RichardZA

Thanks all appreciate the insights. I've now found half my problem - the CT has not being working correctly - I noticed when my meter carried on ticking upwards when it shouldn't be. So basically my solar has not been supplying all my electricity while there has been abundant solar. The installer says it's because it's more than 25m away from the inverter. We're going to try make a plan to get the CT working via a lan cable which apparently has better results.

@De0n19 what has your experience been in winter (I assume you are in same Gauteng region as me?) - just so I have the data for sizing any additional batteries if at all. What does your production look like mid summer vs mid winter? I do intend using electric heaters during the day in winter for work stations and at night we'll light the fire!

I would say I have a NE (12) / NW (6) configuration. Production at 7am is 0.4kw - NE gets killed early morning by some trees that prevent early morning sun - I may have to do some trimming . Today at about 9.30am it will ramp up and by 12pm it will be producing so much power the inverter will clip it at 8.99kW (see second screenshot) How do you use 55kW. My graph is tragic, it's like whenever it's the complete worst time to use electricity, we use it and when it's the best time, the family does not use it. And of course I've got the latest energy efficient products and actually don't want to use electricity, but my municipality wants to make it hard and expensive to sell back to them (I really don't mind a low rate, but to jump through 10 hoops to do it is too much.) I've attached my graph from yesterday and the day before. I may run 5 heaters in the garage today to actually know my system capacity.

@Sc00bsgoing to your earlier point. Just checking a couple of things, because I like your oversizing idea - these panels are very cheap comparable to the rest of the system. I'm currently on 9720W. Are you saying going to 12kW won't hurt my inverter on a super sunny day? And that the extra e.g 2kW for maybe R15,000 is the best long term spend (25 year life) and gives me more oomph during overcast weather? And then just let go of the fact that sunny days there is a lot of unused power.

Thanks for the advice I'm on City Power and will definitely investigate - since I intend 80% of my electricity to come from solar, the slightly more expensive prepaid tariff is not an issue. It looks like they will be charging a prepaid network fee of R200 per month soon.

Thanks for the advice everyone. This week is teaching me a lesson! But I am impressed even in cloudy overcast conditions solar does help take the "edge" off and I'm VERY glad I went for some more panels. No I'm not should I be? Network charge currently is R498 excl and a Service Charge of R169 I'm considering some more batteries, but the payback feels very long! I'm still hunting down why I have a base load of 1kw during the night, it seems too high - my guess is a couple of really old fridges are hurting me. If I can get it to 0.5kw I won't have to buy batteries - new A+++ fridges may be a better investment than batteries.

Thanks for the comments and putting me mind at ease that I haven't overcapitalised here My neighbour has a borehole and I have the solar... I can feel a trade exchange coming on.

Hi all Thought I’d introduce myself and take you through my current experience with solar. We have moved into a new house and the family is big - 8 people and the electricity bill was getting completely out of control - in winter we were doing in excess of 80kW per day. I live in Johannesburg and City Power’s tiered electricity costs hurt bigger households. Borrowed money out of the mortgage at 7% interest and figure I can make the money back with interest. I didn’t do enough analysis up front, but just decided to go with 8kW Deye inverter 18 x 540W JA Solar = 9720W 3 x 4.8kW LifePO4 (80% DOD) The whole household and two cottage are on 4(!) solar EVT geysers. I bought these first and then got more ambitious. In retrospect, I’m wondering whether they I needed them with proper timing (not running all at same time) - maybe I could have got away with just using the solar panels to heat the water (see load graphs later). We have LEDs and gas stove. Bought the whole set up from SolarAdvice and their installers did a great job, no complaints. They flicked the switch on on Monday. I think my night time load is a problem because we don’t get through the night - mostly because the household still thinks cooking is for night time. We have a fish pond pump that may be an issue. It’s a bit desperate to see all the power after 12pm going to waste because COJ doesn’t want our electricity or won’t pay for it. And I can’t see it on the graph as it has nowhere to go, so I don’t know the potential... Natural answer is to spend more money on batteries. Also some lifestyle changes required. I’m setting the battery to discharge to 25% leaving 5% for early morning load shedding. My questions Have I sized the solar too large? It made sense to me to max out the inverter. How bad is winter in Johannesburg (% difference in solar production in your actual experience)? Were the solar geysers a waste of money? I feel I should have got these second and not first as everyone says... I see geysers as batteries (rather poor performing) as they store energy for later use I’m thinking of allowing the excess solar power I have during the day to contribute to the heating of water, to guarantee max temp at sunset. Anyone doing this? What is the current situation with grid tied in Johannesburg with City Power. Does it exist? Anyone done it and is it worth it? What should I do with this extra electricity from 12pm-5pm? Bitcoin mining? I will attempt to answer these questions over time on this thread, but appreciate any input. Typical sunny day in JHB