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I wired a house for smart controls about 10 years ago, it's a lot of extra cables and cost a fortune. I would be more inclined to look at WiFi system which generally involve a control gadget in the back of switches and sockets, its a lot easier.

Sounds like the dongle hasn't linked to your WiFi properly. They can be reset, Google how.

the solis portal is pretty decent

it seems rather high to me as well, but then how many kWh are you not buying in? Thoroughly recommend the immersion gadgets, my customers have reported really good things about them.

Builders tend to be Mr 10% types. It can be cheaper to organise different trades yourself sometimes.

alternatively you could buy a 3 kw inverter which start up at 90V rather than 120V, and I think you can use the existing inverter as an AC battery setup, not directly connected to the panels. The other option, apart from buiding an extension, is to look at the Tigo panel optimisers and...

all work can easily be buggered by the client the moment you step out of the door.

the best practice guide as posted by Murdoch disagrees. It's not really an ad hoc Class ii system, but an exercise in remvoing extranous conductive parts from an existing system from which the client could get belted, but was compliant with the regs at time of installation. The work improves...

earthing issue, SMAs are very fussy about earth connections. If you are on an earth rod (TT system) chuck a bucket of water on the rod and soak the ground around it. If you havn't got an earth rod, then fitting one connected to the inverter case can solve the issue - as customer of mine had this...

not sure if they do what you need, but Hager is good, I also use a lot of Control Gear, which is cheap but seems to work fine.

what the chance of someone putting a spade through it? By the sounds of it, highly unlikley. Personally I would prefer it was fixed to the decking than just lying around, but it sounds like it's a non-issue.

the make is cheap and nasty, but should do the job. It can be fitted in any din rail enclosure like this - https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/BHCT2.html

that's the beastie! It also has my other favourite phrase - 'distress change'. quick scan read shows what we have discussed is perfectly acceptable practice.

MOT is more appropiate, the moment you drive away it is more or less invalid. EICRs are a similar snapshot in time, nothing more, so imho as long as you have tested properly and advised the customer accordingly there is little chance of ending up in court. In such circumstances I do test for...

section 10.4 is very applicable. At one time, the best practice guide used to state that if the client refused to change metal light switches and lamps then you should at least persuade them to fit an RCD to the lighting cct. I used to have a copy of that somewhere, but that was 3 computers ago!

So, you have discovered why we like grid tied inverters and putting panels on South facing roofs with no shading 😁 One point often overlooked is the current weather, with it being so hot panels do suffer heat saturation. My own 3.3kw system hasn't got over 2.3kw this week. You have also...

it will definetly struggle with those numbers, one of the reasons I like Solis is the lower voltage. I suspect your installer also knows this hence the BS about even strings. Lower start up voltage just means the system gets going earlier and finishes later. Now in reality the difference is...

so really we should be doing earth leakage test at the CU to ascertain if the RCD is suitable or not?

funnily enough I mentioned SMA and the 3 inputs about an hour ago on another thread - spooky! without knowing the panel spec I would think 10 panels on a single string should be fine, this can be achieved at the inverter by joining the strings there

Drivel, the MPPTs are independent of each other, and part of the reason for that is so you can have different numbers of panels on each string. SMA used to offer 3 MPPTs, the third being designed for around 4 panels max to cope with awkward roof spaces. Juts make sure 4 panels is enough to meet...