Wahki

@Haugen have you made any progress on the conversion? A year later fuel prices in South Africa are again becoming a kicker and I'm sure quite a few tinkerers will be looking at doing an EV conversion on an old "jalopy" (rust bucket for the States).

Thanks hoohloc, appreciate the suggestion. I hear you on this point, and I have come to the same conclusion... However, our living situation has changed and so we are forced to go off-grid, so it's more of a do or die situation for us. In our case we have had to hitch the cart before the horse, and are now slowly getting the horse out to the front:-) I am still learning and so find this kind of information very helpful. Being situated where we are it has been quite a challenge to get relevant information from suppliers/installers, so I have had to educate myself in order to give a supplier/installer an idea of what our needs are.

Thank you for this Sarel! I think the mistake that most make (preaching to myself here) is that we look at our current Eishkom consumption and measure that against what a "barebones" system can provide daily, but we don't take into account when that power is actually consumed...and this is where we really need to sit down and ask those tough questions that you started this discussion topic with. What we've done is to measure our energy consumption from around 6pm-7am (roughly autumn time closer to winter) and then the overall daily consumption, this helps to give an idea of what the "night-time" usage is which will (almost) dictate how much battery capacity (plus about 30% up from that) one needs in order to function when the sun is down (would you say this is a good way to go, for the non-pro?). And again, lifestyle plays a key role here...are you willing to change habits to accommodate your new "barebones" system, or do you want your system to accommodate your current lifestyle, I think this is critical.

Hi Wentzel, how are those batteries holding up? I'm hunting for another battery, bought mine from Manhattan Computer Solutions but didn't have enough at the time for a second battery, and now I can't find any stock of it (not even internationally). But I'd really like to know what your overall experience has been with it so far...

Hi, I would like to know if our energy consumption of between 5-7kWh is realistic and if so, then a barebones system should be able to take us off-grid? To give some perspective we spent R250.00/month at a rate of R1.68/kWh (VAT incl.) so we would have a little over 100 units per month. We have made some extreme lifestyle changes: no geyser (boil pots of water on gas or fire), use gas and braai for cooking, old-school dishwashing (i.e. no dishwasher), no AC (a scorcher in the Karoo). But we still have wifi router running 24/7, both PC and TV on for at least 8hrs per day (kids are homeschooled), fridge/freezer running 24/7.

So have you bit the bullet yet and made the installation? I'm new to the forums and to solar. I am currently in an off grid situation where I have to lug a battery to work every couple of day to get it charged, lights are some of these inexpensive solar lights packages from Takealot ( not sure if name dropping is allowed), so I'm really interested to know how this setup works for you! I can't seem to wrap my head around some of the consumption figures that I see many talk about as from my experience our family of 5 on average went through 6-7kWh per day (we spent about R250.00 per month at a charge of R1.68 if that makes sense) with some days being less than that. Obviously we didn't run a geyser and all cooking was on gas, but we occasionally used the electric oven for baking and grilling.