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Field note · Case study · Commercial · Jun 2026

Four faults, no monitoring and the panels on the north roof

A four-year-old commercial solar and battery system that had never delivered. One inverter in error, three more idle on miswired comms, a dead battery stack, monitoring never handed over — and the panels fitted on the north roof, costing around 13,000 kWh a year.
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If a multi-inverter array or battery stack isn’t delivering, it’s usually commissioning, configuration and handover that were never finished — idle inverters, batteries out of balance, no monitoring to even see the shortfall. That’s recoverable without replacing the kit.

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Massively massively recommended. We had a big battery array (49kW across three phases) put in four years ago. c £35k cost. It’s been a total nightmare for many reasons, not least 1. our installer being totally useless and unresponsive and 2. Givenergy, our battery supplier, going bust. Long story short it had never worked anywhere near properly despite countless hours on phones and emails; the best we’d achieved was one third of the batteries working. Rather than write it off, I asked a PM friend to try to source someone who could come on site and review and revive the system. He found Solar Tech Support and Ron. Ron assured us he was the man to get it going again. After so many years of pain, I was not convinced but, true to his word, five hours later it was up and running. Lovely chap, super knowledgeable with a support team to lean on who are also clearly super technical. I honestly didn’t think there was much chance of getting this array going ever again so was absolutely delighted when Ron and team pulled it off. Bravo!

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Made contact for assistance with my GiveEnergy battery that wasn't discharging. Ronald looked at my issue the same day, identified the root cause with a clear explanation of what was going on along with some options on how to remediate the issue. So far my battery is now working and keeping my fingers crossed that it stays this way. Ronald is a very experienced and knowledgeable engineer and I would recommend.

Al · Jul 2026 Google

Ron very quickly diagnosed what was wrong with my GivEnergy system. Unfortunately the kit has died after only 3.5 years of use-which is quite sad and timing couldn’t be worse with GivEnergy gone bust. Ron gave me advise on how to handle this with my installer. I’m hoping they’ll be forthcoming, but if they aren’t i now have a good idea how to deal with that. Thanks a lot Ron!

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Written by · Independent Solar Engineer Last updated

We were asked to inspect a four-year-old commercial solar and battery system, fitted when the building was built. It should have been quietly paying for itself for years. Instead we found a catalogue of problems — finishing with the panels on the wrong roof entirely.

A customer asked us to carry out an on-site inspection of a large commercial solar-plus-storage system — a multi-inverter SolaX array with a wall of batteries, installed about four years ago at the same time their new building went up. It had never delivered what they were promised, and they wanted to know why before writing it off.

A commercial plant room with a row of wall-mounted SolaX storage inverters and a stack of battery modules — a multi-inverter commercial solar-plus-storage system, several inverters of which were sitting idle or in error.
The plant room: a multi-inverter SolaX storage array with a wall of batteries. One inverter was in error on a faulty comms lead, three more sat idle on miswired comms, and a whole battery stack was dead.

What we found

It didn’t take long to build the list:

  • One storage inverter in error — a faulty communications lead.
  • Three more inverters sitting in idle — their communications had been wired incorrectly, so they simply weren’t doing anything.
  • A whole stack of batteries dead — flat, and in need of force-charging to bring it back.
  • No monitoring — the system had never been handed over to the customer, so they had no way of seeing that most of it wasn’t working.
  • And the headline: the panels had been installed on the north-facing roof.

Any one of these would quietly rob a system of output. Together, they meant a very expensive array was running at a fraction of its potential — and the owner had no visibility to even know it.

The north roof — what it actually costs

This is the one that makes you wince. The good news, if there is any, is that the roof pitch is shallow — around 10° — and at a low pitch orientation matters far less than it would on a steep roof, because the panels are close to flat and a large share of UK sunlight is diffuse. So it’s not the catastrophe a steep north-facing array would be.

But it still costs real money. On a system of this size (~100 kWp), the south-facing roof would generate roughly 13,000 kWh a year more than the north — about 15%. At commercial electricity prices that’s in the region of £3,300–£3,900 every year, and over the life of the system, tens of thousands of pounds — for no reason other than which slope the panels were screwed to.

Bar chart comparing estimated annual generation for the same ~100 kWp array at 10° pitch on the south roof (~89,000 kWh) versus the north roof as installed (~76,000 kWh), a gap of about 13,000 kWh per year or 15%, worth roughly £3,300–£3,900 a year.
Same array, two roofs. At a shallow 10° pitch the north roof still gives up around 13,000 kWh a year — about 15%. Estimates for a representative UK location; indicative, not site-measured.

The fix

None of this is terminal. The faults are exactly the kind of thing a proper commissioning and handover should have caught on day one: the comms leads get replaced and re-wired correctly, the idle inverters brought back online, the dead battery stack force-charged and rebalanced, and the monitoring finally set up and handed over so the owner can actually see their system working. The system is now booked in for those remedial works to get the customer back up and running and seeing the full benefit of their — very expensive — array. (The panels stay where they are; relocating a roof array rarely pays back, but knowing the true expected output means we can set the system up to make the most of what’s there.)

Residential or commercial

Big system or small, the pattern is the same: most “underperforming” solar isn’t broken hardware — it’s commissioning, configuration and handover that were never done properly. If your solar isn’t doing what it should, we’ve got the experience to get you up and running as you should be.

Field note by Ron Vitova, Solar Tech Support. Customer and location withheld; yield figures are estimates based on the system size and roof orientation, not site-measured.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Most underperforming commercial systems aren’t broken hardware — they’re commissioning, configuration and handover that were never finished properly. Inverters left idle on miswired comms, batteries that were never brought into balance, monitoring never set up so nobody can see the shortfall. All of that is recoverable without replacing the kit.
It depends on the roof pitch. At a shallow pitch — around 10° — orientation matters far less than on a steep roof, because the panels are close to flat and a large share of UK sunlight is diffuse. Even so, on a ~100 kWp system the south roof would typically generate around 13,000 kWh a year more than the north — roughly 15%, or £3,300–£3,900 a year at commercial electricity prices. On a steep roof the penalty would be far worse.
Yes. Without monitoring you have no way of knowing whether the system is working. On this job most of the array was sitting idle or faulted and the owner had no visibility at all — the shortfall had been invisible for years. Proper monitoring, set up and handed over, is how you catch a problem in weeks rather than never.
Yes. Big system or small, the pattern is the same — faults, configuration and handover that were never done properly. We diagnose multi-inverter commercial arrays and battery stacks and get them back to doing what they were paid to do.

Commercial or domestic solar that isn’t performing? Let’s take a look.

Tell me what your system is doing — or not doing — and how it’s set up. Multi-inverter commercial arrays and battery stacks that have underdelivered for years are usually a configuration and handover problem we can put right.

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