1. Who you're contracting with
RVTC LTD ("we", "us", "Sentinel"), a company registered in England and Wales. Contact: hello@sentinelapp.solar. By signing in with your approved installer account or using Sentinel, you agree to these terms.
2. What you get
Sentinel is provided free of charge to approved installers. There are no paid tiers, no subscription, and no charges for use.
3. How access works
- Access to Sentinel is by application only. You apply, and we review.
- Access is granted free of charge to installers who are consistently rated 5★. This is a matter of policy and a design decision on our part, not an automated entitlement.
- We may withdraw or suspend your access, or limit it to reading so that you cannot change any settings, if your standards slip, if you no longer meet the eligibility we set, or if you breach these terms.
4. Your responsibilities
- You confirm you own (or have authority to manage) the GivEnergy inverter you connect to Sentinel.
- You won't use Sentinel to access systems you don't have permission to access.
- You're responsible for keeping your pairing code and account credentials secure.
- You won't reverse-engineer the agent or attempt to bypass the customer's consent controls: the read and write windows the customer opens on their own device, and the 48-hour access the customer grants on it.
5. Consent: the write window & 48-hour access
Sentinel is read-only by default. We won't change a customer's inverter settings without the customer's explicit consent, given on their own device in one of two ways: (a) during a support call, the customer opens a write window in the Sentinel app, which closes by itself after one hour, or sooner if the customer closes it; or (b) the customer grants a named engineer 48-hour access in the Sentinel app, which covers changing settings as well as reading them, ends by itself after 48 hours, and can be revoked by the customer at any time with immediate effect. From version 1.2.0 of the Sentinel app, access granted under (b) also covers RVTC's administrator, and the screen on which the customer grants it says so before they agree: “RVTC’s administrator can also connect during these 48 hours, to help your engineer.” Either way the customer consents to the access, not to each individual change, and under (b) the engineer may make changes while the customer is not present. No write is sent outside one of these. Every write is recorded to a permanent, tamper-evident log before it is sent to the inverter — if it cannot be recorded, it is not sent — and no engineer can alter or delete it. Only the account owner can erase an entire system's record (for example to clear a test), and every erasure is itself permanently logged.
6. Inverter changes — DNO compliance
Some inverter settings (the export and import limits, anti-islanding, and the voltage and frequency protection settings) are protected by the DNO connection agreement under G98 / G99. When an engineer sets one of these from the Sentinel dashboard, the dashboard warns that it is a grid-code setting and asks for the new value to be typed again before it is sent; putting one back to its value from before the first change in a session asks for a plain confirmation. Sentinel does not check that a change is within the DNO agreement. You remain responsible for ensuring the inverter is operating within its connection agreement.
7. Our responsibilities
- We'll make reasonable commercial efforts to keep Sentinel available, but we don't promise 100% uptime. Sentinel is provided as-is.
- We won't change a customer's inverter settings without their explicit consent, given on their own device as set out in section 5 (a write window they open during a call, or 48-hour access they grant and can revoke at any time).
- We'll tell you within 72 hours if we become aware of a security incident affecting your data.
- We won't sell your data to third parties — ever.
8. Liability
We're not liable for: damage caused by changes that have been authorised but fall outside the DNO agreement; loss of generation revenue or feed-in tariff payments; consequential losses (lost work, lost time, etc.). Sentinel is provided free of charge, and to the fullest extent permitted by law we accept no liability for any loss or damage arising out of or in connection with your use of it. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death, personal injury, fraud, or anything else that can't be limited under UK law.
9. Termination
You can stop using Sentinel at any time — uninstall the agent and your data stops flowing. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these terms, with reasonable notice except in cases of urgent risk.
10. Changes to these terms
If these terms change materially in future, we'll email approved installers 30 days before any material change to these terms, and ask them to tell the customers whose systems they look after. Continued use after the notice period counts as acceptance.
11. Law
These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Disputes go to the courts of England and Wales.