Solar and battery systems can cost £10,000–£20,000 or more — so what happens when something goes wrong and the manufacturer doesn’t want to deal directly with you?
👉 **RANK YOUR SOLAR & BATTERY MANUFACTURERS HERE:**
I want your help to find out which solar and battery manufacturers provide genuinely good customer support — and which ones need to do much better.
In this video I share my own experience with SolarEdge support after one of my three SolarEdge batteries began intermittently dropping offline.
The frustrating part wasn’t simply that there was a fault. My Home Assistant system could see what was happening, I collected logs and evidence, and eventually SolarEdge made a change to the battery management software that significantly reduced the problem.
But getting there was far harder than it should have been.
That raises a much bigger question about the solar industry.
Should homeowners who have spent thousands of pounds on solar panels, inverters and battery storage be forced to go through their original installer for technical support? What happens if that installer stops trading? And should manufacturers provide better direct support to the people who actually own their equipment?
I also compare this with my heat pump. I pay £9 per month for a maintenance contract that provides support when something goes wrong as well as an annual inspection and service.
Could a similar support model work for solar and home battery systems?
### I NEED YOUR HELP
I’ve created a community Solar & Battery Support Tier List.
If you’ve had direct support experience with any of the manufacturers listed, visit:
👉
Simply drag the manufacturers you have experience with into the appropriate tier and submit your ranking.
You don’t need to provide an email address or personal information, and you don’t need to rank every manufacturer.
Please rank manufacturers based on your **actual support experience**, rather than whether you like or dislike their products.
If we can collect hundreds — or ideally thousands — of responses, we should start to get a useful picture of which manufacturers are supporting their customers properly.
And once we have enough data, I’ll publish the results and start asking some questions of the manufacturers that consistently perform badly.
Which solar or battery manufacturer has given you the best support? And which has given you the worst?
Let me know in the comments.
#SolarEnergy #SolarBattery #SolarEdge
source
IMO it would be worth having Givenergy on there because the software is still being 'supported'. I put supported in quotes because I sent them a question by email and didnt get a response.
If companies are giving kit to youtubers who spend less than a minute extolling the product beware. My Delta has 17 various 3 pin plugs connect with various to use at any one time and all pirts in use with splitters to run small cooling fans for the kit and me. Heavily tested. It's just a comsumable to me £350 over 2 years.
We could make the choice to be modest users. Every extra device heats the planet a bit more. Installers aren't the brightest of folk. The client is not their focus, they are their focus.
Spec and built it yourself for much quicker pay back to afford fixing the issues. But we are dependant on the Chinese BMS and Firmware, sadly.
Are you going to hire the scaffolding the installer required to clean your panels? Is a maintenance hatch ever included.
Similar experience with SolarEdge. The batteries can sometimes drop into an idle state and the house then runs from the grid. A reboot of the inverters (only) usually fixes the problem. An open ticket for 6 months and multiple previous related tickets. Multiple firmware updates to both inverters and batteries have not resolved the issue.
Overall the system works well, but these failures are too frequent and expensive at peak rate. Detailed data can be recovered from their monitoring platform via API. Timely, quality fixes to the firmware let down an otherwise decent ecosystem and leaves the impression that they either do no care, or they are struggling and cutting cost corners.
Manufacturers can not bother because the UK law lumps the responsibility on the retailer .
I have a similar setup to yours, and have had the EXACT same issues, along the same timelines as yourself. I also have a friend with similar setup, same problem. We've narrowed it down to an INVERTER software issue. like yourself, several rounds of direct solar edge support and the generic "we've applied a firmware update". the issue happens less frequently now. I pushed SE for more details, but was told the changes are propritory and would not be provided. I believe the battery goes into standby mode, then doesn't come back, unless the random SE daily reset brings it back. My theory, is that home assistant may be sending commands too fast in some cases, which makes the follow the leader model get out of sync, then the battery can get caught between changes and default to standby. I overhauled my HA model, and I've not seen the issue happen since. my friend, using HA only recently, and starting to see the issue more frequently. so gut feeling some issue with follow the leader and modbus command frequency.
You are at least in a better position than Givenergy owners – the company went bust. I've just fitted fuses to my batteries so I can reset the BMS if it ever locks up. Givenergy Gen2 batteries as supplied have no way to power cycle the BMS. Now we could also talk about technical support for electric cars. I'm finding that useless too. A well known German brand is telling me to check indicators and settings which are not even fitted to my car and likewise closing tickets when they have not even understood the problem never mind fixed it. And that's from the support centre in Germany. Totally hopeless and clueless. Cheers
Car companies are losing billions pushing EV's, the solar industry has been put through the wringer with Chinese oversupply and crashing prices. Your expectation levels are simply not in alignment with commercial reality. For years the whole install industry was largely a thinly disguised get rich quick scheme running on govt/taxpayer largesse and over generous FIT schemes, hence the orphaned support and trail of dissolved companies. Take your pick, every last request pandered to in extremis or no warranty because the company who supplied your kit has gone too.
This does bother me a little bit since getting a solar installation, because the panels themselves, unless Mr Burns/Elon Musk decides to try and blot out the sun, they just sit there on the roof doing their thing – cushty.
But the battery, they say it has a 10 year warranty and I shouldn't need to do anything, but how would I even know? I'm not an electrician, and the user interface tells me almost nothing.
(I'm also in the druidical brotherhood of software developers, and have studied the alchemical texts passed down to us from the ancients for support ticket resolution, "What is one should be zero, and what is zero should be one, (try turning it off and on). If that doesn't work, just threaten to close the ticket and hope they go away".)
My installer got taken over by a larger solar installation company it’s a National Ireland wide company. They aggressively ran down their domestic installation service. I purchased a EV charger that integrates into my existing Solar and battery system (same manufacturer). My original installer was gone, the new one wouldn’t help. I went directly to Huawei who were helpful at first but then said they were cancelling the ticket and I had to go back to my installer. I explained they were no longer in business. They then told me the Nationwide company had my passwords, Huawei wouldn’t issue new password and the Nationwide company told me that if they gave me my password it would have given me access to EVERY Huawei installation in Ireland, nonsense of course, but I hit a brick wall. No help from new company,no help from Huawei. I eventually got sorted via one of their ex employees who was made redundant. If anything goes wrong from now I could be in trouble.
Contacted Fox a few times for support, minor stuff – firmware updates, settings changes. Never had a problem with them. Never had to contact them for a major issue. Can't compare to anyone else. It is supposed to be installer first, for support queries, but Fox didn't ask whether I had.
Electricity providers – contacted E-on Next loads of times in the year I was with them, very quick support, usually within hours. Moved to Octopus in January, and support has been … erratic. Sometimes they action the email after a week or two, sometimes they never acknowledge it at all. It took 2 months, many emails, and a phone call to get my export meter set up properly (and it had been working perfectly with E-on). Two weeks to swap my export tariff. I don't know why people say that Octopus support is good, that has not been my experience.
Please add Hanchu ESS to your list to select. Quite a big brand in the UK now. Thanks
swaping tha connector order the battery, and the stay where is at the moment, or moves the battrey localtion the the stack setup you have, the posable moving the battery them selfes, but hopfullt enuogh cable slack in the capble system, the just plugs around?
Good points. SolarEdge is off the list and will be warned against, thanks.
using eco flow and victron. 4 figure stuff and not just gadgets ! . i still wont try for warranti even when only 3 years passed! in case of hardware and even worse if you are a bit DIYer there is not much you can achieve . now in case of software then the strugle is real! … read the homework before try to communicate because you might find solution on your own or via communities! thankfully when something expensive breaks it is wise to spare some more cash on local electronic repair store if chances seem on your side for a repair. !
Wickes solar are horrendous, stay clear. over a year and still no resolution.
Tesla are not as great as you may think. It took them almost 3 months to respond to my issue, they then told me to contact the installer, who doesn't respond to me, in the end I managed to fix the issue myself (a loose connection in the gateway), but Tesla would not give me any hints as to what the problem was, I found it almost by accident.
Mixed feelings for Solaredge; i worked as installer and needed to call support sometimes and they mostly helped out great, not fast but it mostly ended up in good solutions, end consumers have lot more trouble specially with account related things, lost their installer but only having user rights instead of full rights to do advanced things, this is a big problem specially now when battery`s are become a thing the consumers need all rights to change settings.
Just had the same from Smart Home Technical. They did me a super job with the batteries however a little issue last week resulted in a request to pay for a support package. Yes, the batteries have been in for a couple of years but I was a little back footed by the response, especially as I have recommended them time after time. Thankfully, a full reboot of everything solved the problem.
I have 3 solaredge batteries and inverters just like you. Until recently also had a solaredge EV charger which came with a 3 year solaredge warranty. After two years I had issues with car charging in that it would nolonger take surplus solar. Solaredge were very slow to respond. It turned out that the serial number sticker had not been placed on the side of the unit which they said they needed to diagnose the fault. They said they would send it, it had been sent etc but it never arrived. This went on for months all the time sending emails saying they wanted to close the case. I gave up, I needed a car charger that worked. I had a Myenergi Zappi installed. This is also not without issues in relation to how it works with solaredge. It doesn't with the batteries discharging at night if a car requires a top up. Part our system was installed by Upvolt including the new charger, who have been helpful but I feel their knowledge is limited. Solaredge warranties I feel are worthless and their customer service pretty much non-existant. This is a company in trouble.
The classic, "we're closing your ticket because otherwise our statistics look bad".
Rip off UK,
Government bodies which should help the public,
seems to be buddies with the Wealthy Business.
Jonathan cannot complain about my Fox Ess customer service .I have had to contact them three times about my system and each time I have been satisfied with their response.
They send confirmation of complaint and usually respond in two to three days with a fix.
On another note reference heat pumps I have also a service contract with Octopus but was disappointed on the service correspondence. There wasn’t any! If you had your car serviced you would expect a service sheet. When I asked customer service they said they did not issue them. Not very good if I sold the house as I’m sure the new buyers would want details of any maintenance.
Can’t believe how much space you need for Solar Edge, my Sigenergy fits on a tiny footprint.
I’m starting the process for a heat pump on Monday. I’m starting with my plumber of 15 years, and all being well he’ll get the business, and I’ll get immediate service. My system was installed by Dan at Capital Solar, he’s been fantastic had a few minor issues, he got me te answers. Ighlyrecommended.
Great idea, well done
My experience with Enphase support has been really good… fortunately haven't needed to contact them after the initial install when I needed them to fix something remotely. Panel level monitoring certainly helps.
PW3 has been behaving well too, haven't needed to contact their support yet.
Profit over service its country wide in every industry. When I buy now any tool or machine I know there is no or very little service after I start using it. Warranty is a bit of paper that’s it.
I too had issues with SolarEdge, two inverter failures, getting replacements was long winded, several months each time.
My installer seems to be avoiding me, calls not returned, emails unanswered, so I agree support is bad, they just wanted to sell me more kit.
When I upgraded some panels I moved the new ones to Victron, so I now use several Victron MPPT controllers for about half my solar panels.
I selected a Fogstar 32 KWH battery and a Victron 10 kVA MultiPlus II, with a 'Cerbo' running on a Raspberry Pi.
My Samsung Heat Pump is fully supported by the installer, no problems with them at all.
This is fully integrated into my Home Assistant monitoring and automation system.
I have found Victron very helpful, plenty of information and I am on their forum which has some of their engineers on who will help.
So glad I ignored the recommendation of my original Solar Installer to install GivEnergy.