Paid GivEnergy Tier Announced.
What? Why? When?
We need to speak directly about an upcoming change to the software that powers your GivEnergy system. To date, it has been provided free of charge, funded by ongoing hardware sales.
Infrastructure, data storage, and operations all have ongoing monthly costs. Our products can last over 15 years, which adds up to many hundreds of pounds over their lifetime.
As our user base has grown and hardware sales have slowed, that model no longer works.
What’s changing
To continue operating the platform sustainably, we’re moving to a model which – I hope you’ll agree – is simple, fair and transparent:
Local access remains free, forever
You’ll always be able to manage your system over your home network. Your system can continue to function independently of cloud services, for those who want a more hands-on approach.
Cloud access will become paid
A single monthly fee will cover remote access, historical data, automation, and API usage (including 3rd party remote access). These are the services which mainly drive our ongoing costs.
How this change will save you money!
The software is not just a convenience. Smart Tariff actively reduces energy costs and carbon intensity compared to static schedules.
Our goal is simple: for the subscription to save you more than it costs, with upcoming improvements to our use of:
- Automatic charging on time-of-use tariffs
- Solar generation prediction to optimise charging
- Export strategies
- Integration with EV chargers
For example, we plan to provide an option to charge your battery a little less overnight if we know your solar will produce more power the next day for your average usage – our calculations show that this alone can save 50p per day on average.
Our goal isn’t to profit from the software but to make the platform sustainable, so it can continue to operate reliably for the long term and support our vision of empowering energy freedom for all.
We’ll continuously review pricing to ensure it remains fair and reflects the cost of running the service. If we’re able to reduce costs over time, we’ll reflect that in how the service is priced.
What about managing it yourself?
Some customers prefer to take full control of their system locally, using their own tools and setup. That option will always remain available.
However, it typically requires:
- Additional hardware (for example, a home server or controller)
- Ongoing electricity usage to run it
- Trust or cost with additional software vendors
- Time and effort to configure, monitor, and maintain
For most users, a managed cloud service is not only simpler and more reliable, but also cheaper overall once these factors are included.
A personal note from our Principal Software Engineer
I’ve recently taken responsibility for GivEnergy Software, with a very clear goal: to make the platform sustainable and de-risk its future.
I know that the GivEnergy experience – in software quality and hardware support – hasn’t always been where it should be. That’s on us. I am confident that we can make this work if we get this transition right. That’s why your input matters.
I’ve put together a short survey to understand how you use the software and what matters most to you. It should take only a minute or two – there are 12 questions, most are multiple choice and all are optional. Your responses will directly influence how we implement this change. We’ll feed back with your aggregated, anonymised responses in a future blog post, for maximum transparency.
What happens next?
We’ll review your feedback quickly and share full details on pricing and timing shortly, with the new model beginning in May.
We know this is a significant change, and not everyone will welcome it. My aim is to be transparent about why it’s necessary — and to ensure the platform continues to sustainably deliver real value for those who rely on it.