Skip to content
About STS · Independent solar engineers

About Solar Tech Support — why I built this

I saw the same situation hundreds of times. A customer with a solar system that had stopped working, or was silently underperforming. An installer who'd gone quiet — or gone under. A manufacturer support line pointing them back to the installer. And nobody who would just fix the problem.

That gap — between a broken system and someone qualified to sort it — is why Solar Tech Support exists.

MCS-registered solar engineers Fully independent — no installer or manufacturer ties Serving homeowners across the UK
Credentials
Electronic Engineering degree
University of York
Technical Director
Large-scale renewable energy company · 3 years
~1,000 solar installations per year at peak
Every major brand · Every failure mode
Oversaw technical support at scale
Operations, process, CRM, quality — not just the engineering
All 19 major brands supported
GivEnergy, SolarEdge, Growatt, Sunsynk, Solis, and more

The background behind the service

I'm an Electronic Engineer — degree from York, not a two-day solar course. That distinction matters. When I'm diagnosing why a battery isn't charging, I'm working from circuit theory, not a support script. I understand what the CT clamp is actually measuring, what happens at the inverter input stage when DC voltage is too high, and why a firmware update can silently corrupt a charge schedule. That depth isn't available from most of the people you'd otherwise call.

Before starting Solar Tech Support, I spent three years as Technical Director at a large-scale renewable energy company — overseeing around 1,000 solar installations per year at peak. I was responsible for technical support, commissioning standards, operations, quality control, CRM, and processes. I worked across every major brand sold in the UK market. I've seen every common installation error, every firmware failure mode, and every way a system can look fine on paper while silently bleeding money.

That experience taught me two things. First: the technical problems are almost always solvable quickly by someone who knows the systems properly. Second: the support infrastructure that should be there for customers — after the installer leaves and before anything is seriously wrong — mostly doesn't exist. That's the gap Solar Tech Support fills.

What I've seen — the patterns that repeat

After overseeing thousands of installations and their aftercare, the same faults appear again and again.

CT clamp reversal — everywhere

A reversed CT clamp is one of the most common and most misdiagnosed installation faults. The inverter thinks import is export, suppresses battery charging, and the monitoring looks plausible. Many customers live with this for years, losing money on every cheap-rate window.

Firmware resets killing charge schedules

GivEnergy, Growatt, Sunsynk — all have firmware histories where an update silently reverts the system mode back to Eco, wiping the Timed Charge schedule. The customer wakes up the next morning with an empty battery and has no idea why. This has affected thousands of systems.

Export limits configured wrong

DNO export limits set to 0W by default, or misconfigured during commissioning, mean the system curtails solar generation unnecessarily. On a well-sized system this can cost hundreds per year in lost export payments and self-consumption. It takes five minutes to fix once identified.

Installer-registered monitoring accounts

When an installer registers the monitoring account under their company email, and then ceases trading, the customer loses access entirely. They can't see their generation data, can't change settings, and often don't know this until months later. Account recovery is possible — but slow without knowing the right escalation path.

Faults diagnosed as "hardware failure" that aren't

I've seen customers quoted for new inverters when the fault was a misconfigured setting. I've seen batteries declared dead when they had a persistent BMS communication fault caused by a loose CAN bus cable. Getting a second, independent opinion before agreeing to any hardware replacement is always worth it.

Systems installed for SEG but never registered

Smart Export Guarantee payments require the customer to register with a licensed electricity supplier — the installer doesn't do this automatically. Many systems export to the grid for years without the customer receiving a penny. The fix is straightforward; the frustration is that nobody told them.

What Solar Tech Support is — and isn't

What Solar Tech Support is
An independent technical support service — no affiliation with any manufacturer or installer
Engineer-led — diagnostics come from understanding systems, not reading fault code tables
Remote-first — most faults are diagnosed and fixed without a site visit
Built exclusively around support — this is the entire focus, not a side offering between installations
What Solar Tech Support is not
Not an installation company — we don't fit new systems
Not a general electrician — we are specialists in solar and battery storage systems
Not a call centre — you deal directly with an engineer, not a script-reading support agent
Not affiliated with any manufacturer — our diagnosis isn't shaped by warranty obligations or brand loyalty

Why the Solar Health Plan exists

One pattern I saw repeatedly at scale: customers calling in with a fault that had been developing for months. The battery had been silently undercharging since a firmware update six weeks earlier. The export limit had been misconfigured at commissioning and nobody had caught it. The monitoring had been offline since the router was changed, so nobody knew what was happening.

Most of these faults could have been caught — and fixed in minutes — if someone had looked at the system data regularly. So I built something that does exactly that. The Solar Health Plan is a standing check on your system: generation benchmarks, battery health, settings verification, and firmware tracking. Catch problems early, before they cost real money.

Frequently Asked Questions

Get in touch

Your system should be working for you

If it isn't — or you just want to know it's been properly checked — get in touch. A remote diagnostic starts at £75 and most faults are identified and resolved during the session.

Independent — not affiliated with any manufacturer
Remote diagnostic from £75
Usually same or next day

By submitting you agree to be contacted about your enquiry.