WARNING! DANGER! Battery Labels Are Shockingly Bad

Apparently a recent raft of audits showed 98% of battery installations were defective. Does that mean the entire solar installation industry is incompetent? No, but the people writing the rules…?

Labelling The Problem

The vast bulk of rule breaches aren’t serious safety concerns – there’s no spate of fires or rash of electrocutions to fuel a conservative media beatup or festival of (f) right-wing outrage.

Most are just technical defects involving labels. The wrong sticker with the wrong jargon in the wrong place is all it amounts to.

The thing is though, someone has to burn time and petrol to go back and label a system that’s quite functional, but doesn’t meet a pedant’s checklist.

Semantics Don’t Help In A Fire

Standards committees need to step back. If 100% of battery installations aren’t compliant, then basically it’s because the rules are made & interpreted by smart arse grammar Nastis.

Arguing the semantics of switch or isolator, defining specific words to describe an electrical supply – this might be fun for electricians trying to one up each other, but it’s all bullshit when the house is on fire or there’s a flood coming. Jargon does not make things safer.

I’ve supported customers on the phone and struggled with how little prior knowledge they have. They might sail through a pub quiz night, reeling off the names of all the world’s oceans, but confronted with a switchboard, they’re all at sea.

This image below was sent to me by a customer simply trying to reset her system. She was befuddled about switching off the AC supply, so I made notes on her photo and sent it back.

Irrelevant jargon crossed out with red to focus attention on the parts that matter.

What really opened my eyes was this; despite having an expert coach on the phone, despite perfectly compliant labelling, you can’t flip, flick or fondle a switch if you’re blissfully ignorant of what the boxes on the wall are even there for. When you don’t even realise the shiny glass front of a Tesla gateway is in fact a switchboard door; well you don’t know what you don’t know.

Once I sent the image below, with fundamental components identified, the penny dropped, and the statutory warning stickers began to make a little sense to the customer who was otherwise embarrassed she had no idea.

Labels need to be basic.

You might complain about people who flunked science class, or don’t care how the world works, but consider this – the Tesla Powerwall has a shiny glass facade, and the same design language carries over to the gateway.

To fanbois it’s uber slick minimalism, to others it’s featureless appliance white, but the thing is, a fridge always has a handle and I’ve never found one that’s not intuitive to open.

A fridge could also kill you – it could topple over, you could suffocate inside it, chewing on the high voltage cable might cause burns or electrocution, the R600 refrigerant could leak out and burst into flames; but I’ve never seen a fridge with engraved yellow warning labels, exclamation marks and lightning bolts.

The epiphany I had is one we could all benefit from – the warning stickers are no help. In fact they’re counterproductive.

When equipment is plastered with fear and danger warnings, the perceived risk of breaking it prevents people from learning.

The System Is Failing Electricians

Solar Accreditation Australia has released new guidance on compliant labelling. But electricians are already well trained – they have to be, because they’re expected to test and certify the work they do as safe with a document admissible as court evidence.

To get your SAA-approved solar endorsement, there are 4 nationally accredited units of study. Put another way, that’s a week long course, plus required homework, or about 80 odd hours of training.

And to install batteries you need an additional 3 units. In my experience, that’s another week of face-to-face academic courses, testing, and practical demonstrations to deliver another 80 hours of “rigorous training and assessment by qualified teachers resulting in a national qualification”.

So the person signing off on your battery hybrid solar installation has at minimum done a 4 year apprenticeship and another fortnight of technical study, 160 hours plus homework.

Once they’ve been on the tools for 12 months, they’re required to earn 100 points per year in Continuous Personal Development courses, which invariably involve sitting through several live or recorded presentations and then passing quizzes.

So if people are required to undertake that level of training, and 98% still fail to produce compliant work, it’s seriously time we started looking at the rules. The system is failing those expected to deliver it.

Fun Fact: During the dark days of the white Australia policy, potential immigrants were screened by a dictation test. People had to prove their fluency, so if the vetting officer liked you, the test was in English. However the rules allowed any European language, so if your skin was a little brown you could be tested in Bulgarian.

The system was designed to fail you.

We Do Need A Document Holder

Used house dealers are lucky to give you the right set of keys, let alone instructions for a pool pump or the WiFi password for solar monitoring. And we know other trades can easily render switchboards non-compliant and solar energy management useless if they don’t have enough information.

Improvements should start with the National Construction Code, mandating a decent document holder in the main switchboard. My local network authority already requires that a map of the underground main supply must be painted (not texta pen) inside the meter box door.

The solar standards require a map of the roof and solar disconnection points must be left in the meter board. And the customer must receive a handover pack containing technical specifications, warranty details, procedures, maintenance requirements, etc.

We hardly had to blur this one as it was unreadable anyway. At least a QR code might be legible.

Some more innovative solar companies make all this information available via QR code, like manufacturers do for inverter manuals. It’s a great way to transfer a variety of documents in rich detail, right up until the company goes broke or the server goes down.

However, the numpty who takes a paper map of their solar array (not durable, colourfast or compliant) and glues it over the mains supply drawing? They want to be tarred and feathered.

The most prominent thing about this piss poor excuse for a map is the pattern of the silicone used to glue it down. These Origin subcontractors can get in the bin (a comment I’m happy to make despite Origin owning SolarQuotes).

Battery Standards Must Be Free To Access

Electricians refer to AS 3000 wiring rules as the good book, but unlike all the goat herder’s guides to the galaxy they study in religious circles, ours gets updated sporadically and it’s cited in laws, not lore.

Sadly our seminary doesn’t have soaring architecture and stained glass – rather TAFE colleges sorely need funding to improve their strained capabilities (we should tax the churches and nationalise all the schools while we’re at it).

The point is, electricians must be trained, steeped, and familiarised with the jargon before they’re able to open the book and interpret the contents. If you don’t have that context, then you’re not qualified to do the work, nor offer an opinion.

It’s worth remembering that if you see a “rate my installation” post on social media, the armchair experts aren’t coughing up $300 per copy for the multiple standards applicable.

Inverters Should Supply Their Own Labels

One key question is why inverter makers aren’t supplying the labels that belong with their specific model of hardware.

Some inverters are non-compliant because a cover blocks access to the DC isolator. In fact AlphaESS have a cover screwed on, so technically they need a second isolator added beside the unit.

As seen from behind, this AlphaESS requires a long screwdriver (green) to get the cover off and access the DC isolator. It’s not a compliant product. Credit to Solar Training Centre

Sigenergy fans point to an isolator buried behind a cover, which you need two hands to remove, but without really specific labelling it’s not obvious. Vanity stops them from removing a “knock out” in the moulding to create access, but either way, the isolator isn’t easy to see. And the shutdown procedure requires you to push a separate button, which again can’t be explained by a generic label.

GoodWe need specific labelling too, but in my opinion they have the right compromise in the design. With one finger you can flick the cover off and then it’s easy to see and operate the isolator.

GoodWe have moulded the arrow into the cover (highlighted black) so access to the isolator isn’t difficult.

The best labels I’ve seen recently are designed specifically for the GoodWe ESA. These are available for download from Ultec and they’re a great example of dedicated Australian support.

This really shows the punters what you need to do and how to go about it.

I’ll argue that if you can’t see the handle, and operate it with one hand, it’s not accessible and not compliant.

As a customer, there is no “HAZARDOUS DC VOLTAGE” available from this Fronius inverter, unless you single out the black wiring and have at it with some scissors. At least the big black round knob makes the DC isolator obvious

Numbers Are Universal

Let’s face it, not everyone is good with English, let alone electrical jargon. So without resorting to ambiguous pictograms, Egyptian hieroglyphics or the latest raft of emojis, you can instruct people on how to shut down a power system using numbers.

When I built remote-area power systems, there were sometimes a dozen or more steps in the shutdown procedure. We would apply the statutory jargon, but every system was different, so they all got a unique laminated placard.

In this example, the startup procedure needs extra steps when you reverse the shutdown order.

The real test was in the handover, watching the customer follow the instructions without skilled intervention.

#NUMBERS give you the order, while arrows explain you need to pull firmly on a “rat trap” fuse disconnect.

Shutdown labels must have a numbered order, something your 5-year-old can follow. And to make it work, the switches, circuit breakers or handles themselves must have numbers attached to identify them.

Emergency Stop!

Follow this order to switch off:

• 1. Open Here >>> 
• 2. Flip the toggle down to switch off the mains power
• 3. Turn the handle to switch off the solar from the roof
• 4. Push the red button to switch off the battery

Notice I’ve deliberately avoided the term isolate here; because despite my electrical instinct, I know we’d be better off talking to a junior primary teacher about the most obvious words to use. So have at it in the comments section please.

This Is The Bottom Line

I can’t stress this enough, because all the standards, all the labels, all the audits, all the hand wringing & finger pointing is just a pointless waste of time and resources, unless we make the labels something a completely untrained punter can comprehend.

Labelling must be simple to apply

and even simpler to understand.

For more, read about how the safety theatre of labelling rules distract from the issues that really matter.