Solar & Battery Support Needs to Get Better

You can spend £10,000, £15,000 or even £20,000 on a solar and battery system. Everything works perfectly when it is first installed — but what happens six months or two years later when something goes wrong?

Who do you call?

Your installer? The manufacturer? And what happens if neither wants to take responsibility?

That's the subject of my latest video.

https://youtu.be/PaSMbjMk1cM

My Experience with SolarEdge Support

I've been running a 10kW SolarEdge inverter with three SolarEdge batteries for several years and, for the vast majority of the time, the system works extremely well.

But I've had an intermittent problem where one of the batteries simply drops offline.

There is no warning in the SolarEdge app and no obvious indication that anything is wrong. I only discovered the problem because Home Assistant communicates directly with the system using Modbus, allowing me to see the status of the individual batteries.

Getting the problem investigated turned into a frustrating experience.

My installer was helpful, but ultimately there are software and technical issues that only the manufacturer can investigate.

After initially being told that they couldn't see a problem, and despite providing logs and screenshots showing exactly what was happening, SolarEdge eventually investigated further and made a change to the battery management software.

To be fair, that significantly improved the situation.

But it didn't completely fix it. The battery still occasionally drops offline and, frustratingly, I was never given much information about exactly what had been changed.

That raises a much bigger question.

Why are owners of expensive solar and battery systems so often expected to communicate with the manufacturer through an installer?

What Happens When Your Installer Isn't There?

Solar and battery systems aren't products we expect to replace every few years.

Solar panels can potentially remain on a house for 20 or 30 years. Inverters and batteries should also provide many years of service.

Will the company that installed your system still be around in 10, 15 or 20 years?

What happens if they stop trading? What happens when the original installer retires? What happens when you buy a house with an existing solar and battery system?

And there is another important difference between a solar system and most household appliances.

Every day your solar or battery system isn't working properly can cost you money.

If your system isn't generating, storing or supplying energy correctly, you may be buying expensive electricity from the grid when you shouldn't need to.

Good technical support therefore matters.

Could Solar Learn From Heat Pumps?

There's an interesting comparison with my heat pump.

I pay £9 per month for a maintenance agreement. If the heat pump fails, I have someone to call and the agreement also includes an annual inspection and service.

Would something similar make sense for solar and battery systems?

Perhaps owners could choose to pay a relatively small monthly amount for proper technical support, remote diagnostics, system health checks and someone who can actually take ownership of a problem when something goes wrong.

Of course, there's another argument:

Should we really have to pay extra for good support when we've already spent thousands of pounds buying the equipment?

That's something I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on.

In the video I explain my own experience in more detail and why I think the solar industry needs to rethink the way it supports system owners.

▶️ WATCH THE FULL VIDEO:https://youtu.be/PaSMbjMk1cM

Now I Need Your Help

I don't want this discussion to be based solely on my experience with one manufacturer.

I want to find out which solar and battery manufacturers you think provide excellent customer support — and which ones need to do much better.

So I've created a simple Solar & Battery Support Tier List.

If you have genuine support experience with any of the manufacturers listed, rank them from S for exceptional through to E for very poor.

This isn't about whether you like their products.

It's specifically about customer support.

How quickly did they respond? Did they understand the problem? Were they prepared to deal with you as the system owner? And, most importantly, did they actually resolve the issue?

You don't need to provide an email address or any personal information, and you only need to rank manufacturers you've actually dealt with.

👉 RANK YOUR SOLAR & BATTERY MANUFACTURERS:https://www.jonathantracey.com/question

The more people who participate, the more useful the results become.

If we can collect hundreds — or even thousands — of responses, we should start to get a genuinely interesting picture of which manufacturers are supporting their customers properly.

Once we've collected enough data, I'll publish the results.

We'll recognise the manufacturers doing a great job.

And for those consistently appearing at the bottom of the list, I intend to start asking them some difficult questions about what they're going to do to improve.

You provide the feedback. I'll ask the difficult questions.