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The energy transition is driving a massive scale-up of technical installations: photovoltaic systems, battery storage, wallboxes, heat pumps, energy management systems, and smart meters are being deployed in ever larger numbers. Yet while hardware and sales are growing rapidly, part of the value chain often remains surprisingly analog: commissioning and technical support on site.
Many installers know the situation: a system is installed, but the inverter does not feed in, the battery does not charge, or the wallbox does not communicate with the energy management system.
What often follows is a time-consuming process:
The installer calls the support hotline, waits in a queue, a ticket is created, documentation is searched, and a callback happens hours or days later.
The most critical moment of a project, commissioning, quickly turns into an operational bottleneck. Industry observations show that around 20% of all installations take longer than planned. In many cases, the root cause is not the hardware itself but integration and configuration issues during the initial commissioning phase.
The key to solving this challenge therefore lies not only in better products, but in intelligent support exactly at this moment.
The Challenge
Pressure Along the Installation Value Chain Is Increasing
The energy sector is again undergoing a phase of structural adjustment. After years of strong growth, sales volumes across many segments are now declining. At the same time, customer acquisition costs are rising, making leads significantly more expensive.
For installation companies, this creates a new reality: maintaining the same level of installations requires substantially higher operational efficiency. Especially for larger companies, internal efficiency is becoming a critical factor for long-term competitiveness.
At the same time, structural challenges remain. System architectures are becoming more complex, installations increasingly consist of components from multiple manufacturers, and the use of subcontractors continues to grow. In addition, projects are more frequently executed by international teams with varying language backgrounds.
As operational complexity remains high while margins come under increasing pressure, commissioning is evolving into not only a technical but also a business-critical bottleneck across the entire value chain.
The Operational Reality on Site
A typical scenario during installation projects illustrates the challenge. The system is physically installed, but problems occur during commissioning. These issues can take many forms. In some cases, the inverter does not feed electricity into the grid. In others, the battery fails to charge, the wallbox does not communicate with the energy management system, or the heat pump is incorrectly parameterized. Sometimes the smart meter is not detected, firmware versions are incompatible, or communication via Modbus, CAN, or LAN does not function correctly.
Another frequent source of problems lies in the integration of components from different manufacturers. Installers often have to check RS485 wiring, adjust PIN configurations, compare firmware versions, integrate third-party hardware, and correctly configure energy management systems. The integration of additional components, such as wallboxes or dynamic electricity tariffs, further increases the complexity of the system architecture.
In practice, however, these problems are rarely unique. In most cases they follow known technical patterns that have already been documented or solved before. The real problem is therefore not the absence of knowledge, but access to that knowledge at the right moment. While installers search through documentation or wait for responses from technical support, work on the construction site comes to a halt.
How Large the Efficiency Potential Really Is
A closer look at support processes reveals significant optimization potential. Typical support structures at manufacturers show:
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A key insight emerges from this: most of these issues follow clear troubleshooting patterns. Industry analyses indicate that up to 70 percent of support cases can be diagnosed in a structured way. As a result, first-time-fix rates can increase significantly, support costs can decrease substantially, and installations can be activated much faster. For manufacturers, this translates into fewer escalated support tickets, reduced hotline workload, and fewer repeat visits to construction sites.
Why Many Support Organizations Do Not Scale
Many manufacturers attempt to address these challenges by expanding traditional support structures. This often includes larger technical hotlines, ticketing systems, extensive documentation, and training programs for installers. However, these measures scale only to a limited extent. The underlying operational process largely remains the same.
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The bottleneck therefore does not arise in the product itself, but in the flow of information between the construction site and the manufacturer.
The Critical Moment: Support During Commissioning
Commissioning represents the most critical moment of an installation project. It determines whether the system runs immediately, whether installers can continue working, whether additional site visits become necessary, and how quickly the end customer can begin using the system. Despite this importance, technical support often occurs with significant delay. Yet this is precisely the moment when direct and structured assistance would provide the greatest value.
Why Many Current AI Support Solutions Still Fail
Another reason why technical support processes often fail to scale today lies in the quality of many existing AI chatbots. Both installation companies and OEMs are increasingly experimenting with automated support solutions, often based on traditional ticketing systems or generic chatbots. In practice, however, these systems frequently lack the technical precision required in complex installation environments.
The main reason is missing contextualization. Technical support cases rarely consist of a single isolated question. Instead, they depend heavily on the specific system architecture, the hardware generation being used, the firmware version, and the communication interfaces involved.
In practice, situations like the following often occur: an installer asks about a Modbus-TCP integration, but the chatbot responds with instructions for an RS485 setup. The suggested troubleshooting steps do not match the actual system configuration.
Such errors do not occur because knowledge is missing, but because the system lacks the correct context to interpret the problem. In energy systems consisting of many interconnected components, such as inverters, batteries, wallboxes, smart meters, and energy management systems, this context becomes critical.
Anyone aiming to build scalable AI systems in this domain must therefore go much deeper: into the structured contextualization of technical information, system topology, and the specific installation setup.
The Solution
A New Approach: AI-Supported Assistance for Installers
Instead of simply expanding traditional support structures, the process can be rethought. Modern AI systems make it possible to provide technical support directly during commissioning. Such an approach enables instant analysis of technical issues, access to structured OEM documentation, step-by-step troubleshooting guidance, multilingual communication for international installers, and automatic case documentation. Installers effectively gain a digital technical colleague directly on site.
Pluz Solutions: solomon
How solomon Supports Commissioning
This is exactly where solomon comes in: an AI-based support layer for installers during the commissioning of energy systems.
The interaction is deliberately simple. Installers reach out via a familiar interface, by text or voice, directly from the construction site. solomon analyzes the issue in real time, taking into account the specific system setup: components, firmware versions, communication protocols, and overall system topology.
This context-awareness is critical. For example, when an installer asks about a Modbus TCP interface issue, solomon does not return generic guidance or confuse it with RS485-based setups. Instead, it identifies the exact configuration and provides targeted, technically accurate troubleshooting steps.
But solomon goes beyond guidance. Where possible, it can directly execute actions in connected systems. For instance, if the issue is caused by a closed Modbus interface, solomon can trigger the activation of the interface directly within the OEM’s portal, resolving the problem without manual intervention.
The result is a fundamentally different support experience: not just faster answers, but actual problem resolution within minutes instead of days, fewer escalations, and a direct link between on-site execution and backend systems.
For manufacturers and installation companies, this creates a new operational infrastructure: structured access to technical documentation, AI-supported analysis and case structuring, central transparency over support cases, integration with existing CRM or ticketing systems, and support for more than 70 languages in text and voice.
The impact is clear: reduced support costs, relieved technical hotlines, scalable support without additional personnel, and faster activation of installed systems in the field.
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