Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Update:

Its now almost three weeks since my solar and battery installation and my battery is still not working.

After numerous calls to the company that my contract is with and the installer (who refuses to return my calls) they continue to say its the battery manufacturer Givenergy problem to sort out. I have needed to take legal advice and finally I'm due a Givenergy engineer visit.

Until this is resolved I cant name the main company I am dealing with. However, in order to help others in deciding which battery manufacturer to use. I suggest you join the Givenergy social media page of your choosing. As there appear to be many customers of Givenergy having battery issues recently and the wait for an engineer can be months away due to the volume of issues and a lack of engineers to visit. Although Givenergy are always polite to deal with on the phone. They refused to give me a date for a site visit despite the person I spoke to being the one who books appointments in! Hence the legal route has resulted in some progress been made.

Once the Givenergy systems are up and running they are apparently excellent. We shall see....
 
saf87 said:
The high charge/discharge rate is appealing. My other quotes have been limited to 3.6kW. What makes the app so rubbish? Is it possible to force charge using the app?
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The app is just rubbish and laborious to use, requiring many clicks to get to anything useful. It doesn't tell you your generation for the day (you have to calculate it yourself) only updates every 5 minutes and any settings you change don't stick - you have to login to the portal online instead. The portal itself doesn't work properly on a phone either.

You can select up to two forced charge periods and choose a min SOC. I have 12.25kW of batteries and can fill them from empty easily in the Flux period. The 5kW charge / discharge rate really helps.

The hardware itself is excellent.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
For starts, your contract is with your installer, they have to fix it or you are legally entitled to a refund.

Did you pay anything on credit card? If so, I would not be concerned at all. S75 has your back but you are not there yet.

Have a look at @Mercenary Keyboard Warrior posts about his solar issues.
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Yes, I'm aware but they are being very difficult. No, I foolishly paid via BT. However, due to legal advice things are starting to move forward but its far from over yet.
 
AnastieByte said:
Update:

Its now almost three weeks since my solar and battery installation and my battery is still not working.

After numerous calls to the company that my contract is with and the installer (who refuses to return my calls) they continue to say its the battery manufacturer Givenergy problem to sort out. I have needed to take legal advice and finally I'm due a Givenergy engineer visit.

Until this is resolved I cant name the main company I am dealing with. However, in order to help others in deciding which battery manufacturer to use. I suggest you join the Givenergy social media page of your choosing. As there appear to be many customers of Givenergy having battery issues recently and the wait for an engineer can be months away due to the volume of issues and a lack of engineers to visit. Although Givenergy are always polite to deal with on the phone. They refused to give me a date for a site visit despite the person I spoke to being the one who books appointments in! Hence the legal route has resulted in some progress been made.

Once the Givenergy systems are up and running they are apparently excellent. We shall see....
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Our installer did the same. Still not sorted out and it looks like the legal route is the only option for us too.

Like b0rn2sk8 says, consumer law is pretty straighforward: the installer has to sort it.

Problem is not only does ours not want to know, the so-called arbitration by the so-called regulator (HIES in this case) are not only totally useless, but the agent who dealt with our case immediately said it was not for the installer to sort but the manufacturer. That agent was even so ignorant (or pretended to be) that he said that if you buy a washing machines from somewhere that it is the manufacturer who has to sort things out

Solar industry: chancers galore!
 
I suspect most installers won't have a clue about internal faults, but it is their legal responsibility to arrange for the issue to be fixed, but then your involving a middleman and that can cause complications, mus-communication, slowness of communication etc.

Much better to deal with the manufacture directly if possible.
 
AnastieByte said:
Update:

Its now almost three weeks since my solar and battery installation and my battery is still not working.

After numerous calls to the company that my contract is with and the installer (who refuses to return my calls) they continue to say its the battery manufacturer Givenergy problem to sort out. I have needed to take legal advice and finally I'm due a Givenergy engineer visit.

Until this is resolved I cant name the main company I am dealing with. However, in order to help others in deciding which battery manufacturer to use. I suggest you join the Givenergy social media page of your choosing. As there appear to be many customers of Givenergy having battery issues recently and the wait for an engineer can be months away due to the volume of issues and a lack of engineers to visit. Although Givenergy are always polite to deal with on the phone. They refused to give me a date for a site visit despite the person I spoke to being the one who books appointments in! Hence the legal route has resulted in some progress been made.

Once the Givenergy systems are up and running they are apparently excellent. We shall see....
Click to expand...
The thing with Facebook groups like that, people are vocal about voicing negative opinions but the vast majority won't post up to say everything is working fine so you get a skewed view of what is actually happening.
 
94JDH said:
Are you having the Tigo CCA and TAP installed to monitor the panels on the app?
Tigo don't recommend blind installs of the optimisers and reduce their warranty from 25 years to 5 years as a result.
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No it appears this was not included and I have been quoted an extra £250 to add the CCA and TAP. This is more than the cost of the 4 optimisers themselves so not sure its worth it?
 
saf87 said:
No it appears this was not included and I have been quoted an extra £250 to add the CCA and TAP. This is more than the cost of the 4 optimisers themselves so not sure its worth it?
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This is the problem - if you don't have the full kit you don't know if you have a problem with a panel/Tigo and also can't identify which one is the issue.
 
94JDH said:
This is the problem - if you don't have the full kit you don't know if you have a problem with a panel/Tigo and also can't identify which one is the issue.
Click to expand...
I see the problem. Is there any advantage in having optimizers on all panels? even those which are not shaded? Presumably then with the monitoring I could keep a watch on the performance of each panel individually?
 
saf87 said:
I see the problem. Is there any advantage in having optimizers on all panels? even those which are not shaded? Presumably then with the monitoring I could keep a watch on the performance of each panel individually?
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That's what I've done across 36 panels - it all depends on your budget and circumstances, depending on the type of shading, most modern panels cope quite well without.
 
Hi all

Looking for some advice on what would be best to go for when adding some more solar to my house, my existing setup is as follows:

Panels: 16 x Viridian 270w Polyblack
Inverter: Growatt TL 3600
Shade Factor: 1
Estimated annual output: 2107kWh

These are installed on the NE facing roof.

I am looking to install around 9-10 viridian 405w in roof panels on the opposite SW facing elevation.

I don't believe my current setup has any optimisers fitted.

Am I right in thinking that I could replace my existing inverter with a single 5kW inverter? I know the total installed capacity will be approximately 8kW but as these are unlikely to be producing power at the same time then would that be sufficient? Or is it worth looking to get a bigger inverter fitted? My only concern is that size of the wiring which has been taken to the inverter from the consumer unit and whether it is suitable for higher loads.

Would I need optimisers on this setup or could I get an inverter with multiple MPPT and therefore won't need the optimisers?

Thanks in advance
 
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saf87 said:
I see the problem. Is there any advantage in having optimizers on all panels? even those which are not shaded? Presumably then with the monitoring I could keep a watch on the performance of each panel individually?
Click to expand...
Tigo's seem have quite a high failure rate, I wouldn't fit more of them unless really needed, or you have easy access to replace them.
 
saf87 said:
No it appears this was not included and I have been quoted an extra £250 to add the CCA and TAP. This is more than the cost of the 4 optimisers themselves so not sure its worth it?
Click to expand...
That's a very good price to add it and set it up (the serial # of each Tigo is needed, it's a faff). Panel level monitoring is very useful to have and there are firmware updates released which are sent to the optimisiers via the TAP/CCA which you won't benefit from otherwise. Also Tigo will offer you close to nil support with a blind deployment.

We've debated on this thread Tigo vs SolarEdge failure rates. I haven't seen any convincing evidence that their failure rate is any higher or lower than SolarEdge's but clearly having optis vs not having them means an additional potential failure point.
 
NeilMick said:
Hi all

Looking for some advice on what would be best to go for when adding some more solar to my house, my existing setup is as follows:

Panels: 16 x Viridian 270w Polyblack
Inverter: Growatt TL 3600
Shade Factor: 1
Estimated annual output: 2107kWh

These are installed on the NE facing roof.

I am looking to install around 9-10 viridian 405w in roof panels on the opposite SW facing elevation.

I don't believe my current setup has any optimisers fitted.

Am I right in thinking that I could replace my existing inverter with a single 5kW inverter? I know the total installed capacity will be approximately 8kW but as these are unlikely to be producing power at the same time then would that be sufficient? Or is it worth looking to get a bigger inverter fitted? My only concern is that size of the wiring which has been taken to the inverter from the consumer unit and whether it is suitable for higher loads.

Would I need optimisers on this setup or could I get an inverter with multiple MPPT and therefore won't need the optimisers?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Someone way more knowledgeable may come to help, but my understanding is,
You need to check the MPPT limit per string. You would add the NE panels as one string and the SW as the other.
As such you would need an inverter that can handle around 4kw per string.

The other way is simply another inverter sitting in parallel with what you have now.
The attractiveness of that is that should one inverter go down (the most likely point of failure) then you at least have the other array still operating.

You could get a new inverter thats capable of running both and still leave the old one as is. Then if the old one fails you can switch it over later.

FWIW why did you originally have 16 on the NE when 10 on the SW would likely have been as good if not better at generation!?
 
SBo said:
That's a very good price to add it and set it up (the serial # of each Tigo is needed, it's a faff). Panel level monitoring is very useful to have and there are firmware updates released which are sent to the optimisiers via the TAP/CCA which you won't benefit from otherwise. Also Tigo will offer you close to nil support with a blind deployment.

We've debated on this thread Tigo vs SolarEdge failure rates. I haven't seen any convincing evidence that their failure rate is any higher or lower than SolarEdge's but clearly having optis vs not having them means an additional potential failure point.
Click to expand...
The installer has lowered the cost further in their final proposal to £176 which apparently is their cost price for the TAP & CCA. From some of the discussion I have had with them I am not confident they have installed the monitoring before or understand how it works which is a concern. I have decided to go ahead with them at a total cost of £13,800. I think I will make sure to get the Tigo serial numbers in case I end up having to set it up.
 
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~Divine~Wind~ said:
So looking over the last few pages, deffo pay for your solar install with CC aye?

HIES sound like a bunch of muppets tbh

Are the costsco offers any good?

Costco

www.costco.co.uk www.costco.co.uk
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Like with anything a good idea.
Mine specifically ONLY accepted payment via bank transfer so it was one of them things to weigh up.
But if they will take CC its a no brainer even if its just the deposit.
 
saf87 said:
The installer has lowered the cost further in their final proposal to £176 which apparently is their cost price for the TAP & CCA. From some of the discussion I have had with them I am not confident they have installed the monitoring before or understand how it works which is a concern. I have decided to go ahead with them at a total cost of £13,800. I think I will make sure to get the Tigo serial numbers in case I end up having to set it up.
Click to expand...
Sounds about right. Once you have the serials (or easier they take a photo in their app as you set it up) you just type them into their web portal and then place them in the correct layout.
One thing you will want to do once it's all up and running is drop Tigo a support e-mail and instruct them to "Deactivate panel shutdown in response to loss of CCA", they send you a form to sign and then do it for you. If you don't do that then if you TAP and CCA lose power for any reason then your Tigos will cut the DC power. It's a safety feature for the American market.
 
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