u/New4EverHome81

I recently joined Amber under their VPP, in NSW. I have a sigenergy battery and 20kw solar with the sigenergy 20kw inverter on 3p. My hot water system is a Solahart PowerStore 2.

Since starting with amber, I noticed the hot water system is not heating well at all. It only has the reserve tank full (roughly one third of the tank size) and it takes 10 minutes of running the hot water tap in order to start using that reserve hot water - all other hot water is around 20C, implying the main heating unit is not heating correctly.

Frustrated as I am with Solahart, I can't help but feel their PowerStore product is fundamentally flawed due to it needing signals from a unit with CT clamps connected I order to switch on he heating element. Under the hood it's just a Rheem hw system.

Would anyone have experienced this problem? And of so what would a solution be? Solahart have come in and confirm the PowerStore is working without fault, it's just not being told to heat. They want to charge me $1850 to wire it up. I laughed at this.

I have done significant research and note that it's possible to interface to the Solahart controller (a product from Combined Energy called the PM2 to which all CT clamps connect), with some smarts to turn relays on / off to control hot water heating at specific times of day or under certain conditions like solar generation thresholds etc. The combined energy usage comes with monthly subscription fees.

I also note that the sigenergy inverter can be interfaced with a second ethernet connection and enabling a port (502) by switching on the ModBus option - which can be done by installer or sigenergy.

Any info or help would be much appreciated. Am pretty close to giving up and throwing it out and getting a regular heat pump hw system.

Edit: to make things worse Solahart give absolutely NO way to control the function or management of the hot water system. No way for an owner to set an override, or to "heat now" etc. This is what frustrates me the most.

Given the large number of retailers and VPP offers out there today, I'm looking for the best retailer to "maximise earnings" from solar and battery usage.

I'm in NSW on the Endeavour network. I am on Origin Energy's solar boost plan now but until 1 March this year I was on a great plan with constant 10c FiT. I have three phases and have 27kw of panels in total facing all directions but most often generate around 20kw at summer peak. I often fed in 150kwh per day which was great for earnings with no export limit on Endeavour with phase. The Origin plan i was on only charged about 87c daily supply fee and had 37c flat usage tariff. I loved it.

No more though, now they don't offer the plan any more and I've been moved to the "next best" plan which is circa 2 dollars a day supply with 3c FIT and a marketing headline 8c FIT (for the first 4 kWh or some such which has almost no impact).

I have a 40kwh sigenergy battery that I use to power the home from over nights / cloudy days.

So I joined Amber which are (or were?) one of the better VPP brands out there.

Is there a specific way to help recover the cost of my solar setup quicker than with the standard smart shift settings? I have tried force exporting on a few occasions when the FIT is 10c but this sounds dumb given the system should do this automatically (but doesn't seem to?).

Any help or suggestions much appreciated. Even if it means moving to Flow or something else.