Solar and battery system – battery nowhere near stated capacity and installer does not want to know

kgrins

Looking for some advice on what to do here.

We had a solar and battery system installed in February:

Afore Inverter, 10 panels, 2 x 5.1kWh Pytes 48R100 batteries.

There were a number of issues* (I’ll put some of those in post #2 with a spoiler), but by far the worst is that the battery system holds nowhere near the capacity we were sold. It is closer to half the capacity!

The installer does not want to know.

We went through all the regulators with no success:

-          MCS: sorry your installer is only registered to do solar with us, not battery so we cannot help (naturally the installer does not state this anywhere and MCS don’t care that their logo is basically being used as a false re-assurance).

-          NAPIT: they did sort out that the installer’s electrician had done such a poor job and their cables were too short that the smart meter installers refused to touch it.

-          HIES: these were by far the worst of the lot. Their agent immediately took the installers side saying any battery issue must be down to the battery manufacturer and basically was totally ignorant about Sales of Goods and similar immediately implying that the problem is something we need to sort out with the manufacturer – with whom we have no contact as we had a system installed by so-called experts who chose the components for every part of the system.

After a lot of back and forth with HIES and each time giving our installer lots of time, they got back in the end said their “inspector” had looked at our logs and didn’t see anything (from the time we sent them the ~10MB of logs to their response means that their “inspector” took about 10 minutes to reach this verdict) and that our installer was not willing to offer us any fix.

That was back in August, and that is pretty much where we are.

Our inverter logs, the web portal for the inverter, the logs from Octopus all agree: our batteries do not provide anywhere close to their rates specs. And we are not talking about a few percentage points here – more like half the stated and paid for capacity!

Initially we had based everything on rundown from the inverter logs – mainly because the inverter can only charge the battery by going into the loft and changing a horrible single-line display thing which at the time we were not willing to touch.

Later after looking at some forum posts, we change our approach to discharge the battery down to its min (10% although sometimes it only goes down to 11%) and then charging it from the mains.

While the figures do vary, generally we get around half the stated capacity.

And no, it is not that only one battery is working as we tried the discharge, charge and then use approach with just one battery at a time. Both batteries were very similar and close to 50% of their stated capacity.

We have reached a standstill with this. Maybe we should write our installers a final letter using various wording from the Sales of Goods Act and the Consumer Rights Act 2015, but are unsure whether it would make any difference.  Certainly, the goods supplied, specifically the battery system, are not fit for purpose.

As the so-called regulators were not able to help us, we are now considering the small claims court. But that HIES siding with the cowboy installer probably wouldn’t help us in the small claims court process and possibly all our installer has to do is make it look very technical and the court may say we cannot proceed.

We had looked if we could find a solar installer/engineer who could provide us with a report but have not had any luck. Seems nobody really seem to want to offer something like that – the closest we found was GTec Training who provide an “Expert Witness Solutions” but it seems they only deal with solicitors.

Any advice?

kgrins

Yes, there were plenty of others issues.

I had this in a spoiler but those can sometime not be read, so I've now taken them out

1. The first electrician couldn't install the app nor connect the system to the router
2. the battery stopped charging at all during the cold weeks in February. We had asked during the whole sales and installation process whether a cold/hot loft was suitable - we had been thinking more of the hot summer months when it can regularly be 30°C plus up there - but it seems that when the temperature is under 10°C or so the battery refuse to charge.
3. The sale people had promised an "intelligent battery system" able to monitor the market and buy and sell at the optimum time. (Unfortunately most of that was word of mouth but we do have some paper leaflet too.) Turns out the system is anything but. Not only is there no "intelligence" but the app and web portal for the inverter can do nothing as the only way to charge the battery is via a very poor one line thing in the loft. Total mis-selling as far as we are concerned although at least they did not promise 24/7/365 sunshine as solar sales used to do - about the only thing in the industry which might now be regulated.
4. The cabling at the consumer unit was poorly done and 'floating' so the smart meter people would not touch it. That is the only thing the installer did fix as NAPIT got on the case.
5. The batteries are not earthed but the electrician did tuck (hide) the cable around the back so it wasn't obvious!

I'm sure there was more.

Screwdriva

Did you pay with a credit card? If so, Section 75 claim?

kgrins

Screwdriva said:

Did you pay with a credit card? If so, Section 75 claim?

No, unfortunately not

Wonder if anyone has had any success with small claims court and solar installers?

Mikeyboy01443

For some reason i can't view the spoiler bit...
But anyway this is pretty poor but reflects what i saw when i was looking at solar - it still seems very much the wild west and even with all these various bodies supposedly offering protection, you still are open to problems like this. 
What did trading standards say? This is very much goods not fit for purpose, if it was me i would probably start looking into small claims, that might scare them into having to do something about it? 

Heedtheadvice

I agree small claims is maybe the best option but first,

Are the installers/supplier to you (if different) a member of any other organisations such as NICEIC * you can look on their website. If so give them a try.

Also if you need to go to court get your battery capacity figures checked both the theoretical capacity and in practice. A qualified engineer is best to support your case...but you might start posting evidence of what you claim on here first?I.e. second or more independent  view.

Ensure you have available for the court a summary of your claim regarding the failure, communications and copies of it all to back it up.

Post on the consumer rights board for better help!

A bit of work but should pay off?

Mikeyboy01443

I would assume its pretty easy to work out as I wondered the same myself, empty the battery and then charge from grid and see how much is used, it would be from an external source then ie. The meter

kgrins

Mikeyboy01443 said:

For some reason i can't view the spoiler bit...
But anyway this is pretty poor but reflects what i saw when i was looking at solar - it still seems very much the wild west and even with all these various bodies supposedly offering protection, you still are open to problems like this. 
What did trading standards say? This is very much goods not fit for purpose, if it was me i would probably start looking into small claims, that might scare them into having to do something about it? 

Took that part out of the spoilers. Compared the main issue those things are minor but they certainly show how a wild west cowboy the industry is. The "regulators" are a total joke - such a light touch they might as well be ghosts!

We did contact Citizen's Advice but never took this up with Trading Standards.

Yes, after getting nowhere with the whole process back in August, I had wanted to write a letter to the installer using terms from Sales of Goods Act and Consumer Rights Act 2015 and not fit for purpose was foremost on our mind.

kgrins

Heedtheadvice said:

I agree small claims is maybe the best option but first,

Are the installers/supplier to you (if different) a member of any other organisations such as NICEIC * you can look on their website. If so give them a try.

Also if you need to go to court get your battery capacity figures checked both the theoretical capacity and in practice. A qualified engineer is best to support your case...but you might start posting evidence of what you claim on here first?I.e. second or more independent  view.

Ensure you have available for the court a summary of your claim regarding the failure, communications and copies of it all to back it up.

Post on the consumer rights board for better help!

A bit of work but should pay off?

As it happens their list of accreditations is huge and has grown since they did or installation: for instance their MCS cert now states "Battery Storage Systems – Limited-scope covering the installation of EESS classes 1, 2 and 3 inclusive". Previously their MCS was PV only - as MCS were quick to point out as their "we do not have to help you" excuse.

However, no NICEIC in there:

1. TrustMark Certificate
2. Green Deal Certificate
3. Huntsman Evergreen
4. BBA Certificate
5. KIWA BDA Complaint
6. Independent Warranty Association (IWA)
7. BBA PAS 2030 Certificatee
8. MCS Certificate of Approval
9. HIES Membership Certificate
10. EPVS Certificate
11. SSIP Certificate
12. Federation Of Master Builders Certificate
13. Constructionline Gold Member Certificate
14. NAPIT Competant Person Scheme Certificate

14 plus a bunch of spray foam insulation certs. We only went to MCS, NAPIT and HIES but like I said in the OP they were all pretty useless. I still remember the HIES person starting about how things like this are all the between us and manufacturer (who doesn't know us whatsoever as everything was chosen, supplied and installed by our installers). That someone so ignorant of sales of goods should work for a regulator is crazy!

We have been looking for an expert who could certify our figures but had no luck. It seems that either most installer are far to busy for that, or they don't want to speak out against anyone. We did contact Gtec to see about their "Export Witness" service (https://gtec.co.uk/expert-witness-support) but it seems they are only interested in working with solicitors for that.

Initially the figures I had produced were based on what the inverter log output. They are quite detailed so I was able to write some SQL to work out when the sun went down (charging stopped), then how much was drained and work out the actual capacity. This got me something like this:

Except for a few outliners, this showed at most a bit over 50% of our rated capacity.

(We have two 2 x 5.12kWh batteries so 10.24 kWh - although since they will only discharge down to 10% effective capacity is only a bit over 9 kWh.)

After discussing this online in August, I then took another approach. Discharge the battery (10% to 11% is the SOC min) and then charge it from the mains.

Tested both batteries individually too, and on average #2 was a bit better.

I haven't tried much analysis since August (was getting a bit data tired from pouring over the logs so long), but we have just moved to Octopus Flux and have started charging the batteries overnight as off-peak is about 15p vs 30p during the day.

And the figures again agree with the previous. For instance, today to charge from 10% to 100% took only 3.5 kWh whereas 90% of our batteries should be more over 9 kWh (and Pytes claim ≥95% efficient at charging so with that 5% loss a full charge should be around 9.6 kWh).

Yes, if going to a court we will have to print out and sort out all correspondence. Well, our installers are functionally illiterate or just prefer to leave no paper trail as - despite their stated complaints policy - they have never responded in writing to anything. For the one thing NAPIT got them to do, our installer only phoned - similar with HIES.

MeteredOut

Have you tried posting to a facebook group or any other forums for that specific battery, with pictures of your setup? Perhaps they've not been linked correctly. I believe multiple batteries need to be balanced too, so perhaps there's an issue there, or some sort of incompatibility between your inverter and the batteries?

Can you tell if you're getting both batteries to 50% or just one to 100% and one at 0%?

Would it be possible to have only one battery connected and see if that fills to 100% or just 50%

Of course, this is what the installer should be doing for you, so should continue chasing that avenue too.

kgrins

MeteredOut said:

Have you tried posting to a facebook group or any other forums for that specific battery, with pictures of your setup? Perhaps they've not been linked correctly. I believe multiple batteries need to be balanced too, so perhaps there's an issue there, or some sort of incompatibility between your inverter and the batteries?

Can you tell if you're getting both batteries to 50% or just one to 100% and one at 0%?

Would it be possible to have only one battery connected and see if that fills to 100% or just 50%

Of course, this is what the installer should be doing for you, so should continue chasing that avenue too.

Yes, that is indeed what the installer should be doing although I suspect they think that they pay off regulators to keep customers at bay!

The spreadsheet table in my previous post was from when we doing exactly that.

Like I mentioned, since HIES reject our complaint in August I haven't had looked at that much and only started looking again in the last few days after changing to Octopus Flux and charging overnight.

The figures now seem even worse

The inverter logs I can get with a ~5 minutes lag, but the Octopus ones can take a day or so.

Anyway, since the 4th (Monday overnight - I only set the battery to charge from Flux on Sunday evening), the inverter logs show the battery taking on average around 3.4 kWh to charge from 11% to 99% for a calculated full capacity of 4 kWh rather than 10 kWh.

I have invested in the console cable for the battery system and have previously put an IP camera up in the loft to watch it and can leave my laptop up there to remote into it to get the battery system's console. When the inverter thinks it is at 100%, the battery system says likewise with all of the indicator LEDs on both batteries full lit, and logging into the console says the same.

Both the inverters and the batteries think they are full charged.

The only forum I have seen which might be relevant is the diysolarforum.com one and there were some people with the same battery there but nothing like what we face from the posts I read. Am slightly reluctant to post there as what I don't want to do is take advice there and change something which eventually gives our installer yet another excuse to say they are not at fault - not that they seem to need any excuses!

Powering down the system and disconnecting one or the other battery to test them individually as I did in August was about as far as was willing to go with changing things. (Pretty sure one of the "regulators" says installers should produce a handover manual and itemise everything, ours never did.)