flatfourfan

I lose about 500w production over winter and that's mainly due to generating starting later and ending earlier and only peaking at about 4500w compared to summer where I'll easily be doing upwards of 5000w. I'm generating about 20-25kWh in winter and summer I do about 20-30kWh. No need to add extra panels for me, I just manage my draw better.

I still refuse to pay a monthly service fee, get paid peanuts and jump through hoops to maaaaaaybe break-even with the city council. I'd rather just use what I produce.

We've been going now for about a year, so I can add some stats. In the beginning it took us about a month to play around a bit with the system and what pulls and when it pulls. We've also had all four seasons go by too. 2023 - Gone from pulling 88.6kWh a month from the grid to 2024 - Currently pulling 18.1kWh a month from the grid We have some weeks where we will pull 0kWh from the grid and will produce between 25/30kWh a day from solar. We're on prepaid my wife just loads R50 on each month, just to keep the man happy and to keep some credits just in case. When the sun is like it is today, I load it, dishwasher, both geysers (3000w + 3500w), 1000w pool pump, fridge/ freezer, anything that I can throw at it and the sunsync 8kw inverter just takes it. I'm yet to find the peak of what I can use. I've even had the welder and lawnmower on with all of the above and no problem. My system reckons I've saved about R21 000 in this period.

so looking at that graph, there is a LOT of meat still left on the bone in order to reduce your eskom usage by quite a bit more you know? What % are you running the battery down to? I'm thinking that a little more PV could make a serious knock in your 08h00-14h00 usage.

Due to the crappy clouds in the sky............(screw you clouds btw) my parabola looks like a Chicago comb. But.......when you're pretty much maxing out the generation of the array, then sometimes life isn't that bad anymore.

Yup and that was a day with less than 1kWh pull from eskom. The target has always been to pull as little as possible from the grid.

So been on the sun proper since July '23 and I honestly thought that the winter months would be my worst, but unless it's been a total cloud day, then it's actually been above okay. I've also been educating myself with what the system can and cannot do. Prior to solar our household was using around the 450-600kWh a month, but yeah that's expected with two teenage girls and a wife that doesn't really share the passion of saving. Currently August was my best month with a 669kWh pull from the sun and only 10.7kWh from eksdom, Prior to that we were doing mid 500'skWh and about 1/10th of that coming from eskom. The family is on board now. Wireless Cbi timers on my pool and geysers have allowed me to pretty much run 95% of my house from the sun. I wake up to around 45% of my batteries that are used to just top up the geysers in the morning and my day at 7am normally starts on 25% or pretty damn close to it. Hey, you try and have a household of three woman having to have cold water..............it's a price that I'm willing to pay. 🙂 Just had my best pull day yesterday of 28kWh for the day from the sun. I'm actually struggling to find more pull, I know that once the rains start and my mower, then that'll be another 2-3kWh pull......I hope. 12 x 470w Jinko panels, 8KW Sunsynk inverter 2x 5.5KV greenrich batteries

Those numbers are hella encouraging.............Yup, in winter i would start my day on 25% storage, but as it's getting warmer and I don't need to run the geysers in the morning to "top up" I'm starting my mornings on about 60% so my dream of pulling more in summer seems to be fading somewhat. Perfect time to buy some AC units I'd say. The best part is last week we pulled a total of 3kWh from eksdom for the whole week and actually had multiple days with zero draw from them.

I saw the shield cleaner and it sure as hell smells a lot like diluted window wash stuff that cars use.......so I dunno, water and a bit of vinegar should sort you out.

some good points there. I checked out my logs with some previous weather info and I think that you're onto something. While it was clear skies on both days, the one day the "clear-sky index" (yes I had to read up on this as I didn't know how it was measured...lol). was better on the following day and there was also a 20kph wind from the west that wasn't there the day before.....................imagine that.... Overall, I've been getting anything from 75-95% of the 5500 array and generating around 17kwh on a bad day to 27kwh on a great day and around 21kwh ish in the middle on days where we're not home....If summer gets me even better numbers, then I guess I don't have much to complain about........lolz. Thanks for the input....

The numbers were actually checked the following day, i get what you're saying if they were taken immediately thereafter though. There was a post for a commercial set up a few years back, they had lost 20-30% because of dust. I believe that they were in the eastern side of Pta next to Hans Strydom.

I've been running my PV array of 5500watts for about 3 months now and am dead chuffed with how well it's worked (once dialed in). Because I'm a monitoring nut, I noticed that on clear skies, my production would be less than in the beginning. I've hit 5000watts on a few occasions, but would normally hit the mid to high 4000's pretty easily, not lately though. I started looking into logs and noticed a few 100watts over time. First check was the panels themselves and noted a pretty thick layer of dust on them. I hosed off everything quickly and saw my production go up 1-200watts. So I decided this weekend to get out the floorwizz with a new head and a long-assed broom and cleaned them properly.......since Saturday my production has increased by an average of about 450-500watts. I know in summer we'll have the rain, but I think that I need to work it into my routine every 4 months or so.

Yup, I actually have the mounts on the highest adjustment which gives me around an extra 50mm clearance.

apparently outdoor floor tiles........seems like a bit of a waste to me.

Do you want backup for load-shedding or do you want to try and go off the grid as much as possible? For 55kwh pull a day, you're going to struggle with what they're trying to sell you. We have a near-identical set-up, but with 12xJA 470 panels, our usage is however about 21kwh on a hard day for a family of four. Tell hubby that he's going to have to get in on this and learn with you as people don't realise that everyone in the house has to play along to make this work. I have my wife on the app so that she is fully aware of where we stand for the day, this makes her planning things also easier. With your usage, I would use timers to smart manage pretty much everything that you can during those sunlight hours. Lights, TV's computers, Fridge should all be good through the night, but I feel that you're maybe going to be a battery short to get you through the night and maybe a few extra panels short during the day to meet that demand.