Where we fit Sigenergy across Sussex and Surrey: the house with one good wall

Sigenergy build around one idea: the inverter, the battery, the management of both and, if you want it, the car charger go into a single stack instead of three boxes on a wall. The Sigenergy installer hub explains the stack and the question to ask before you buy it. This post is the other half — where on our patch that one-position logic suits the house, and where it does not. We fit the line from Washington across West Sussex, the Surrey edge and the East Sussex end of the coast, and the three county pages behind this post say the same things in more detail: Sigenergy in West Sussex, Sigenergy in Surrey and Sigenergy in East Sussex.

One thing before the counties. Nothing here prints a capacity, a warranty term or a price for the line, and nothing claims an approval we do not hold. The datasheet and the terms for the exact configuration come with the quote, and the question the hub asks you to put to anyone — what happens if one part of the stack ever has to be worked on — gets answered in writing before you sign.

West Sussex: the estate house with a garage

The house a stack suits best is commonest in Mid Sussex and Horsham District: a garage with a solid wall, a modern consumer unit, a family evening load and a drive the car stops on. One position takes the inverter, the battery and the charger; one notification goes to the network operator; one app watches the lot. The survey marks out the clearances the fire-safety specification asks for on the garage wall and floor, because a stack needs them kept for the life of the system, and it asks whether the garage has quietly become a room — on the older estates it often has, and then a utility or the loft is the fallback.

The paperwork is the one West Sussex wrinkle. Two operators split the county: UK Power Networks on the coast and in Mid Sussex and Horsham town, Scottish and Southern for Chichester, Billingshurst and our own RH20. A stack means a single inverter rating to notify — a G98 notification up to 16 amps per phase, a G99 application above it — and we read the operator from your MPAN rather than guess from the postcode.

The rural plots under the Downs are the other good case: an outbuilding with a solid wall and the better roof, the stack on it, the run back to the house measured rather than estimated. Battery storage in Storrington & Pulborough is that layout.

Where it is the wrong answer: the Victorian terraces of Worthing and the harbour side of Shoreham, where there is often no single wall that will take a stack. A cellar or a rear addition can; a cupboard under the stairs cannot. On those houses a separate battery that can go where there is room is the honest recommendation, and Sigenergy, Fox ESS and Hanchu compared is how we make that call.

Surrey: a lower yield, and one stack to keep it

PVGIS models about 1,037 kWh per kWp a year at Dorking against about 1,125 at Washington, and the Greensand and the trees shade more Surrey roofs than coastal ones. A house that makes less exports a bigger share of what it makes unless there is somewhere to put the surplus — so the Surrey edge is where storage matters most, not least. A stack that holds the day’s surplus, releases it in the evening and charges the car overnight from a cheap-rate tariff does the three jobs from one position.

The car is the Surrey argument. The county council reports over 200 chargepoint sockets installed on its behalf by October 2024 for the houses without a drive, and states that trailing a cable across the pavement is not allowed. A house with its own drive is the Sigenergy case, with the charger in the stack. Export tariffs compared lists the overnight tariffs, dated.

Two operators again, and the line between them wanders: Cranleigh, Dorking, Horley and Reigate are UK Power Networks, Haslemere and Godalming are SSEN. The stack does not care; the form goes to whichever your MPAN names. Inside the Surrey Hills National Landscape and the Dorking conservation area with its Article 4 directions, a stack indoors or in a garage is an electrical installation the designations do not reach — the array is where they are checked, and solar panels in Dorking covers that side.

East Sussex: one house, or four flats

The East Sussex end of the patch has the best modelled yield we publish — about 1,177 kWh per kWp a year at Lewes — and the most subdivided housing. Brighton’s dense Regency and Victorian terraces are frequently divided into flats, and that is the whole question for a stack: a whole house with a dry basement or a rear addition and its own car space is a candidate; a house converted into four flats is not, because each flat has its own supply and the stack serves one of them from one wall that has to be yours. Can a Brighton flat have a battery? walks through the lease side.

Lewes is the largest town in any National Park, with a conservation area over almost all the historic town. A stack indoors is an electrical installation the Park does not reach, but on a listed house the position and the cable runs go to the conservation officer first. And a lot of Lewes roofs already have panels — Solar Together put many of them there. A household adding storage to an existing array is asking a different question from the one a new stack answers: what happens to the inverter you already own, which depends on its age, its type and what is connected to it. We answer that after looking at the unit, in writing, and name the line that suits what is there — or say that none of ours does.

The whole of this end of the county is UK Power Networks territory, so one operator for everything. The coast from Peacehaven to Newhaven is as exposed as Worthing, and a stack stays off the outside walls there: on a clifftop bungalow, the garage.

The short version

• Fit it where there is one good wall, the clearances can be kept, and the household wants the car charger in the same assembly — estate garages, rural outbuildings, whole houses with a basement.
• Do not force it on a terrace with no garage or cellar, a converted flat with a communal supply, or a house whose only candidate wall is on an escape route.
• Ask first what happens if one part of the stack has to be worked on, and read the datasheet and warranty terms for the exact configuration before you sign.

The county pages carry the facts behind each of these: West Sussex, Surrey, East Sussex. The stack itself is explained in how the Sigenergy stack works and what a Sigenergy installation involves.

Regional facts are the ones already on our county and town pages, with their sources there: PVGIS 5.2 yields read 15 October 2026; network operators checked by postcode district on 15 and 18 October 2026; Surrey County Council’s chargepoint page reviewed 1 October 2026; Solar Together Sussex’s published scheme figures. Product statements are the Sigenergy hub’s own.