From self-taught to scaling £700k to £14M
I came at solar from the wrong end of the textbook. Self-taught practical first — pulling things apart, putting them back together, learning what every wire did and why. Then I studied MEng Electronic Engineering at the University of York, which gave me the maths and the circuit-theory grounding to stop guessing and start engineering.
I entered the UK solar industry in 2014 and fell in love with it on the first install. The combination of physics, electronics, software, regulation and real-world consequences was — and still is — the most interesting engineering problem I've worked on.
I joined a sales-led solar company as their engineer. Being the technical person inside a sales-driven culture turned out to be a massive operational edge for them: I built the operations arm from the ground up — the CRM, the website, the technical team, the quotation systems, the commissioning processes. I deliberately stayed out of sales. My job was to make sure every system they sold actually worked, was safe, and stayed working.
The numbers from that era: the company scaled from £700k/year to £14M/year over three years. My team commissioned more than 1,000 systems a year at the peak. I trained engineers, ran the technical recruitment, wrote the commissioning and diagnostic procedures, and made it my job to learn every new inverter and battery the day it shipped. Several of the brands I tested early are now household names.
Why I stepped away — and why I'm back
After the exit I worked for myself for twelve months, then I had to take a couple of years out of work for reasons that aren't this page's business. STS Solar Tech Support is my return.
I came back because the inbox kept finding me. Friends, neighbours, friends-of-friends — all with the same story. Their installer had gone bust. Or stopped answering. Or sold them a system that never worked properly and disappeared with the deposit. They'd done the right thing — chosen renewable energy, paid a five-figure sum, expected it to work — and got left in the dark with a system they couldn't diagnose, an app they couldn't log into, and a warranty pointing back at a company that no longer existed.
That's an industry problem. People who chose to help make the world a better place got screwed over by people who chose to make a quick buck. There needs to be a good side to this industry, and I'm here to be part of it.
What I actually do at STS
STS Solar Tech Support is a deliberately small, deliberately focused operation. I do not sell new solar installations under this brand — those go through the sister brand. STS Solar Tech Support only does diagnostics, repairs, audits, decommissioning, ongoing care, and the technical work nobody else is willing to do.
How that breaks down day-to-day:
- Remote diagnostic — Free if I can't fix it. from £75 if I can. Most faults are settings, firmware, monitoring, or a CT clamp installed backwards — and most of those I can resolve from my desk in a session.
- On-site repair — from £245 minimum, complex jobs quoted in writing first. Every visit ends with a written report.
- Audits + takeovers — for commercial sites, building acquisitions, or where the original installer is gone. Independent reports written for third-party use.
- Decommissioning + remove-and-reinstall — properly handled including the DNO and FIT/SEG paperwork that everyone else forgets.
- Solar Health Plan — £10/month ongoing care for the people who want a known technical home for their system.
What independent really means
"Independent" gets thrown around in this industry to mean "we hate our competitor". When STS Solar Tech Support says independent, it specifically means:
- No manufacturer affiliations. I don't take commission or kickbacks from any inverter or battery brand. If I tell you SolarEdge is the right answer for your situation, it's because the engineering says so — not because I get a margin on it.
- No installer commissions. I don't refer paid leads to installers. If you ask me which installer to use, I'll give you my honest read on the options, not the one who's paying me this month.
- No trade-discount habits to protect. If a component needs replacing, I source the right part at the right price — not the one that maxes my discount tier.
The sister brand for new installs (Alectrona) is operationally separate. I keep STS Solar Tech Support clean of cross-sell so when you call me about your system, you're getting engineering — not an upsell pipeline.
Where I go deepest
I work on every major UK inverter and battery brand. If I had to name the ones I've spent the most hours on:
- GivEnergy — every product, every firmware version, every cloud quirk. I worked with the brand from before it was a household name.
- Solis — three-phase, hybrid and commercial. Grid-side faults, export-limit weirdness, the lot.
- Fox ESS — battery diagnostics, BMS faults, commissioning issues that the installer skipped over.
- Tesla Powerwall — backup configuration, gateway-offline triage, self-consumption mode tuning.
- SolarEdge — optimiser diagnostics, arc-fault calls, the calls where the installer says "it's fine" and it isn't.
- Complex diagnostics — the multi-fault, multi-brand, multi-vendor situations where nobody else wants to take the call. Those are the ones I want.
How to work with me
Easiest start: book a remote diagnostic. Free if I can't fix it. We talk through what you're seeing, I review your monitoring data, and we either resolve it on the call or scope the next step in writing before any money changes hands.
For commercial sites, the independent audit or system takeover pages are the right starting point. For ongoing care, the Solar Health Plan.
Or just email hello@solar-tech-support.co.uk and tell me what's happening.
