Deez

Love this choice .....  Best choice I think

Thanks Buyeye
I have decided for now to go with the 20l Gas Heater to have an alternative heating source for long outages. We are currently experiencing lots of long outages due to faults at Houtkoppen sub. 
I am going to change the elements on my 2 remaining geysers down to 3kw and will connect that to the next phase of my PV Array + inverter/battery set up.

Hi @deez I went with the change to a lower power element route and connect to a 5kw inverter with overspecced pv array.
 
If you go for a good size inverter like the deye 8kw or axpert max 7 kw then you don't have to change anything on your geyser just the source of electricity that heats your water. Then you don't have to worry about the insurance you just claim as usual.

You need Eskom and you will have cold water at night time load Shedding, or use up battery to heat water at 2am.
You will never have cold water and never be reliant on Eskom. The 48kg are huge, even 19kg lasts long, Have spare like I do and  when one is empty I change to the other and have at three months to fill the spare.

Hi Ryan,
I am 100% on your page. My geyser is covered by insurance but I am considering using the pay out to convert to gas. I also have 4kw of installed PV cells with a 5kw Deye inverter.
Option 1 - Replace geyser and convert to Solar
Replace Geyser with a 200l Kwikot geyser (covered by insurance). Replace 4kw element with a 2kw electric or PTC element. Install a GeyserWise or GeyserWorx system to "smart" control the geyser and switch seamlessly between DC and AC as required to maintain temperature. I understand that this wont get me completely off the grid but it will allow me to maximise the investment of my PV installation. Costs Geyserwise = approximately R10k - lets say R11.5k with installation. GeyserWorx = R9.3k with installation (add in a another R2k for a AC/DC element - still confirming with GeyserWorx whether this is required.) Ongoing electricity usage will only be determined once installed and measured over a period of time. Option 2 - Remove geyser completely and put in a Gas Geyser
Remove burst geyser and install a 20L forced fan gas geyser Utilise the R6k pay out from the insurance comp to contribute towards costs of gas system. Complete decoupling from Eskom. Costs Approximately R18k - R20k installed with a decent Paloma or Bosch geyser. Therefore all in about 12k taking the insurance payout into consideration. Cost of Gas to change a 48kg bottle every 2 to 3 months (R1350). Conclusion
In my situation the installed cost works out to pretty much the same for both options with the gas heater slightly more expensive. The swinger will be the ongoing cost of gas vs the electricity utilisation I suppose.
Not a clear winner in my opinion except it you want to off the grid completely.
 
 

I would not be discourage from using any 2 KW, however the Geysewise has some positives on the PTC element. Either way dont be discouraged using a smaller KW element. I agree with Vassen. it will take longer to heat ,use less power but longer.

@Deez the PV system has a dual element 900w DC and 1500w / 900w recommended for 150l and 2000w AC /900w DC for the 200l. The 900w heats the water via DC (PV) to a special MPPT controller to the PTC element. Yes it heats it. Even at 900w(200l). The day would start at 55C, then the morning people shower/ bath 26C - 30C. At the time I use the water 55C around midday, I am old school and shower quick, now at about 44C, come 3pm to 5pm back at 55C again.  I also have the 150L , works even better as its smaller at 900w naturally. This is winter

My two geysers are configured in a “It will never work” way but it is something that can also work. I ended up doing my own install to make sure every thing is insulated and no skimping of materials. I doubt anybody else has the same system but am curious if there are others like this.
Few years back I decided to go the solar route. Starting with the geyser because of it being the thing that is responsible for about 45% electricity bills. I did not opt for the retrofit flat plate but a complete solar solution. I kept my existing kwikhot 150liter geyser as a spare. Not wanting to remove it because I was a bit wary of solar geyser promises. It seemed like a waste to remove a good working electric geyser for no real reason. I did however install two new shutoff valves for this “to be spare” geyser on the “in and outlet” so that I could shut them and also drained the water. 
I then installed a 200ltr h/p evacuated tube geyser parallel over the spare geyser also with it’s own shutoff valves. So I can switch between any of the two if needed. 
The evacuated geyser been running more than two years now not needing the spare geyser until two months ago my solar geyser controller had a small problem that forced me to switch on the spare geyser and open it’s valves. Within 45minutes we had hot water again. 
I have been experimenting with the two geyser side by side in parallel 150ltr + 200ltr and think I will only revert back to the solar option in spring time when less hot water is required.
The result is surprising with plentiful of hot water even with all Eskom’s load shedding the last couple of weeks. During the day the solar heats up to about 70degrees and the kwikhot element geyser to 60 degrees the two geysers now mix hot water at the taps and the temperatures of both geysers does not drop much, even when one geyser is colder the hotter geyser adds the hot water in the mix. I am paying slightly more now in winter for Eskom but it is nice to not worry about hot water. I have since installed a inverter and think as I expand and spare pv becomes available to power the electric geyser with pv.

2400 watts of pv power is not going to be enough, I have 4260 watts of solar panels, my geyser is 200 litre fitted with a 2 kW element ( heat it to 70 degrees once a day with pv ONLY ), it takes an average of 5 hours to heat the geyser to 70 degrees, as it is winter, i just barely get my batteries charged to 100 % ( use batteries during the night , to cut down on return on investment )