On the plus side the solar panels and battery basically work, have generated lots of electricity and saved us money. On the negative side it has taken 8 months since installation to get it fully working as it should, with little help from the installers.
I enquired about a heatpump and solar, and the solar pre-sales service was impressive: detailed analysis of what was possible for our house, which pretty much made sense, so I went with Boxergy for solar panels, battery and inverter. Things slowed down a bit once I’d signed, but the installation started end of May 2025. When they arrived it turned out that the free car charging point included in the contract I had signed was a mistake (it was claimed that they had emailed this information after signing, but when I asked for the email I was instead told I’d been phoned. Oddly, I have no recollection of this). Two of the installation roofers were very junior, so it was clear by the afternoon of the first day (but after I'd paid most of the bill, as they required) that the advertised one day installation was not going to happen. Progress was also a bit slow the next morning and by the time they were ready to put the panels on the roof it was too windy to do so safely. As they had a bigger job to start the next day, they didn’t ‘finish’ our installation until a week after starting (but did at least store the panels in our garage, rather than leaving them outside, when asked).
The first problem was then that the initial setup was incorrect, so that all the energy from the panels was fed straight to the grid and all the energy for the house was still taken from the grid. This was fixed after another week or so. They also labelled the AC cut off switch from the inverter as the DC cut off switch from the panels, which seemed a bit dangerous, and had attempted to correct a slight manufacturing fault in the inverter cover with the aid of a hammer, which had not improved its fit. These issues were eventually fixed.
However, the system repeatedly drew power from the grid when it should not have: that is, when the load was well below the 5KW limit from the inverter and the battery was well above minimum charge. It would also draw power from the grid overnight when the load was low, but not if we forgot to turn something off, so that the load was a bit higher. Boxergy first claimed that this was all normal, and was down to transient load spikes when appliances were turned on and off. Given the amount of energy involved, and the fact we are not running a particle accelerator in the basement, this seemed unlikely. Eventually they said I should contact the manufacturer, alphaESS. I did, and, because the system’s measurements did not match those from our existing smart meter, alpha twice changed the meter for the system. This resolved nothing, and after about 4 months they suddenly announced that the problem was that our mains supply voltage was sometimes too high (over 253V) and this was causing the system to isolate itself (as it is designed to), and closed the ticket. They would only provide me with a few hours of system data to back this up, and did not explain why this explanation had not immediately been apparent from the system logs 4 months earlier (the user does not get access to these, only the installer and alpha). I bought a voltage logger, and it was indeed the case that the voltage was sometimes too high, and this might be what was tripping the system (albeit at a bit under 253V). So I contacted the distribution network operator. After much chasing and another 3 months they eventually tapped down our local subnet transformer. The mains voltage is now back in the statutory range and the incorrect usage has stopped. Over this entire period Boxergy offered no real help in resolving the matter, they just repeatedly asked for the final 15% of the payment, which I was withholding until the system worked correctly.
The remaining issue was then the low load overnight grid usage. Neither alpha nor Boxergy offered any help at all here. Eventually I figured out that it is a known issue with the system, and there is a software fix that can be turned on, buried in the settings on the user App for controlling the system. Why that is unknown to the installer or the manufacturer’s UK subsidiary I can’t say.
So, all in all, months of being fobbed off and days' worth of effort to get system working as it should.
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Boxergy are MCS certified installer for Heat Pumps, Solar PV, Battery and EV Chargers in Scotland. - Air Source Heat Pumps - Solar PV - Battery storage - EV Chargers. We're on a mission to make home renewables affordable for all!
