Living with a home battery: handover, alarms and shutdown
Once a battery is fitted, most of its life is uneventful. The handover is where you learn the few things worth knowing, and get the papers you will want later.
In short
At handover you should receive user instructions covering start-up, shutdown, alarms and fault codes, contacts for help and warranty, safe shutdown and what to do in a battery fire, plus the installer's statement of conformity with PAS 63100 attached to the electrical certificate. Learn the shutdown, check the alarms, and keep the paperwork together.
What the handover should include
PAS 63100, the specification for protecting homes against battery fires, sets out what the householder should be given. Its list is a good checklist for the day the installer leaves.
| Item | Why you want it |
|---|---|
| User instructions: start-up and shutdown | So anyone in the house can switch it off safely |
| Alarms and fault codes explained | So a warning on the app or unit makes sense |
| What to do in a battery fire | The steps differ from other fires; know them in advance |
| Help and warranty contacts | Who to call, and who stands behind the warranty |
| Statement of conformity with PAS 63100 | Shows the location and safeguards follow the specification |
| Electrical installation certificate (BS 7671) | The record of the electrical work, now with a battery chapter |
| Network notification or G99 approval | Proof the operator was told, and any conditions |
| MCS certificate, if registered | Often needed for export payments and future work |
Alarms and safety at home
Where a battery is indoors in a rarely visited place such as a store cupboard, PAS 63100 asks for a smoke or multi-sensor alarm linked with the home's other fire alarms. Test it with your other alarms. If your battery is in a garage or outbuilding, think about whether you would hear an alarm there.
Keep the area around the battery clear. PAS 63100 keeps batteries at least 2 m from stored flammable materials and fuel tanks or cylinders, and that is worth respecting long after the installer has gone: a garage battery is easy to surround with boxes, paint tins and garden fuel.
Knowing how to shut it down
Ask the installer to show you, in person, how to shut the system down, and where the isolators are. Write it on a card near the battery or the consumer unit, so that someone else in the house, or a visiting electrician, can follow it.
Settings worth understanding
- The reserve. The share of the battery kept back. A higher reserve leaves more for a power cut (if you have backup) but less for everyday use.
- The mode. Self-use, timed charging from the grid, or export at set times. Each changes when energy moves, not how much the battery holds.
- Charging windows. If you charge from the grid, the times should match your tariff's cheap hours, and change when your tariff changes.
Monitoring apps show solar, house use, battery and grid flows. A few weeks of watching tells you more about how storage works in your home than any guide; how a solar battery works explains what you are seeing.
Paperwork to keep together
Keep the instructions, certificates, PAS 63100 statement, network paperwork and warranty registration in one place. A future buyer, an insurer or an electrician working on the house may ask for them, and the network paperwork matters if you later add panels or a second battery. Lifespan and warranty covers what to register and keep for the warranty.
If the battery is in a place you're no longer sure about, perhaps after building work, read where a battery can go and ask an installer to look.
The first few weeks
The early weeks are the best time to check that the system does what the design intended. Watch whether the battery fills on sunny days and empties in the evening, whether it stops at the reserve you expected, and whether anything is exported while the battery still has room. If it charges from the grid, check that charging happens in your tariff's cheap hours and stops when they end. Small surprises, such as a reserve set higher than you wanted or a charging window an hour out after the clocks change, are easy to fix in the first month and easy to miss after that.
Keep a note of the battery's usable capacity reading in the app when it is new. Over the years, comparing against that number is a simple way to see how much capacity it has kept.
When you move house
A battery stays with the property. Pass the instructions, certificates, PAS 63100 statement, network paperwork and warranty details to the buyer, and transfer any monitoring account. A battery with complete paperwork is far easier for a buyer, a surveyor and a lender to understand than one with none.
What this page is based on
- PAS 63100:2024, fire protection for battery energy storage in dwellings (BSI, sponsored by DESNZ), PDF (read 3 Nov 2026)
- IET and BSI announcement of Amendment 4 (2026) to BS 7671, the Wiring Regulations (read 3 Nov 2026)
- MCS guidance for installers on telling the network operator (G98 and G99) (read 3 Nov 2026)
- MCS Installer Operating Requirements (2026), technologies and use of the MCS mark, PDF (read 2 Nov 2026)
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