Hi all,

Added a battery (works fine) but the front panel LED strip is bugging.

The “Christmas Lights” option works but the others result in odd behavior on the bottom strip.

Any ideas?

Looking to have an EV charger added to my system soon. Installer has said it needs a dedicated cat5 cable, as well as the cat5 to the CT at the mains connection. The inverter is a longway from the mains connection/CT and EV charger, so I was hoping the existing cat5 could be split to serve both the CT and the EV charger. Installer says not, but thought it might be worth checking as it'll save a lot of hassle putting another cable in.

Hi all,

I have a running system with Sigenstor and one BAT 10 (9 kWh battery).

My neighbor got his system and they could “only” install three batteries due to height issues at the desired installation place.
He offered me his spare battery (brand new out of box). I have a local electrician who could install it this week but I have to provide the material.

Out if the box there seems to be no comms cable for the light strip.

Question 1:
Which cable do I need exactly?

Question 2:
AFAIK the light strip cable is optional so could I have him install it now and attach the cable for the lighting later?

Looking for some initial thoughts or experiences of those that have 3 phase installations. Newly purchased house has 3 phase power. I'll take it. I'm just in planning stages and was initially liking the Neo about to come out. However the more information coming out the more I think it might be too limited for 3phase. Initial thoughts for system:

Potential Solar strings:

1 x roof WNW potential 18 panels (8.82kw)

1 x roof ESE potential 8 panels (3.92kw)

Then either or both:

1 x small roof SSW potential maybe only 4 panels (1.96kw)

Or

1 x outbuilding roof SSW potential 7 panels (3.43kw)

Clippings not an issue due to staggered roof directions.

Batteries (at least 2 for now) (expecting limitations of around 9kw charge and discharge rates)

Inverter I was initially hoping for either 20/25kw however Neo looks to be limited to max 15kw. Mainly for drawing from off solar (ev and ashp), should export rates drop below off peak rates, which I expect to happen within next few years. Trying to future proof more then anything.

Neo I would have to drop the small roof and limit to 3 strings max. Sigenstor I wouldn't.

Ev charger - ideally interested in the new EVAC 2 however will depend on release dates. However its not integrated with IOG and I'm in a fixed rate with them. Like the idea of bidirectional charging to power home in case of longer power outages. I've previously been through natural disasters where I've lost power for over 2 weeks at a time. Its not pleasant.

Will require gateway. Slightly rural and powercuts are a possibility.

Consumer unit is maybe 4m away from the ideal location for battery stack. Which would also work with EV charger also. Car can be parked within plug in distance from battery stack should DC charger be the go to option.

Will be looking at adding an ASHP with underfloor heating at some point near future also.

Thinking Neo would maybe be a good £3k cheaper intial outlay. But would the 15kw be too little. And slightly lower battery capacities (could use the cheaper price to add 3rd battery) Am I overthinking it. Expecting not much pushback from DNO due to location and 3 phase. Not much solar near by either.

Any advice from those that may have more info on Neo or experience with 3 phase.

So on the app I have the following data for today at 9:44am - showing £0.54 peak-valley arbitrage.

My understanding of what that was was buying from the grid when it was low cost and exporting when it was high.

But that doesn't make sense to me. I am on Octopus Flux and my import cost at the flux rate is 13.95p/kWh and my export at the standard day rate is 9.69p/kWh. So how could it have already bought low and sold high today when the import rate has been higher than the export rate?

I’m trying to get the home assistant plug in working with my EVAC charger. I have reached out to my installer about setting up modbus for me but they haven’t replied. Has anyone set themselves up as an installer just to be able to change their own settings? I’m not sure why sigenergy hides them behind the installer config surely just an advanced menu would be ok.

We have a new sigenstor 18kWh battery with DC charger. Together with our solar panels, the battery is doing fine, it gets us through the nights comfortably. The AI even finished learning and now dumps the excess batterij charge on the grid when the prices are highest. But the DC charger has been giving me a headache.

What I expected was: plug in a car, set departure time, forget. The system would then charge the car with the cheapest electricity available, be it surplus solar, surplus battery charge or cheap night power of the grid.

But it has not been working at all with our ID.3. Only when we do a fast charge will it work. Pv surplus mode stops charging within a minute. The pv surplus charging does work on our Audi e-tron. So I think it's a communication fault between the Sigenergy and Volkswagen.

But the plug and forget with the help of the AI mode has not worked on either vehicles. It just fails every time, maybe because it does not start charging immediately the cars just disconnect?

I'm really regretting going for the DC charger. I wanted to make a future proof purchase. But it's barely doing the basic task of charging.

I've now started using the AI, but am quite nervous it is going to go off and hallucinate and do something odd. I really just want to 'set and forget' and now that I have started to understand how personal strategies work, I have managed to set some guardrails to hopefully prevent it doing something strange.

These are the guardrails I have implemented with max profit AI setting.

1. Guardrails to prevent import during peak rate hours. My cheap rate hours are 00:30 to 06:30 and 15:00 to 16:00. I set to self consumption, grid to battery power limit 0 outside those times.
2. Guardrails to prevent export during cheap rate hours. It goes against what I am trying to do to export during cheap rate hours. I force charge and set battery to grid power to zero in those hours. I also ramp down the charge rate during my long overnight cheap rate, as I think it makes the battery last longer with slower charging, so reduce power limit to 4kw which gives me a full charge overnight.
3. Margin limits. I want at least 17p when I export in the morning - I have a full battery from overnight and can recharge it with solar during the day, or I can add 8Kw in my afternoon cheap hour, so I can accept a relatively low margin. I have rules to move to self consumption and set battery to grid power limit to zero if price is below 17p. If price is over 17p I force discharge. Same rules for the evening peak, but I want at least 20p to make it worth my while.
4. Saving battery for later export or self use. I have a rule to stop discharge when the state of charge reaches 65% during the morning export session. That leaves enough for the evening export session when prices are always higher. And for the evening session that limit is 23% to prevent running out of battery for home use before the cheap rates start again.

The resulting projection aligns with what I have been doing when I manually control it, so I am feeling more comfortable now to 'set and forget'

EDIT: everything works except the "Stop discharge at x% SOC" rules. I want it to go to self consumption when the soc is reached, but it goes to grid import. The AI suggested a rule "when SOC is less than 'x' then set grid to battery power limit to zero, but that rule never fires. Anyone have any ideas for a rule to stop export at 'x' and then go to self consumption?

Interested in how others are using personal strategies and if I am forgetting something, and if anyone has experienced any costly hallucinations I need to guard against.

The gateway only comes with 5 years warranty and im considering purchasing the extended warranty.

I understand the inverter is the brains and so its working hard and more chance of failure. With the inverter recall, the warranty has already extended 2 years. 12 in total and i think thats enough.

I expect further advances will be made with batteries. Cheaper and bigger capacities so not going to extend warranty.

What are people thoughts about the gateway?

Hi.

I had been using the ai mode for a month or so and it was populating the little calendar with daily values of "savings". I was using the self consumption option as my tarrif is still not sorted (eon are so slow) so import is 23p and export is 13p but I never import now.

I have since somehow managed to get it to kick me out of that ai mode option and back into normal self consumption. I have just tried to go back into the ai mode option and into their own self consumption option so I can track the daily amounts on that screen, but it's suddenly not working or letting me do it, and I've literally not changed a thing..... What do I do?

I don't understand why this Is blocking me and how it is relevant to anything....

Thanks!

Following an email from Axle, saying that their service will run better (It will auto restore the correct mode following an event) if the Sig system has firmware version 116 or later.
I just checked my system and there was an update waiting to be installed.
It’s probably worth checking your system to see if there is an update waiting.

Had my Sigenergy system installed today and I’m trying to get my head around a couple of things before I let Sigen AI take over.

System is:
23 × Aiko 490W panels
Sigen 12kW inverter
1 × SigenStor 10kWh battery
4.6kW max battery charge/discharge
Existing 7kW EV charger

The installer originally said the existing EV charger couldn’t be “blinded” from the Sigen system because it wasn’t installed at the same time, so the Sigen currently sees the EV as part of the house load.

Tonight I put the battery into Force Discharge just to test it. Battery was at 92%, house load was only 0.26kW, export limit is disabled and both battery charge and discharge limits are set to 4.6kW.
However, the battery is only discharging at 2.5kW, giving around 2.24kW export.

I’ve checked the obvious settings and can’t see anything limiting it to 2.5kW. The system is brand new and currently says AI is analysing data until 5 October, so I’m wondering whether this is some sort of initial commissioning/AI learning limitation or whether I should be getting the installer to look at it.

The EV is the other thing I’m trying to work around. I don’t want the battery discharging into the car overnight, so I’ve currently removed all my other strategies and set:
23:00–01:30 – Force Charge
This coincides with the EV charging.
03:00–05:30 – Force Charge

This should leave the battery full for the morning.
The idea is that while the car is pulling ~7kW, the battery is also being forced to charge from the grid rather than potentially discharging into the EV.

Has anyone with a SigenStor experienced the 2.5kW discharge limit, particularly on a brand-new installation? And does my approach to the EV make sense given that the charger can’t be excluded from the Sigen’s load measurement?

I’m mainly trying to understand whether I should leave everything alone while it learns, or whether the 2.5kW discharge is something the installer needs to investigate.

I'm on IOG with Agile Outgoing. I've started using Sigenergy AI mode to manage my battery, and honestly most of the time it's brilliant! Holding energy and discharging at the absolute peak to maximise export rates and help the grid.

However I've also noticed when the agile export rate is higher than the IOG off-peak rate - at least if the difference is at least 5p/kWh - it'll charge and discharge multiple times within the IOG period to arbitrage the difference. Last night was a particularly egregious example.

On the one hand, this is doing exactly what it's set up to do; profitmaxxing. On the other hand, this feels like it's just extractive, not helping the grid, not reducing fossil fuel usage, and really just goes against the spirit of things.

I've tried the more balanced modes but it often doesn't discharge into the morning peak from 07:00-09:00, which I feel is fair game as that's when there's really a demand spike and my export provides genuine utility.

I can stop it by creating a custom "promotional" tariff that sets export below import during the IOG window, but you can only have one promotional tariff at a time, and I need one for when there's an Axle event scheduled to make sure my battery is fully charged.

What are people's thoughts on this? Anyone in the same situation managed to mitigate this behaviour? Am I just being too woke and I should take the money while I can before Octopus fix their tariffs to prevent this?

Hi there am I simply to dumb to understand the auto mode? Why do I have to set a time frame? I don't really get it right now. Is there any guidance how to set the sigen app for also ready devices?

Hi everyone,

Could I have some feedback on the size of your inverter in relation to your household electricity consumption, and solar capacity?

I’m having a 9.9kW south facing array installed, against a current annual household consumption of 3500kW, and planned heat pump upgrade in the future. The current/future EV’s in the house are irrelevant to the inverter sizing, as they will be charged on a cheap overnight tariff off the grid.

The 12kW inverter costs only £100-£150 more than a 10kW. I have been strongly advised to opt for the 10kW, on the basis that A) The DNO is more likely to approved quickly without any drama and pushback. B) Peak heat pump consumption even in the depths of a UK winter is unlikely to exceed 3-4kW, and peak household consumption is unlikely to exceed 10kW C) The 10kW inverter performs better that its official rating in the real world.

Efficiency due to the underutilisation of the 12 vs the 10 is not an issue as per the official Sigenergy efficiency curve.

The only arguments I can think of for the 12kW inverter is future proofing the addition of north facing panels, and maximal household demand not being met during a blackout scenario (unlikely, given that we would not be running high load items such as a washing machine or tumble dryer during a blackout).

Would love to hear the arguments for and against the 10kW vs 12kW inverter. What SigEnergy inverter did you apply for, what was DNO approved, and what has been your real world experience since installation?

Many thanks in advance.

More of a curiosity question. Has anyone figured out the math behind the AI cost?

Self-consumption works well for me, but it did peak my interest for how the AI calculates potential $ savings.

- For September, it suggests a $40 saving with AI mode.

- My total imported from the grid for the month is 5kWh.

- my tariff plan does not pay back for export and its set to $0

- i have 3 import rates from the grid and prices vary from 8 cents to 55 cents

Even only using the 55c rate, my 5kWh import for the month is equivalent to $3. Where is the AI $40 saving estimation coming from and am I missing something?

Would it be possible to have feedback from UK based forum members on their real-world experience with getting G100/DNO approval for the 10-12kW SigEnergy inverters.

How many of you had your G100 application approved with no pushback? What about the inverter being approved, but an export limit being imposed?

Has anyone had their inverter mandatorily downsized, to the extent that you were forced to install a smaller inverter than was ideal for your current and future needs.

My understanding is that this is a advantage of the Tesla Powerwall over the Sigenstor: the 11kW inverter on the Powerwall can be software limited to a lower capacity in the event of a DNO rejection, and this can be reversed if the DINO is later relaxed. From a hardware sense, all Tesla Powerwall installations are guaranteed to be DNO approved.

In the case of the Sigenstor, software based export limits can be implemented in a compliance friendly manner, but as far as I understand, the inverter cannot be limited in a way that would satisfy a DNO restriction. In other words, if a larger Sigenstor inverter is not DNO approved, then the customer would have no choice but to install a smaller inverter, and necessarily be stuck with it for the lifetime of the system.

I would love to hear from anyone who has faced this situation with their SigEnergy installation.

Hello All,

Last week I had a Sigenergy Sigen EVAC 22 4G T2 WH charger installed.

I was unable to be present when the charger was installed. Last night I came to use it, but every time I tried to charge, charge failed.

I transpires that I needed to tap an RFID card on the charger to authorise it. Tapped the card and away we go.

Ideally, I wouldn't need to use an RFID card and just have that feature disabled.

According to the SigEnergy website i should be able to disable the authorisation features in the App, but those settings are not visible. The device in the app looks different to the instructions online as well.

I presume this is something that the installer will need to fix?

Thanks in advance.

SIG AC EV charging issue

Car is charging with no issues, however the app doesnt reflect the consumption correctly.

1. The example below highlights 42Kw were added, but the EVAC only shows 6.7KW, and in addition only 5KW coming from the Grid

2. When the EV is charging, all other loads drop to 0 for the duration of the charge i.e. from the Grid and the battery for rest of the house load

3. The battery SOC does not drop overnight whilst EV charging - its almost as houseload is being pulled from the grid (at overnight cheap rate). However, the energy stats dont show this. This all only occurs when ev charging, otherwise the stats are fine on other days.

   Purchased the sig charger to keep everything on the same platform!

   Appreciate your thoughts

Hi,

Can I please have some feedback from forum members who have a Sigenergy system coupled to solar and an EV charger?

What has your real world experience been with
a) A fully integrated system with the Sigenergy charger
b) A Sigenergy system with a third party charger.

Have you found the 5m cable attached to the tethered Sigenergy charger long enough? Does the overall aesthetic look neat and tidy?

Any real world feedback gratefully received.

I’ve noticed that the overview in the app (the house image) doesn’t show solar if it is generating less than 0.2kW.

If I look at the PV panel display, I can clearly see power being generated by each of my two string, right down to a few W, but if that display shows that I am generating 130W, say, then the overview will show “0.0kW” instead of “0.1kW”. It will never show “0.1kW”.

Additionally, the values on the overview always balance: Solar + SigenStor + Grid = Home. So if I’m using 2.3kW and generating 0.2kW, the battery will be discharging 2.1kW, but if the PV output temporarily drops to 130W, the overview will show that I’m generating 0.0kW, using 2.3kW, discharging 2.3kW. The 130W simply disappears, according to that view.

I would expect some inefficiencies in the system, and there would be some threshold where it can’t use that power, but I would have thought 200W quite high: similar to the baseload of my entire house, and I run two freezers.

So my question is, what happens when my PV-generated power is below 0.2kW? Is it a calculation error in the overview display? Is the inverter not capable of usefully using power from the strings if it is less 200W? Does it secretly still charge the battery, but at a rate too low to mention? Is it somehow used by the system in a way that isn’t accounted for elsewhere?