GivEnergy Repairs & Support in Kent

GivEnergy was the retrofit battery of the energy crisis. Between 2018 and early 2026 its hybrid inverters and stackable batteries became the default choice for adding storage to an existing solar array, fitted by local Kent installers and by national chains selling into the county. The south east had the demand: high electricity prices, a large stock of owner-occupied houses with south-facing roofs, and an early move onto time-of-use tariffs that made a battery pay.

The scale is not guesswork. Government figures put more than 45,000 solar PV installations of all sizes across Kent and Medway at the end of 2024, and the South East has more renewable generating sites than any other English region once solar is counted. A large minority of those homes added a battery, and GivEnergy took a lot of that market.

The result is a large installed base across Kent with nothing behind it. GivEnergy Ltd is in administration. A good number of the installers who fitted these systems have closed, been sold, or simply stopped answering. What is left is the hardware on the wall, working away on settings somebody else chose, and an owner with no obvious person to call.

That is the gap this page is about. We are independent GivEnergy specialists based in Leeds, and we work on these systems every day: diagnosis, repair and reconfiguration. Kent is covered remotely like everywhere else in the UK, and on site through an engineer who covers the county.

Kent also has a particular reason to want a second opinion before anything gets replaced. In December 2025, after an investigation by Kent County Council Trading Standards, three men were convicted at Maidstone Crown Court over the mis-selling of solar equipment to elderly and vulnerable homeowners in the county. Inverters and batteries had been swapped out unnecessarily, some of the work was found to be hazardous, and expert evidence established that the systems had been working properly before anyone touched them. That is not how the trade in Kent generally behaves. It is a good reason to treat "your inverter has failed and needs replacing" as a claim to be tested rather than accepted, and testing it is precisely what a diagnostic is for.

GivEnergy Ltd entered administration on 9 April 2026, on an application lodged on 7 April 2026 at the High Court of Justice, Business and Property Courts in Leeds. This is administration, not liquidation, but the practical effect for an owner is narrow and permanent: the administrator has stated that no further hardware warranties will be honoured by GivEnergy Ltd. There is no factory RMA route, no free replacement inverter, and no manufacturer engineer to escalate to. If your installer has also closed, there is nobody left in the original chain.

What did not change is the hardware. A GivEnergy inverter and battery run on firmware held locally on the unit. They keep charging, discharging and exporting on the settings already written to them. A system that was working on 8 April was still working on 10 April, and systems installed years before administration are still cycling now. The failure mode to plan for is not a sudden shutdown; it is that when something does go wrong, the old support path is closed.

Nor did the app stop, and that surprises people. The portal and the mobile app are run by GivEnergy Software Ltd, company number 14899764, which was not part of the administration appointment and is still trading, so the cloud stayed up when the manufacturer went down. The useful part is that your system does not depend on it either way: the inverter and battery hold their settings locally, and we can diagnose and repair them with the portal up or down.

So who supports it now? In practice, three groups:

• Independent engineers who can read the fault, work with the local interface and the physical hardware, and repair or replace at component and unit level. That is what we do.
• Your original installer, if they are still trading. Worth a call first, particularly if any workmanship guarantee they gave you was their own rather than the manufacturer’s.
• Nobody, for anything that depended on GivEnergy Ltd’s own authorisation, such as a warranty claim. That is the honest answer, and it is why the settings and firmware on the unit in front of you now matter more than they did.

Our remote diagnostic is free. If we fix the fault remotely, it is £125. No fix, no fee. The full administration record, with filings and dates →

After enough of these systems you stop guessing. The distribution of faults is consistent, and most of it is not broken hardware:

• Battery not charging overnight. Nearly always a charge schedule that no longer matches the tariff, a state-of-charge floor set higher than the owner realises, or an AC charge window that was never enabled. Overnight charging diagnosis →
• Importing from the grid with a full battery. The classic CT clamp fault: reversed orientation, the wrong cable clamped, or a clamp that has worked loose in the meter cupboard. The signature is import and export readings that look backwards. CT clamp direction →
• Portal or app showing offline. Usually the dongle, the router or the WiFi band rather than the inverter. The system is generally still working fine behind it, and if the dongle won't rejoin your WiFi, we can set it up on site, from £195. Portal offline →
• Backup power not working in a cut. EPS that was never commissioned, or was wired but never tested, so the first time anyone finds out is during an actual power cut. EPS not working →
• Relay clicking, BMS Comm Fail and other BMS errors. Relay clicking is usually high grid voltage rather than a dead inverter, and the event log shows which. A failed relay, a damaged comms cable or a BMS fault is hardware, and those are the ones that need an engineer in front of the unit.
• Firmware. We don't advise running updates from the GivEnergy portal or app. Where an update fixes a problem you actually have, we do it manually, on a callout or by talking you or your electrician through it remotely. How we update GivEnergy firmware →

Remote first: most of the above is solved without a site visit, and a Kent postcode makes no difference to that. Where a visit is needed, we have an engineer who covers the county. Tell us the symptom and what the app shows, and we will start there.

Two different things, and it is worth being clear about which is which. Remote diagnostics and remote fixes are UK-wide, and have always been: the work happens over the local interface and the portal, and your location is irrelevant to it. On-site work in Kent runs through an engineer who covers the county, rather than from a depot. We are a Leeds business and we are not pretending otherwise.

Between them that covers the county, including:

Outside the county, remote support is unchanged wherever you are, and the same subject-to-availability arrangement covers the west through our Bristol page.

A note on timing, because it would be dishonest to leave it out. We are busier than we have ever been and enquiries are currently taking up to seven days to answer, in the order they arrive. Once we are talking, the remote session is usually quick. An on-site visit depends on the Kent engineer’s availability, and we will tell you what that looks like before you commit to anything.

• Remote diagnostic. A structured session on the fault log, the schedule, the SOC floor and what the clamp is really reading. Free to book; £125 only if it is fixed in that session. How the diagnostic works →
• On-site repair. Relay, battery comms cabling, BMS, isolators, the things that need hands on the unit. From £295 per visit, quoted in writing first.
• Inverter replacement. Supplied and fitted, settings carried across, monitoring reconnected. From £1,495.
• On-site WiFi setup. When the dongle won't join your WiFi, we can set it up on site, from £195, router setup included. If the signal doesn't reach, a WiFi extender is an extra £75, and we carry them with us.
• Monitoring account. We do not handle GivEnergy account transfers, because the owner can do them in the app. Monitoring transfer guide →
• System recovery. Where the installer has gone: condition report, paperwork rebuild, warranty position, and a plan. System recovery →
• Annual maintenance. A yearly check with a written report you can compare year on year. Annual maintenance →

A battery that was commissioned on a flat-rate tariff in 2022 and never touched since is not going to behave well on a modern time-of-use tariff. The hardware is fine. The schedule is three years out of date, and nobody has looked at it because the person who set it up has gone.

What we change, and why it matters:

• Charge windows against the actual tariff. Cheap-rate windows move when tariffs change, and the inverter does not know that. Charge schedule setup →
• State-of-charge floor. Set too high and you are paying for capacity you never use; set at zero and you have no backup reserve when the power goes.
• Export behaviour. Whether the system should be exporting at all, and what your export limit actually permits.
• CT clamp verification. Not a setting as such, but the single most common cause of a system that looks broken and is not.

This is the work that most often pays for itself, and almost all of it is done remotely.

Kent’s distribution network operator is UK Power Networks, through its South Eastern Power Networks licence, which serves south London, Kent, East Sussex and parts of West Sussex. It is the body your installer notified, or applied to, when the inverter and battery were connected, and the body you or an engineer deals with when anything about the export side changes. It is not your electricity supplier, and switching supplier does not change it. One exception worth knowing: some newer housing developments sit on an independent network operator rather than on the regional one directly.

Two routes exist. EREC G98 covers generation up to 16 A per phase, which the standard itself puts at 3.68 kW on a single-phase supply and 11.04 kW on three-phase, and it works as connect-then-notify: the installer tells the network operator no later than 28 days after commissioning. Above that, EREC G99 applies and it is apply-before-connect, with the network operator's assessment due within 10 working days on the Fast Track for many small installations. A battery set up to run the home in a power cut (island mode) can't use the Fast Track, so it goes through the standard G99 process. The point most often missed on a retrofit: once the aggregate capacity of everything on site passes 16 A per phase, adding a battery becomes a G99 job and the operator has to be consulted before the work, not after.

UK Power Networks is more generous than the bare threshold suggests. Its own domestic guidance says that where maximum export after any export limitation scheme is under 5 kW, the application is approved automatically, and it reports over 90 per cent of installer applications now approved instantly.

One point that catches out anyone replacing a failed inverter on an older array: under G98, substantially modifying an existing installation, and replacing the inverter is the example the standard gives, brings that system into current compliance. It is not a reason to avoid the repair. It is a reason to have someone do the paperwork properly at the same time.

Where the installer has folded, the practical problem is paperwork rather than hardware. Before we touch a system we ask what you can find:

• Any G98 notification or G99 application reference, and the network operator’s response letter or offer.
• Your MPAN, from an electricity bill.
• The inverter and battery model and serial numbers, plus the commissioning date.
• Any export limitation paperwork, and what limit was agreed.

If none of it survives, that is not a dead end: the record sits with UK Power Networks rather than with the installer who has gone. There is a catch worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on the phone, though. UK Power Networks states plainly that only installers can notify on a customer’s behalf, so a homeowner cannot regularise their own connection. That needs a competent installer to file it, which is work we do.

One warning worth stating plainly. Where an export limit has been agreed with the network operator, it is not a number to change in the app because the system would generate more without it. If a reconfiguration would move your export limit, that is a conversation with UK Power Networks first. How export limitation works →

Kent is not one planning authority. At the time of writing it is twelve district and borough councils under Kent County Council, plus Medway, which is a separate unitary authority and not part of KCC at all. Each runs its own conservation areas, its own Article 4 directions and its own local list, so a rule of thumb that holds in Maidstone need not hold in Thanet. That structure is changing: in July 2026 the government confirmed all of it will be replaced by four unitary councils, with shadow elections in May 2027 and the new councils taking over on 1 April 2028. Either way the point stands, and it is why we check the address rather than the county.

The baseline is reassuring for most Kent roofs. Roof-mounted solar on a house is permitted development under the GPDO 2015, Schedule 2, Part 14, Class A, provided the equipment protrudes no more than 0.2 metres beyond the roof slope and sits no higher than the highest part of the roof, chimneys excluded. Conservation-area status excludes only a wall fronting a highway; there is no restriction on a roof slope facing the road.

Kent has more than its share of the things that change that answer:

• Listed buildings, and there are a lot of them. Class A does not apply at all to a listed dwellinghouse, so solar on a listed Kent house needs listed building consent as well as planning permission, whatever the roof slope faces. Kent County Council counts 17,349 listed buildings in the county, plus 360 scheduled monuments, which are also outside Class A. Bristol made a Local Listed Building Consent Order for Clifton in July 2025 to simplify exactly this. No Kent authority has made an equivalent, so the ordinary consent route applies here.
• National Landscapes. Kent has two, the Kent Downs (designated 1968) and part of the High Weald (1983), and between them they cover about a third of the county. Designation does not remove householder permitted development rights for pitched-roof solar, which is the misunderstanding we hear most often. What it does is make the address "article 2(3) land", and on a house the only place that bites is a flat roof, where solar has needed prior approval since 21 December 2023. It also raises the bar on anything that does need consent, because since December 2023 councils have had a duty to further these landscapes rather than merely have regard to them. For what it is worth, the Kent Downs team’s own renewable energy position statement encourages rooftop retrofit, with designated heritage assets as the stated exception.
• Conservation areas, and a World Heritage Site. Kent County Council counts 493 conservation areas, from a handful in Dartford to nearly a hundred across the Canterbury district. In a conservation area the restriction falls on a wall, balcony or roof enclosure fronting a highway, not on a pitched roof slope. Canterbury Cathedral and St Augustine’s Abbey form a World Heritage Site, which carries that same restriction.
• Article 4 directions. We checked the national planning dataset for all thirteen Kent authorities and found none that removes solar permitted development rights. Treat that as an evidenced absence rather than a guarantee: several Kent districts have published no Article 4 area records at all, so your own council's map is the last word.

There is a physical side to this too, and it is the reason we ask what the roof is covered with before anyone climbs on it. Kent has an older housing stock than the national average, and in places a much older one: around 18 per cent of Kent homes were built before 1900, against about 15 per cent across England and Wales, rising to nearly a third in Tunbridge Wells and a quarter in Thanet and Dover. Handmade peg tiles, Kent hips and valleys, and oast houses with conical roofs are not the roofs that mounting systems are designed around. The MCS installation standard is explicit that roof brackets must not impose load on slates or tiles unless the bracket is certified to spread it, and that a structural engineer should be consulted wherever the roof structure is unusual. On a repair or a panel swap in this county, that is a live question rather than a formality.

None of this affects diagnosing or repairing a system that is already installed, which is the bulk of what we do. It matters when a repair turns into a change: a bigger array, a relocated inverter, panels on a different slope. We would rather raise it before the quote than after.

This is the common case now, and it is worth separating what is genuinely lost from what only feels lost. The installer’s own workmanship warranty dies with the company. So does the aftercare. What survives is more than most people expect: the equipment warranties from the manufacturers other than GivEnergy Ltd (Fox ESS claims go through a Local Installer, a role we can take on), your MCS certificate, the network operator’s record of the connection, your generation data, and any insurance-backed guarantee you were given, which is a separate policy designed to outlive the installer.

Two practical notes on recovering the paperwork. MCS will reissue a certificate from its installations database where the installer is no longer trading, but only to the current owner or their legal representative, on proof of address and for a small administration fee. And be careful what you read into MCS protection: it covers installer failure and installation defects, not a manufacturer’s product warranty, so it is not a replacement for the GivEnergy hardware cover that has gone.

What we do with an orphaned Kent system: establish what is actually installed and how it was commissioned, rebuild the documentation that can be rebuilt, set out the warranty position honestly, and give you a written condition report you can act on. If your installer has ceased trading →

The monitoring account is separate from that work. We do not handle GivEnergy account transfers, because the owner can do them in the app. If your installer has gone or cannot help, another installer can request access at givenergy.cloud/temporary-access. The account owner approves the request, and that installer can then help as the original could. Monitoring transfer guide →