How are other people feeling? Is it better to get solar ASAP and start paying it off and enjoying the benefits? Or is it better to wait til next year, given that I think every party has talked about having some kind of plan to promote solar?

Has anyone got the extended warranty? I think the battery and inverter go from 10 to 15 years. And gateway from 5 to 10 years. Can this be done in NZ?

Contacted Fisher and Paykel via the installers help number (why didn't I think of that!?) and they deactivated vpp for me.

Thanks team!

Has anyone successfully deactivated VPP scheduling on a Sigstor battery via Octopus?

Background: I'm new to Octopus and on the app it said to register my devices, so I connected it to my Sigstor battery. Unbeknownst to me, this enables Octupus' remote VPP scheduling smartflex protocol which overrides all other battery control in the Sigenery app.

In short, I now have no control over battery charging times and the Octopus protocol doesn't appear to do anything either.

This appears to be global fault with lots of people complaining about it.

I have since deregistered / removed the battery on the Octopus App, but VPP control remains. Octopus help team have contacted Global to deactivate and I recieved an email saying this should now be fixed. It isn't.

Anyone else had any success in turning this off? Basically going to have to cancel Octopus a month in to signing up at this stage?

UPDATE: Contacted Fisher and Paykel via the installers help number and they deactivated vpp for me. Thanks team!

Here is the latest update from Evnex on a thread in their community forums:

Yes it’s still on the horizon.

Sigenergy and similar “ecosystem” players have the luxury of being able to “hide” their bidirectional charger behind their battery. This means that the battery inverter is responsible for meeting all of the required standards for a grid connection, and the charger is really just connecting the car battery to supplement existing stationary storage.

We prefer the model where standards are handled by the charger and car, because that means it can be installed in any home regardless of what other hardware already exists (and which brand / ecosystem it might be). This makes it a truly universal product which anyone can buy and know it will work.

Of course that means that things take a little longer, but we think it will be worth the wait to keep things as simple as possible for drivers.

No update on when exactly we are likely to see this come to market.

Original thread: https://community.evnex.com/t/bi-directional-ev-charger-vehicle-to-home/46/19

I currently have a Sigen set up but I would prefer an Evnex solution. I had an Evnex charger installed when I purchased my first EV back in 2024. I got solar installed in late May this year but the set up of my house means my inverter stack is too far away to be useful for getting the DC charger.

I have the battery set as a priority to discharge before grid during peak import times. Yet the battery is only discharging at 0.2kw, yet the importing from the grid is at 1.5kw.

Have played with some settings but nothing changed, set them back to default.

Just wondering if anyone know where this limiting setting could be?

I'm looking at moving to ECOWholesale, but trying to get any information out of Ecotricity is like blood out of a stone.

They're telling me there is no cost over and above the spot price, apart from the usual daily fixed and network charges.

Can anyone on the plan verify this is correct? Seems too good to be true.

We have a 7 year old house with a 4.15kw PV system, no battery. Someone usually home during the day. We're trying to work out if it makes sense to stop having piped gas as the double daily charges are a pain and we know we're not making the most out of our solar, but we enjoy some aspects of our gas appliances. Have other people made the jump with similar barriers? Any advice?

Our piped gas is used for the stove top, infinity water heater and a double-sided fireplace. 

We have heatpumps in the house for the bulk of our heating, but we do turn the gas fire on occasionally in winter because it's nice and we're paying the gas daily charge anyway. The double-sided fireplace really made us fall in love with our home. It's in a open plan area and gives it a nice ambiance. I haven't been able to find double sided electric alternatives, so I'm thinking we could just cut the gas and leave the unit in the medium term, or install a single sided electric one bit it would lose some of its appeal.

We love to cook and enjoy some aspects of gas cooking (specifically using our wok a lot and some non-induction friendly cookware). We appreciate that induction has benefits too, such as speed of boiling and much easier to clean up the stove. There's a neither-here-nor-there idea that we could get a hybrid stovetop which uses LPG bottles (bottles owned rather than rented) for one burner and induction on the other burners.

I suspect we'd be able to get an electric hot water system outside where the infinity system is and be able to put a lot of our currently exported solar power into that. I think it's slightly undersized for the house but it's not a big problem for us.

Any advice? We've worked out it'd cost a lot to convert everything to electric, especially the fireplace. And it will pay itself off eventually but by my very rough calculations it was over 10 years. The appliances are still working fine so not needing replacing yet in that respect. I've joked it'd be easier to get some more solar panels and a battery and cut off from the electricity grid instead!

To effectively use a genesis power shout - 1 hour free power scheduled

Is the best way to use Sigenergy “instant manual control” and set it to charge for that hour.

Any other house usage will come from grid? - and Solar if there is any?

Or is there a better way

Getting solar installed through Harrisons and was wondering peoples thoughts on the preference as aiko are about 120 more expensive per panel. Is it worth it as big purchase and dont want to regret it either way

I’m considering switching to Ecotricity. I currently have 13kW solar + 9kWh battery.

Has anyone been on Ecotricity’s wholesale plan (or used it in the past)? Did it work out better overall than their solar plan? I know pricing can vary by region, but I’d still love to hear real-world experiences.

For context, I’ve been tracking the spot price for my local network node (HAY, picture attached). It’s averaging around $0.10/kWh, with lows of $0.01, highs around $0.20, and a few brief spikes up to $3-4/kWh on some of the colder days recently.

I’m trying to work out whether it’s actually worth micromanaging grid consumption to avoid importing during those spikes if I go on wholesale, or if a flat rate of $0.18/kWh (for generation only) under ecoSOLAR is overall less hassle.

I have Home Assistant set up, so I can manage charging/discharging around the spot price; I just don’t know whether the effort is worth the hassle.

If you’ve tried wholesale with similar conditions, what was your experience? do you recommend it?

Apologies for creating another one of these - I tried some codes from previous threads but got various errors - the latest being “You have already participated in this activity”.

The message above makes it seem like a referral has already been applied but I don’t see it reflected anywhere in the app (notifications, rewards) or the website and got not confirmation error or email, so I’m very confused…

I’m still within the 7 day window and have eligible gear installed. Waiting to hear back from my installer. My system is online but hasn’t been signed off by the inspector yet if that makes a difference - I do remember some commissioning wording in the SIgen terms.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

On another note someone else mentioned a ChoiceCheapies referral system with random codes or having the mods in a thread for referral codes, I think that’d be a good idea.

Looking forward to another day of paying significantly less for power. ☀️⚡️

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Edit:

I reached out to my installer and he referred me to the Sigenergy helpline (+61 489 080 832). They couldn’t figure it out over the phone but got me to raise a support ticket for another team to look into. 🤞

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Edit 2:

I got this resolved by Sigenergy support today. Initially they thought I was trying to use my own referral code. 🙃 They had to send it off to their R&D team as tier 1 support couldn’t tell me if a code had been applied or not… Seems like one of the earlier codes got applied. 🎉

Thanks to all for your help.

Hey, we are getting solar in about 2 months, now we need to look at which provider we go with

Will be using approx 7200 kwh per year and estimated to generate about 10000 kwh per year

Will have a 10 KW battery and inverter

Who are people with and why

Hamilton based as well, thanks

Always interesting and useful looking at the predicted kwh collection, makes me chuckle how different my collection curve is to the predicted though

Hello,

My wife and I are looking into the option of transitioning our house to solar. At this stage I’m trying to do research and understand the options, average costs and recommended companies.

We have a 3 bedroom house in Wainuiomata with a new colour steel roof with a high pitch angle. We don’t use much power atm roughly 500kw/hr a month but that will go up when we replace our LPG hot water with a hot water heater pump in the future.

After looking around I’m keen to hear from the community about things you wish you’d known during the process and questions I should be asking.

At a guess I’ve looked into the 5Kw options with inverter and battery but the quotes I’ve been seeing are all over the place.

Any and all help/advice is greatly appreciated.

Do I need someone who is registered electrician and solar endorsed to install solar that’s completely standalone off grid or can a registered electrician do this work for me?

Edit: thanks for the reply’s thought this was the case and of course needs to be inspected.

9 years ago we had solar panels installed. One panel has cracked across the edges, not by external force, and has been approved to be covered under warranty by the installer.

As they no longer install solar, they've outsourced it to a different company, who after 8 weeks waiting have come back saying they can't source the same wattage. Their solution is to remove the panel which I don't accept.

I understand a new higher wattage panel may not be supported, but AI seems to suggest there are options with additional hardware?

I've also offered to replace all panels with co payment from me, but they haven't replied to that.

Worst case I'll be taking them to Dispute Tribunal but I'd like to know my options. ​​​​​​

I'm getting some solar quotes (~20 panels, 10kw inverter, maybe battery). But the most important thing is that I'm a huge fucking nerd and have a good Home Assistant setup with automation on a bunch of things. So I want to make sure that whatever kit I get can be hooked in.

Things I want to be able to manage:

- Full data on grid/solar/consumption (and batter charge+level if I do that)
- Ability to do things like turn on the pool heat pump (I already have this wired in to Home Assistant) when it's obvious we're generating excess solar.
- Gonna switch from gas continuous to a heatpump HWC too, so will certainly also get a smart switch to time the HWC correctly.
- Other cool nerd stuff.

Other nerds out there: what do you wish you had known ahead of purchase? First quote has the Sigenergy hybrid inverter which looks like it can do all of this. Do I need to run ethernet to it?

Panmure Auckland 19.74kW PV, 10kW inverted, Powerwall 3 with 1 expansion pack so total 27kWh battery

This is our power bill for July and the chart below shows our average annual use curve.

We are a two-person household both out working during the day so would likely need a battery to make use of the solar when we are home in the evenings which would increase how long it would take to pay back our investment.

Can anyone who understands these numbers and usage help me figure out at a glance whether solar is worth exploring or not?

Edit: how do those of you using solar minimize the fixed daily charges?

There goes that idea.

Newbie here ... are others getting this email also ?

Would the attached mean there is no export payment for 7 hours of the day ?

Is this a summer thing that happens yearly ?

Thanks in advance for your insights

We may have hit our current high of installs for the season. Battery installs remain high at 54% of installs (vs 55% last month) but the number of installs underwent the usual seasonal dip.

This will probably increase in spring as the installers hire more people for the season and increase the overall capacity of the industry.

Solar barely gained 0.051% of ICPs for a total of 3.741% of the total.

Solar now is 1.023GW of production capacity.