This_isKat

I have a 200litre solar geyser since 2014. Absolutely have to boost the temperature in winter to the minimum 50degrees which is good enough for hot water. Of the top of my rocker, am thinking it may be a better idea/option to have a shower installed, instead of a bath tub, this would mean the shower head would have to be one which allows a fair level of throttling of the amount of water even if the lever was a maximum to enable the saving of water and also the walls and ceiling from discolouration, if the bathroom doesn't have an extractor fan, which I have seen in many a hotel in my travels. I'm worried with the current heat waves being experienced in my part of the world that the rubbers on the solar geyser may not last too long. Now in the bath I put 1 part hot water to about 20parts cold lately. It may be a good idea to have your solar geyser be connected to Eskom/Grid via a switch such as mine is for winter times rather than the non-essential side of the inverter and also to reduce the size of the water heater so as to make a saving.
Off my rocker, have also seen the use of gas water heaters being quite effective but this is more so in UK and USA, not sure if in Africa anyone has had these and how reliable and robust they are over the course of time. No the Brand is not on or of PowerForum... just my humorous thought😀, but something of this sort with a 5-9kg Gas tank just outside the bathroom may work... for autonomy from the grid/Eskom, me thinks. This would work both in summer and winter or combined with a solar geyser.
@This_isKat...explore gas as well.

Hi All,
Just as an update, as of yesterday (27 June 2022), my system is fully up and running. Which is perfect timing given the threat of stage 6 loadshedding announced in the morning.  I ended up going for: (i) 1 x  Sunsynk 8KW inverter; (ii) 2 x Hubble 5.5 kWh batteries; and (iii) 12 x Jinko 545W panels. 6 panels are north facing and the other 6 panels are facing west.
I followed the recommended advice and bought a meter to get a sense of my usage, the meter only worked on plugged electronics but based on the data, the usage from plugged electronics was not significant. My geyser and oven were definitely the biggest contributors towards my electricity usage. 
I ended up going for a different installer. His quote was considerable better than everyone else that I spoke to and met with (including the installers that I mentioned above). It took some time to get the installation started because I wanted to be comfortable (as a noob) that I have researched everything that I needed to - also there were stock shortages on the Hubble batteries.
The installer put everything on essential except the geyser and oven. The geyser and oven are on non-essential but they get powered from excess solar during the day and at night they draw from the grid. The installer also included a geyser timer for free and I am now able to monitor usage from my geyser on an app (CBI). What's concerning is that the geyser was on from 4am until 6am and then again from 9am until 10am, and as at 11am, the geyser has already used 13kWh. My geyser is a 150 litre geyser but I suspect (and according to the app) that the element is a 4kw.
Other than the issue with the geyser element (which I will sort out in the coming days by replacing the current element with a 2kw element), I am happy with the installation.
Thank you all for your valuable insights - I really appreciate it!

Thank you all - I really appreciate your contributions! I am dropping the solar geyser conversion. I got a revised quote which includes an 8KW Sunsynk, 2 x 5.12KW lithium battery and 10 x 545w Canadian / JA Solar Panels for around R149,000. For the sake of completeness, I will shop around for two comparative quotes. 
I will pull the trigger on the solar installation once I have better sense of what my usage looks like.