Solar or battery system faults common to all brands
Most people with solar do not know what inverter they have, and it barely matters for the things that go wrong most often. A system that shuts down at midday, a battery that will not discharge, and an app showing nothing overnight all have the same explanations whoever built the equipment.
This is not the SMA event list or the Tesla Powerwall app-alert list. Those are brand-specific. It is also not permission to work on the roof side of the isolator. Switching the inverter off at the AC breaker makes it safe to stand next to and leaves the panels and their wiring live whenever it is daylight. The MCS installation guide says the supply from PV modules cannot be switched off.
Grid-related shutdowns at midday in summer are usually the inverter disconnecting because local voltage rose while several houses exported, which is what the regulations require rather than a failed inverter. Isolation and arc-fault reports are the ones not to keep resetting. The useful call is your installer; this is notifiable electrical work, not gas work, and not oil.
Named-brand hubs in this category: SMA and Tesla Powerwall. Those pages carry the manufacturer’s own table; this one does not replace them.
How these displays appear
Many domestic inverters have no screen at all, and on those that do the screen shows a status word and a number rather than an explanation. What you get everywhere is a coloured light on the unit and a fuller message in an app or a monitoring portal, and the portal is where the actual event name or number lives. If you are trying to look something up, the app history is worth finding first — a light can only tell you that something happened, not which of a dozen things it was.
What a reset actually does
The owner-safe action on a solar system is a restart: switching the inverter off and on at its isolators, waiting, and letting it go through its start-up checks. Which isolators, in which order and how long to wait depends on what your manufacturer publishes for owners, and the three procedures on this site differ from one another. GivEnergy’s customer diagnostics guide has the householder turn off the DC (solar) and AC isolators to restart the inverter, then restart the battery from the button on its side, and says to contact your installer if unsure about the process. SMA’s published owner restart is the AC breaker alone, off overnight and back on in the morning (see the SMA page). Tesla publish separate power-cycle sequences for Powerwall 2 and Powerwall 3 with different waits (see the Tesla page). Where a guide like that exists, follow it, and operate the DC isolator only as it instructs. Where the manufacturer publishes nothing for owners, stay on the AC side. Understand what a restart does and does not do. It makes the inverter safe to stand next to. It does not make the panels or the wiring between them safe. The MCS installation guide puts it plainly — the supply from PV modules cannot be switched off — and a DC isolator only disconnects the array from the inverter; everything on the roof side of it stays live in daylight, which is why the guide requires the isolator to be labelled "Danger — contains live parts during daylight". Do not open the inverter, do not operate the direct current isolator for anything beyond the manufacturer’s published restart, and do not attempt to measure anything on the array.
Most common shared solar and battery faults
The solar or battery system displays people look up most, whichever badge is on the appliance.
- Inverter shutting down in the middle of the dayUsually simple to fixUsually the grid rather than your system. Inverters must disconnect when mains voltage goes outside the G98 protection settings, and exporting solar is what pushes it there.
- Generating less than expectedUsually simple to fixThe rated figure is a laboratory number a British afternoon rarely supplies. Two published non-faults explain most of the rest: darkness and export limits.
- Battery not dischargingGet it checkedBefore treating it as a fault, check what your tariff is asking. A battery holding charge in the evening is very often following a schedule correctly.
- Panels are still liveStop — call an engineerThere is no switch that stops a panel generating. Turning the inverter off makes it safe to stand next to and leaves the roof wiring live at hundreds of volts.
Every shared solar or battery system fault
4 published shared pages. Filtering happens in the page — every one is in the HTML.
Showing 4 of 4 codes
Solar and battery these pages cover
These pages apply across types. The split is by how the appliance is built, not by badge.