the this was basically probably done by somebody who thought, I've read somewhere this, you know, this stuff, and I don't know more about this. I'm not gonna ask anybody. I'm just gonna put fire extinguisher there.
Gregg:Yeah. So it is on people's minds, and let's be assured, like, in case of EVs, you're less likely to have fire like, fire in an EV. Like, I think it's 10 to 20 times less likely statistically because it's just less moving fewer move moving parts. Exactly. And things don't get as hot.
Gregg:Let's be honest. Yeah. So and I'm pretty sure the when it comes to domestic battery storage, you don't you optimize the size, obviously, but you don't optimize necessarily the weight. Right? So the batteries are probably heavier than what you would put in a car.
Gregg:Like, it's not a concern, when it comes to the the weight. But also, I presume and I'm just asking for confirmation because, you know, I don't know. But, again, as an engineer, I'm thinking about it. I'm sure these things are also rated for the the c rating. So that's a it's a less of a c rating than a car battery because you're not gonna pull 200 amps when you launch the car Yeah.
Gregg:Right, out of the, domestic battery pack. Exactly. So that kind of swiftly leads me to another question, which is I think another important thing when it comes to battery packs is how much power can you put in and pull out of the, your battery packs?
George:So it depends on on what you've got, which is a real cheap copper, and so I'm sorry, but it it does. The biggest that we do at the moment currently is our all in one unit, which is a 13 and a half kilowatt hour battery with an AC coupled inverter attached to that. That's got a continuous output of 6 kilowatt. So it can discharge continuously 6 kilowatts and then charge 6 kilowatts too. That is the biggest that we do currently.
George:We've got a few things coming in the pipeline that are gonna succeed that and hopefully coming sort of early q 1, q 2 next year. But right now, if you were to look, give energy and buy something that would be the best that you could do for single phase at least. For 3 phase, we go bigger and bigger and bigger, and that's purely because of the the phase isn't being able to handle more output than Yeah. Than than one single phase. But for most standard times in the UK, you can have a single phase, and that's the the biggest you can get.
Gregg:Okay. And, obviously, if you have a smaller battery, it doesn't go that far.
George:Exactly. Yeah. So on the smaller side of things, the the lowest output that we do would be 2.6 kilowatts, which, again, you know, depending on on your usage, if if you maybe live on your own and you're a very low energy user, that would probably do you, to be honest with you. It's all about you and your needs. And and if you've got the information to begin with, if you know what you're using in day and you know the items that you're, using in your home that are gonna draw electricity, that makes it a lot easier for you to be able to make that decision yourself.
George:We're here, and we can guide you, and we can help you and your installer will help you too. But if you've got the information, it's your house, it's your usage, makes things 10 times easier.
Gregg:Well, I think one of the propositions of Give Energy is having a cheaper solution that still worked pretty well and has a very long guarantee like you said. Yeah. Because probably because you cut you you you're doing the end to end manufacturing and installation. So you can guarantee the the pro the the product. You're not reliant on a third party giving you their warranty and therefore cupping it, you know, down to whatever they give you.
George:Exactly. I mean, so so we don't do the installation ourselves. It wouldn't be a Give Energy person, but all of the people that do do Give Energy installs will come to our center and do a training course with us. So they're all accredited by us, and they've done some sort of formal training with us so they know how the kit works. They know the pitfalls to avoid and all that good stuff.
George:But, yeah, you're absolutely right. We we if anything, we'd estimate that that's to be longer. We'd, you know, we wanted to go bigger with the warranty, but then for all kind of insurance purposes, we had to to drop it back down to 12. But realistically, you could have that battery for 15, 20 years depending on your usage, and it would be fine. It wouldn't be an issue at all.
Gregg:What is the most because we obviously, at Everything Electric Show, there's a Sunday, so it's the 3rd day. Mhmm. You've had a fair share of people asking you questions on the stands. Yeah. What is the most thing you've heard?
George:I think one one of the really exciting things that we do give that not many other people, if any people actually do at the moment, is we've got our own DFS scheme. So I can talk about that a little bit if if you're not too familiar with all that is, but it's essentially like a like a an incentive when the grid is under real strain. You can send energy back to the grid in order to help keep the lights on for, you know, the UK in in its entirety, really, and you can get really lucrative rates for doing that. So we run that scheme that's specific to us. And you can I think last year, people were getting sort of, you know, the 4 pound a kilowatt hour, you know, sometimes when it was kind of in in the deep winter, dark days that that we had?
George:And that obviously is is massively lucrative if you've got a lot of storage and you can, you know, chuck 6 kilowatts out for an hour. You're you're raking it in, really. And that's a really exciting prospect, I think, for people. Not only do you get to feel a bit smug because you're like, you know, I helped to keep my neighbor's lights on, and they don't even know about it. But you're also coming back with with a nice paycheck off the back of that too.
Gregg:So that that yeah. That helps. It gives people another incentive to buy.
George:Exactly. Yeah.
Gregg:Yeah. Which which is a good thing. Because these things are not cheap in the grand scheme of things, but they're obviously I I always think battery is something that you should have if you get solar I got my solar in 2017, and the only option we had at the time that was really sensible was Tesla Powerwall Yeah. But we didn't wanna go that far with money, so we didn't get it. And I'm kinda still regretting not having a battery, and, you know, it's something that I'm considering now.
Gregg:Yeah. But we've had and I'm not the only one in this bucket. You know, we've had our solar for, what is it now, 7 years, and it still works flawlessly. And it's a you know, I don't wanna change that installation. Yeah.
Gregg:I don't wanna change the inverter, you know. So this is why I'm asking, like, somebody in my group or use case Yeah. You know, was gonna come in and I just want a battery. Mhmm. How how do those batteries actually work with smart diverters like Zappi and you know?
Gregg:Because you you have your own charger. But again, you might go to somebody's house and they already have a charger. They're not gonna change their charger. Yeah. Absolutely.
Gregg:You know, it integrates very much better with your thing. But you might not necessarily wanna buy the charge the the battery from a manufacturer of your charger because maybe it doesn't fit your purpose. Maybe it's more expensive. Who knows? Do do do do all those things work then?
George:Or Yeah. All works absolutely fine, Greg. To to be honest with you, it's it's all about I mean, you know, having an a whole ecosystem is is more of a it's an easy thing for you.
Gregg:You know? Of course. Yeah.
George:You can just you can have it on one app, and you can you know how it all works, and it's all fine. You can have a battery from us. You can have a charge from somebody else. You can have a diverter from somebody else, and it will all work together fine. There's no there's no problem with that.
George:It's just it's a bit more laborious for you. You've gotta go in and you've gotta manually do things where if you were to have just give energy equipment, you can schedule things and it will just be autonomous for you then, and you don't have to worry about it. But you make a good point earlier on about if you're having solar now, it's a massive no brainer. You may as well get battery on top of it because that's gonna increase the amount of, you know, generation that you're generating and and then being able to use on top of that.
Gregg:But even if it smoothed out the the load. Right?
George:Exactly. Yeah. So you you, you know, you said it's gonna go further because you're not wasting anybody sending it back to the grid. You you you're gonna use the vast majority of them. But even if you haven't got solar, a lot of our use cases these days are people who are just having a battery, and they're getting on either they've got, like, an economy 7 tariff from way back when, or they're getting on a smart overnight tariff because they've got an EV, and they're charging the battery up overnight and then discharging it during the day.
George:And you can save tonnes from doing that if you charge it, like, what, 6, 7 p, some of the rates now, and they go up to 30, 35. It's a no brainer. You may you know, you're gonna power your home from that low price all day long. Yeah. That's a good that's
Gregg:a good that's a good good thing. Again, I have to get a battery. I'm just, you know, pondering the the the market kind of thing.
George:We'll see you out, Greg. No. Don't worry. We'll get you one.
Gregg:It's fine. Sure. So was there any question that I didn't ask you? Or you is there something you wanna talk about that, you know, you're excited about in particular and you want people to know? I I think I think to
George:be fair, I think you've you've done really well, Craig. You've done a really good job. Well done. I think that's all the questions that needed to be asked. In terms of I mean, we can talk a little bit about the future, I suppose.
George:We've got some really, really exciting things coming out the end of year and next year, which I can't talk about in too much detail, but I would say definitely keep an eye out on Give Energy and what we're doing and how we're working because it really is a really exciting time for us. And, you know, the industry as a whole is always quite exciting, to be honest with you. We're at you know, everybody's kinda pushing each other to do bigger and better and be bolder and and all this kind of good stuff. So it's exciting for the battery storage and sort of solar space as a whole. But, specifically, at GIVE, we're we're doing a lot of very cool things that are gonna come into fruition sort of end of the year, beginning of next year, which, yeah, we can't wait for you all to see.
Gregg:Are you UK only company, or do you, you know, install in other countries?
George:No. No. Yep. So we are so we're our HQ's in the UK. We're based up in Stoke on Trent in the Midlands, but we're in the Netherlands.
George:We're in Australia. We're in South Africa. So, yeah, we've got sort of fingers and a lot of pies, and we've got sort of our main manufacturing over in in China too and, you know, in Asia. We're we're we're there as well. So, yeah, we're we're quite a global company these days, which has only happened in the last sort of 2, 3 years really for us.
George:So the expansion's been been huge.
Gregg:I mean, it sounds like there there's an episode with an update coming up. Absolutely. Stay tuned. We'll come back. Absolutely.
Gregg:Good stuff. Right. It was nice to have you. Thank you. Thanks, Greg.
Gregg:Cheers. Alright.
George:Bye. Bye bye.
