The Findings Desk carries the recurring market-signal notes: indicator movements, "what changed this month," and data pulses grounded in the benchmark. Where a Findings piece argues an interpretation, that byline sits with Dietreich Farquharson; where it reports what the data showed without building a personal case, it sits here.
Published under this byline
Two makers hold a number one for the same half-year, and both are quoting a tracker accurately.
Fox ESS and Sigenergy have each announced a first place in global residential energy storage for the first half of 2026, on two different trackers. The distance between what the two trackers report for first place is wider than the distance between the first three suppliers on either of them. What a shipment ranking measures, and the four things it needs attached before a reader can check it.
Two listing actions took effect this week. The approved list recorded the suspension as an expiry date and the de-listing not at all.
The Clean Energy Council suspended seven NeoVolt battery models on 15 September 2026 and de-listed eight Smart Lifestyle models on 17 September. The Clean Energy Regulator's battery file republished on 15 September moves the seven NeoVolt expiry dates to that day. The eight Smart Lifestyle rows are unchanged, expiry 17 June, on files not republished since the de-listing.
Eight Smart Lifestyle models are being de-listed after the supplier's liquidation, and all eight are still on the approved list.
The Clean Energy Council notified industry on 11 September 2026 that it intends to de-list three Smart Lifestyle inverters and five Smart Lifestyle batteries on 17 September, six months after liquidators were appointed to the supplier. The products have been suspended since 17 June. They remain on the Clean Energy Regulator's approved product files, each carrying an expiry date of 17 June 2026, in files that have no status column.
The Clean Energy Council has suspended seven NeoVolt battery models, and states the decision is not about safety.
The Council notified industry on 15 September 2026 that seven Bytewatt NeoVolt battery models are suspended from its approved product list from that date, on documentation grounds, with corrective actions due by 14 December. It states that the decision was not taken on the basis of a product recall or any identified product safety issue. The two NeoVolt systems scored on review.solar are certified as different models and are not named.
The United States now gates new inverter authorisations on where a product is made, not on who makes it.
The FCC added foreign-produced power inverters to its Covered List on 28 July 2026 and narrowed the entry on 20 August. New models meeting the definition cannot receive equipment authorisation, which closes import, marketing and sale. Models already authorised are untouched, and the test that decides the next one is a domestic content percentage.
Two Sigenergy battery controllers will share one model name. Only one of them takes the new accessory.
A Sigenergy technical notice dated 18 August 2026 moves the SigenStack battery controllers onto new product codes on 30 September and leaves the model names untouched. The incoming DC combiner box works only with the new codes. Of the four published surfaces we checked, one prints the code that tells them apart.
51 panels promise 25 years or more. 11 cover parts only.
The current benchmark records 51 active panels with product warranties of at least 25 years. 11 cover parts only; this living comparison separates duration, service, transport, evidence quality and manufacturer backing.
A metering accessory is where a vendor's market intent shows up first.
Sigenergy's Sigen Power Sensor has moved to a new -WI generation. The published installation guide adds 2.4 GHz WLAN alongside RS485, widens the operating range, and carries RCM certification with Australian demand-response pin assignments, where the two prior published datasheets listed European standards only.
A vehicle compatibility list is not a manufacturer certification.
Sigenergy publishes V2X field-test results for 204 vehicle records across 44 brands, and states on the same page that no vehicle manufacturer has certified, endorsed or authorised any of them. The gap between a charger vendor's compatibility list and a carmaker's supported feature is the whole buying decision, and it is documented in the vendor's own footnotes.
SolarEdge's financial record through Q1 2026: the context behind a 25-year warranty.
SolarEdge entered 2026 as a company that had stopped collapsing and had not yet recovered. Two years of heavy net losses, a roughly 30% headcount reduction, the closure of its storage division and a large secured exposure to a customer now in Chapter 11 sit alongside a return to positive gross margin, positive operating cash flow and year-on-year revenue growth. This is the sourced record, not a forecast. The judgement is the reader's.
Home battery storage's breakout year: the 2025 data, and what Australia just proved.
Global energy storage additions crossed 100 GW for the first time. Battery pack prices hit a record low, with stationary storage now the cheapest segment there is. And in under a year, Australia's Cheaper Home Batteries Program installed more residential capacity than the country had built in its entire history before it. The data behind 2025, and the subsidy-design lesson inside it.
The inverter decade, in the figures that survive a source check.
The story of the solar inverter growing from a passive DC-AC converter into the grid's control layer is real, but a lot of the numbers attached to it aren't. Here's the decade rebuilt on primary sources only: the market concentration that's documented, the power-electronics shift that's measured, and three widely-quoted figures we checked, couldn't source, and left on the floor.
The hardware is commoditised. The software that runs it can't prove its claims.
Inverters, batteries and EV chargers have converged on similar efficiencies and price bands. The value has moved above the hardware, to the control layer, the home energy management software that dispatches these assets against tariffs and grid signals. An independent audit of 51 products found a third claim the top capability tier and only one in eight can demonstrate it. Where dispatch logic is weak, high-efficiency hardware delivers little.