Sigenergy has spent the year talking big. Fast growth. Innovative tech. A cheer squad of consumers and industry commentators that treats any doubt as a personal slight. That mood set the stage for what we are seeing now.
Burnt plugs. Throttled inverters. Real faults in real homes. To their credit, Sigenergy is swapping out the affected units and paying installers a reasonable rate to do the work. That part is solid.
Unfortunately, this is the worst time of the year to pull installers off new jobs. Everyone is flat out. The phones never stop. Pulling crews away to replace hardware means real money lost and real stress added. It is a huge hit in what is one of the busiest months before the rebates reduce on January 1.
In one incident, a Sigenergy inverter actually caught fire – the blue residue is fire extinguisher powder, but the blackening shows where flames emanated from the fan grille.
Open Talk Is Not The Enemy
There is more. Allegedly deleting posts in company-run Facebook groups when people ask about serious issues is unacceptable if true. The quickest way to wreck trust is to act like open talk is the enemy. If the gear is good and the company proactive, it can stand up to questions.
And blaming installers is not cool either. Yes, some issues will always come back to poor work. But hardware makers have a duty to build parts that make good work easy and bad work hard. If a plug is such that it begs for a tightly bent cable, I don’t think that is only on the installer. Clear design helps everyone.
It Didn’t Have To Be This Way
I have to wonder if this issue would have been picked up and resolved sooner if the mood around the brand was more ears-open rather than chest-out.
Sigenergy is doing the right thing by the consumer, and that’s to be commended. But the lesson is simple. Openness beats spin. Listening early beats scrambling late. And treating the trade with respect is worth more than any launch event or flying installers to China.
We all want SigEnergy to prosper with its great value, innovative, high-power stackable tech. Let’s hope that feedback from seasoned professionals is welcomed by both Sigenergy and its vocal fan base going forward. Those old hands were trying to help before the plugs got hot.
Phase Shift is a weekly opinion column by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Subscribe to SolarQuotes’ free newsletter to get it emailed to your inbox each week along with our other home electrification coverage.
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Yes, the Sigenergy fan boys are bad, parroting the line “it is all the fault of all those installers”
But they are not as bad as Tesla fan boys whenever someone casts doubt on the empire of electric cheesus..
+1
As one with a derated 12 kW SP unit I feel for my installer who did a great job.
I do recall MC Solar in Brisbane commenting about some of their plugs being sub-standard as well as the wiring tidiness in general and they were dismissed by Sigenergy when I enquired and the reason cited was they were sour grapes as they didn’t get full distribution exclusivity after their trip to China…Mark’s comment did stop me from getting a Sigenergy unit and I am glad I did…now seeking a Fox Ess, just haven’t found the right installer yet…
Finn – unsure if we’re allowed to post links to other places here – but if you want to get a gauge of the general Sig userbase you could take a look at the (unfiltered) Whirlpool Sigenergy Forum Thread here: https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/374p81k1
Unlike the very heavily moderated Sigenergy End Users – Australia & NZ Facebook Group (which is actually created, owned and tightly managed by Sig Australia and NOT users) the Whirlpool Forum is lets say less restrictive on user discussion
The thread has been in general positive on Sig esp the first 300 pages but has literally exploded recently with many new users joining to perhaps vent their frustrations on being repeatedly blocked from sharing their experiences on Sig’s Facebook group and of course to discuss the latest “issue” at hand. The discussion is still fairly optimistic on Sig with the one caveat being essentially what you describe above (the complete lack of comms from Sig, and sanitisation of any commentary)