u/TheRealNinkasi

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0HG4XXPCV

Finally joined the team. Ended up being under 500 mm away from the wall (470 mm in fact, excluding skirting board, from plaster wall to the outside of the bollard - FYI behind the plaster sheeting is brick, and behind that is the outside so no fire proofing was required). Left space above plus slack in cable to make slotting in one or two more modules later simple if we ever do that. He was about to put the stickers on the stack, but was happy to put them on the wall instead when I asked. The sparky did a really neat job I think, also updating most of the circuit breakers whilst tidying up the board. After he left I did discover that he had been so absorbed in tidying the circuits up he had forgotten to put in a smoke alarm - so have contacted them about that as was included in the quote, although of course I can always pop over to Bunnings and get something. Once that's in place, just need to wait it all to be inspected and approved. Hopefully soon!

Oh, I should also note that it's inside on the left hand side of the garage entrance, so only needed the one bollard.

So had an installer come around to quote, and they suggested putting the battery inside the garage up against the wall. Their proposal basically having the battery sticking out about 500 mm, with the bollards making the whole lot take up 650 mm in total from the wall. This would be fine by me, still allows for our two cars to park in there without risking hitting the bollards, and seemed to line up with some of the photos I've seen of installations in here, but when I had a look at the specs online from Sigenergy and the regulations I started to get confused.

It appears the system is 260 mm deep, so allowing a 50 mm air gap from the battery to the wall would mean it would stick out 310 mm (not the 500 mm the installer indicated). Clearance from the front of the battery seems to be 300 mm for heat dissipation from Sigenergy but 600 mm for safety - so that would be a total of around 910 mm from the wall (50+260+600). Or is that 600 mm only required for when a technician needs to access the system, so is not an issue if the car is moved out of the way when this happens? Or are they measuring the 600 mm from the wall rather than the front of the battery? My concern would be that if there is an emergency and the car is not able to be moved, then it would not be compliant....

The gotcha is the 600 mm safety requirement that pops up on google searches is hard to actually lock down to specific regulations. I've looked at regs for battery installs and they talk about minimum distances to the side and above depending on how far away from windows and doors etc - but other than distance requirements if the system is in a pathway, I haven't been able to find something in writing. My best guess is it perhaps comes from wiring regulations that mandate a minimum of 600 mm of working space in front of any switchboard (and as it has high-voltage DC isolators and AC breakers it could be deemed that).

Any comments or pointers?

** update **

Thanks all for your suggestions and comments. Sounds like indeed it will be possible to have the battery stack up against the side wall of the garage without causing any issues. I'll allow for the conservative amount of 650 mm which would be fine, and if it's less than that then all the better! :-)