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Last week we wrote that if you own a Smart Lifestyle battery, the company behind it is in liquidation and the warranty is a promise with nobody left to keep it. Still true. But there is now a phone number, and that is worth a short update.
The 17 September update
The Clean Energy Council went ahead and de-listed all eight Smart Lifestyle products, three inverters and five batteries, on 17 September. No surprise there. What came with the confirmation is new.
The Council has been talking to Hiconics, the company that held a co-licence for the same hardware. Hiconics is the energy storage arm of Midea, the appliance group, which is why the email address it gave ends in midea.com. Hiconics has told the Council it will do three things for Smart Lifestyle owners, case by case:
- Take technical calls and help troubleshoot a system that is playing up.
- Assess and repair a unit sent back to it, where a repair is possible, at your cost for parts and labour.
- Supply spare parts, subject to what it has on the shelf.
The number is 1300 457 098. The email is solar_service_au@midea.com.
Limits of Hiconics support
So if your battery dies outright, you are still looking at a quoted repair. Nobody is swapping it for free. If a board fails and they have the part, you can probably get it fixed for a price. That is an improvement on nothing, which is where you were seven days ago.
Correction to the product notice
One small thing. The original notice on 11 September was headed as a PV module de-listing. The Council has now said that was a mistake. No panels were de-listed. If your panels happen to be a different brand, which is common, they were never part of this.
Repair and replacement options
Same advice as last week, with one line added.
Keep using the battery. It works the way it did yesterday.
If it faults, call Hiconics first on the number above and get a quote before you decide anything. A repaired inverter for a few hundred dollars beats a new battery system for several thousand.
If the fault is the kind a repair will not fix, or the quote is close to the cost of a new unit, that is when to look at replacing it. The WA battery rebate still applies to a new eligible battery on an existing solar system, and the federal rebate steps down again in January, so the timing is not neutral.
And if you bought the system from a retailer that is still trading, that retailer carries obligations under Australian Consumer Law regardless of what happened to the manufacturer. Hiconics is the repair line. The retailer is still the warranty line.
Want a second opinion on a system you did not buy from us? Get a quote for a battery health check and we will tell you straight whether it is worth fixing.