Jacques Ester

Good Day
My first installation done.
PV Modules: 40x Canadian Solar 615W panels (8 per string/ 5 strings). Total installed capacity 24.6kW. East/West configuration.
Inverter: 30kW Deye 3phase Hybrid.
Battery: Deyeness Stack 4 Tower 57kW. Operating voltage 230V (4 stacks plug and play in series).
Location: Hermanus.
Check- no surface mounted trunking from panels to inverter and DB to inverter. In conduit under plaster.

Hello we are in communications with Pylontech international and they are in process of setting up a local support hub similar to other manufacturers like Solis Hubble etc.

Most solar calculators online quote you a payback that never matches reality. They assume you use every kilowatt your panels make, that prices stand still, that your battery lasts forever and that the cash you sank into it could not have earned a cent anywhere else.
So I built one that does not pretend. You put in your real numbers and it shows you two figures side by side - the rosy payback a salesman quotes and the realistic one you are actually likely to get - then it breaks down exactly what eats the gap. Wasted daytime generation, panel degradation, the battery you will replace once down the line, financing interest and the higher fixed charge some municipalities slap on solar homes.
It is free and there is no signup. Set your own tariff off your bill rather than the presets and be honest about how much you use in daylight and you will get a sensible answer.
Anyone interested can have a look here:
https://southafricafacts.co.za/solar-savings-calculator-south-africa/
Keen to hear if the numbers line up with what you are actually seeing. Share your own setup and payback if you are up for it.

Sad news that @TaliaB has been admitted to the Christian Barnard Netcare with Pulmonary Embolism. He was fine earlier in the day. He has been put on Echmo.
Please keep him in your thoughts. 🙏🙏

@Aartappel your problem is quite a generic one and I have seen a few different solutions that the farming community is deploying...Direct Solar panels on VFDs, some farmers creating micro Grids large in size and then installing their own MV transmission lines and then disconnecting the various Eskom incomer points. I have at least 3 users completed these projects & have done it in a staged approach but the savings and the benefits are there to witness. Those unreliable expensive Eskom points are worth shutting down & pocketing the ongoing costs into your own infrastructure.
I have been involved with especially ATESS and more recently over the last 2 yrs Megarevo Transformer based Hybrids and AC coupled Grid ties and DC coupled ATESS topology. The largest plant at 1.5MW carrying a base load of 700kW is in a factory with massive HVAC and high inductive loads. The Atess equipment is really robust and honestly can take a heavy punch with large motors starting and stopping...
Its just my personal opinion that the High frequency non transformer based inverters won't last long for the irrigation environment or SAs farming environment because we have harsh conditions and we require equipment that will last the next decade that is serviceable in the field.
If you need basic advice and user cases please PM me. I can definitely point you in the right direction as well as share plants with you that have proven themselves in the field. The farming community are ripe to reap the rewards of solar power & with Diesel pricing very volatile id imagine it's going to accelerate...

I used Cat5 shielded cable to extend my CT cable to 40 meters. No issues.
You can even double up on the wires used.

These are RCCB's(Residual Current Circuit Breakers) they do not have overload protection they are rated for 40A. They will trip if your leakage current exceeds ~ 300mA. You have and earth fault or more that 1 earth fault exceeding 300mA. You need to get a multifunction tester and 1. Check the external earth loop impedance Ze it should be 0.35 ohms for TN-C-S earthing systems and 0.8 ohm for TN-S.
2. Use the multifunctional tester to measure your standing leakage current. By using the scale start with 1/2 and 100ma and work your way up until the RCCB trips. Also ensure you don't have more that 1 earth neutral bond between point of supply and point of consumption or any point beyond point of consumption.

Should you have a short curcuit or overload condition your main or sub thermal magnetic breaker will trip without the RCCB's been affected.
One example of a multifunctional tester.(cheapest)

You’re asking for solid technical advice with evidence and values that’s fair. But you haven’t provided enough system data for anyone to give that level of answer.
Before this can be evaluated properly, please provide: Exact Sunsynk inverter model. Battery brand/model, voltage, and max charge current allowed by BMS
Current PV string configurations (modules per string + Voc/Imp values)
Intended west-roof string layout and amount of panels(kwp)
Whether the Victron will run standalone or via Cerbo S with DVCC
Running Sunsynk MPPTs together with an external Victron MPPT charging the same battery is technically possible but only if charge control authority and current limits are clearly defined. Otherwise you risk voltage conflict and current stacking.

Anyone looking for someone reputable in the Gauteng area, please call Gideon :+27 82 905 0773. I have worked alongside him on quite a few interesting projects. A very good operator.

Mass spammer, it has been dealt with. Many thanks for the reports.

So I finally get to test my minimalist theory in real life.
Because of costs at the time I had decided to install just a 5kW inverter with 2.75kW of panels and 5kWh of battery power, basically sized to carry me through daily load-shedding stints, while remaining grid-tied and rather just trading power with the grid with time-of-use. The goal was to have something more financially justifiable than going off-grid. I reckoned that if a large-scale blackout would come, I'd be able to survive with my household in limp mode - nearly normal - while it gets re-started, and still be better off than most folks. And if Eskom well-and-truly dies, then being off-grid on my own island while the country collapses is a wishful fantasy.
Well that day has now come. You may have caught the news of Nelson Mandela Bay's outage due to a pylon that collapsed from vandalism and poor maintenance. While some parts of the city have got power restored rotationally, I'm in one of the areas that will NOT have any power until infrastructure is re-built. Current promises say there's a 14-day restoration plan, but we'll see. At the same time water supply is affected. My small rainwater tank is sized to carry just around a week's water supply and/or be a diversion tank for the pool. Water gets pumped normally for toilet flushing only, but if the municipal supply goes out I can sanitize and divert water to the rest of the house to cover short periods. Not great pressure on a 0.375kW pump, but better than nothing.
So far so good. As long as there is enough sun, I can cover my baseload through the night, and run all other major loads by day. Food is not likely to spoil in the freezer. Hot water is supplied by thermal solar (flat plate) with an insulating blanket on the tank. A gas cooker & braai skillet are available, but I didn't trust gas availability in a crisis, and so a simple electric two-plate stove and slow-cooker are additional backups. The pool may have to suffer. But as long as the sun shines by day and some rain falls at night, I think we'll be okay.
PE Express
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Just an update. @TaliaB has been discharged. He will take a well deserved break and relax with family on a farm for a few weeks. We wish him a superb few weeks. 🙏🙏🙏

Update from @TaliaB is great news. The blood clot got dissolved a lot quicker than in Mauritius by administering via a drip. He is currently in the high care ward and if all goes well tonight he will be moved to a general ward tomorrow. 🙏🙏🙏

Morning members and friends. It is with sadness that I have to inform you that @TaliaB had another big blood clot in his right lung. He is in the Netcare Christian Barnard Memorial hospital ICU. Let's us be with him in prayers and thoughts
As and when news is received I will share it here
🙏🙏🙏🙏

Sorry for jumping in @Jacques Ester I agree leave existing panels as is on the Solis. Add 8 extra panels as per my very untidy drawing. Remember to include all safety devices( fuses mcb)

Thought I would share some of my experiences and learnings with my quest to be independent of ESKOM.
 
First some stats of the system that i had installed.
2 x Chase Megarevo 8kva inverters
6 x Chase 6.1 Kwh lithium batteries
22 x Trina 550w solar panels
Things to consider in your off-grid journey in South Africa
1.       Inverter KW rating (minimum 12KW)
In sizing my system, I had to keep in mind the primary purpose was to go off grid or get as close to it as possible. My starting point was to replace the ESKOM single phase input which is 220V at a max of 63A giving a theoretical max from ESKOM of 13.8 KW so I wanted my inverters to be rated for at least that, so I decided that my choices were one 16KW or two 8KW inverters I decided for the parallel inverter setup for the redundancy and added flexibility in panel configuration that it offered. I have not been over the 63A usage often but I have, so this was a must for me.
 
2.       How many panels (As many as you can)
There are many calculators and opinions on how many solar panels you should install, and here is my take: Install as many as physically possible. I can’t tell you how many times I regret not getting panels installed on some of the less-than-optimal areas on my roof, Why? Well it seems that most of those opinions and calculators telling you how many panels to install are looking at average sunlight for your location, when going off grid average is not going to cut it, you want worst case, when it is overcast for 3 to 5 days in a row and you start shouting at people for using hot water and your wife is grumpy that the pool is green because you switched off the pool pump, and you looking at the solar app obsessively, when those overcast days roll around you will be glad you put those extra 10 panels in, the additional cost when you do it all at once is far less that calling your installer back to install a few more.
 
3.       Battery KWh (24 hours of usage)
These are the most component of the system and hard to get an idea of how much capacity to install, so I went with the following install enough battery to run your house for 24 hours or as close to that as you can afford, it follows from the solar panel logic that you are not sizing for the average day you are sizing for the worst case. In winter when there is less solar production, my batteries hardly ever go under 50% in summer it is almost never at 100% because of all the cloud about.
 
 
I consider the above the minimum for gong off grid, there are other things to consider when selecting the equipment, you will be using, and the many manufacturers out there offer a variety of features that will interest you, good luck with that choice.
 
Some things I regret,
550w panels instead of 720w the price difference is minimal,
Wrong soalrman dongle, the ones I got do not integrate to Solar assistant.
Not putting on more panels.
The batteries I got seem to only charge at 100A (could be a config issues that I need to look into)
A high voltage setup may have been better for my needs.
The firmware on the inverters is not very good
 
Some summary stats from solar assistant,
the grid usage by the inverters irritated me so I disconnected the inverters from the grid totally in October.
The house hold has 3 adults till May when it increased to 6.

Good for you👊
That is the nature of human beings freeby irresistible, good you are not residing in SA you will have a queue a mile long even batteries for tv's will be on the menu🤣

Speaking of community, I am offering free EV charging already (as described somewhere on the previous pages). Originally it's meant as a help to those with a flat battery, but some drivers even made a habbit of comming and charging their EVs regularly here 😁

Like the saying goes you have your bread buttered on both sides. I believe overpanelling or overclocking is for the rainy days so yes you don't use all the pv capacity during high solar irradiance but you have redundancy on not such perfect days and like you said for winter periods.
Maybe start crypto mining or share with the community 😜

A bit sad thing is, that apart from occasional charging of EVs I have no use for all that power during the summer. Batteries are full way before lunch, water geyser is hot too and therefore the production falls down, just to cover ambient needs of the house:


On the other hand, on the rainy days it's great now. Even if I consume a lot on that particular day, solar is still able to keep-up, power the loads and charge the batteries at the same time:

But what I am really looking for is to see how the new setup will operate during winter. Of course, there still will be a plenty of days with the production nearing zero, but I hope that on the other winter days it might work good-enough.
Let's see!

Hi guys, let me share the recent update of my solar lab!
Originally I had 20kWp of PV on the roof, which was great, but the available space was not utilized optimally. Namely because there was the chimney blocking part of the west roof. Not to mention long shadows it casted each winter. After a couple of years I demolished that chimney (with the big help of my friend Kobra) and built a new fireplace, plus new chimney that freed the space on the roof.
For a shame, width and height of the panels that I had was not ideal, so even with the chimney removed I was still unable to utilize space optimally:

Therefore, I was continuously looking at the PV modules market each year, in order to find new panels that would fit better. As you might know, the manufacturers of PV modules are introducing new models each year, with their dimensions derived from the physical size of the actual solar cells used. And as solar cell makers are gradually able to produce bigger silicone crystals (that the cells are cut from), the PV modules are getting bigger and bigger, even when the number of cells per module stays within the standard amounts (like 72, 144 etc.).
Finally, in 2025 I found PV modules with the size of 1961 x 1134 mm, which was perfect for me as it would fill the roof from side to side almost completely, while still allowing me to put 4 rows of panels on it. So I went for 500Wp double-glass/bifacial, all-black panels and bought 3 palettes of them. Although these panels are bifacial, they are NOT transparent as the space between the cells is of opaque black color. On the other hand, putting bifacial panels on the dark roof makes no sense anyway. The price was excellent (for me) 77USD + VAT per panel. Let's see how these double-glass panels will hold up in the long run.



Firstly, I had and idea to remove all the old panels by myself, but found it being too labor-intensive. Looks like I am getting old, to be honest. So, after removing 18 panels out of 72 (with the help of my friend Vitek) I gave-up and called a third friend of mine, David, who is running a business of building large PV power plants for factories and other commercial customers. David's guys were amazing and after a couple of days, all the old panels were down, aluminium rails repositioned and leveled. Also, the new rails for fourth row of panels were added and finaly there was 86 panels installed.
West roof:
East roof:
Now it's 43 kWp of solar, composed of 6 strings:
East: 14s + 14s +14s
West: 14x +14s +16s
To be continued...

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That’s why all of our wall-mounted LiFePO₄ batteries, from the original 5.1kWh to the 10.6kWh powerhouse, are fully interoperable. Whether you’re upgrading an existing setup, adding capacity, or building a large system with mixed battery sizes, LBSA batteries work together flawlessly.
Built to Mix, Ready to Scale
All LBSA batteries share the same:
51.2V system voltage
Smart BMS communication
LiFePO₄ (Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistry
Wall-mount design
That means you can combine different capacities - 5.1kWh, 5.3kWh, 6.1kWh, and 10.6kWh - in a single system without needing to:
Modify wiring
Update firmware
Change inverter settings
It’s plug-and-play scalability - made for real-world installers, real homes, and growing energy needs.
Why It Matters
For installers and system owners, backward compatibility means you don’t need to wait for a full battery replacement cycle to upgrade. Want to add more capacity to your 5.1kWh system? Just pop in a 5.3kWh and keep going.
It’s future-proof, budget-friendly, and totally stress-free.
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At the moment its feeding the batteries, in parallel with the Sunsynk... soon the Sunsynk will be replaced, though, with Victron Inverters, so this is temporary, but works 100%... previous to the 85A MPPT and the 4 Jinko panels, the batteries would get full only every 2 or 3 weeks this time of year, now, its pretty much a few times per week and the consumption has gone up by a bit as well... :-) around 27 to 30kWh per day...

Hi Guys
I have a friend looking for new homes for around 20 x retired 42U server racks of various makes & ages.
These racks are ideal for mounting batteries in a safe enclosure, if you are interested please message him for details

Item: 42U server racks including side panels and doors, can supply shelves as well
Age: Not 100% sure
Price: R2-R3K each
Payment Method Accepted: CASH/EFT
Warranty: as is
Packaging: No packaging
Condition: Good
Location: Currently Meyerton
Reason: Refurb of server room
Shipping: Can Deliver at a fee
Collection: Bryanston
Call or Whatsapp Ywain on +27824116373 for more info

Item: ~16kWh Bank
Age: Brand New
Price: R41 900
Payment Method Accepted: Any
Warranty: 1 Year Ltd
Packaging: All if required
Condition: New
Location: JHB North
Reason: Just building Batteries
Shipping: Yes
Collection: Preferred
Link: Ask and i will provide info.

PM in interested. We can discuss details and options.