Johandup

As well as pipe diameter and material plse

Hi Johan, What is your current charging rate and what is the max your inverter can do? Note that your current fuses etc probably covers only two. So if you combine it they will need upgrades.

Show us pump graphs and then we can have a sensible talk. Pumps are not about horsepower. Why are you pumping from the river?

Just the minister of non-energy and his brother in law Patrick who is also the president's swaer. And the infamous Bossassa Watson. For some anyway. Lol The question is who decided on the high IPP tariffs. They must come to explain. The word #smart must not be mentioned in a sa context. They battle with smart meters in the first world countries. Let's keep to candle technology. Oh, and don't hold your breath on the new Guvament solar rules. Nersa is one confused organisation. The Aintcee knows sh$t is coming with eishkom.....

I hear that our minister of (non) energy said they are going to encourage people to go solar. Confusing times....

Just keep the receipts. You'll need it for the warranties...

@Moe Joe I think a 3kw inverter is adequate for small loads. Look in the forum for posts on db's with 3P power supply.

Had motion light sensors at my workplace as part of an energy saving drive. it was (retired now) very irritating when working on a computer and the lights would switch off. But it was funny to see the people waving their hands to switch it back on.

Solar power is expensive. The first step is to measure the startup and running amps of all the machines you intend running. Then you can do the sums and decide on whether you want all of it to run at the same time. It is difficult to manage power consumption if you don’t do it personally. You can bargain on getting 90% (debatable) of your installed panel wattage if everything is in your favour i.e. no clouds, rain and sun is shining. This is possible from 09h00 to 15h00 if you live on the Highveld. The limiting factor for your proposal is the number of solar panels you want to install. It is more cost efficient to first change your equipment to energy efficient models. You don’t mention the big consumption items like the stove and geyser.

Had the same story. Somehow one misses that the indicator lights are off... I am a “bit” more observant now. 🙂

Interesting views. In my case the cfl globes did not last. I replaced the last, which I installed when I switched all over to leds, last week. So far not one of the leds have failed - after more than three years. And they were made in China 😂 Running on an inverter might make a difference to smooth the supply. Of more interest is that metering based on a ct is regarded as accurate. But these systems work out at $500 or more. I think that installing kwh meters on the mains income supply as well as the inverter outgoing side is the way to go. At least these meters are still affordable. Then simple record keeping will tell you what's going on. All measurements must be tested in some way to see how accurate the readings are. We tend to accept readings at face value. Even though we've learned to check a car speedometer against a GPS.

Whilst reading up on the solar metering subject accuracy came up many times. This affected people reselling power back to their utilities. A lot of posts on this topic are everywhere. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170303180139.htm

R2.13 before the coming July increase on prepaid.

I came across this and thought some people will be interested. There is a huge lot of installations on boats. What I found interesting is the battery with a built-in communication. This is a state of the art a-z Victron installation. https://sailbits.com/installing-and-using-a-victron-lifepo4-energy-system/

@Jaco de Jongh which solar panels (and how many) did you install with your infinisolar inverter?

@divhy I am watering a big garden, with 2x5000l tanks and I easily empty it in a few hours. When the borehole was done solar was not on my radar 🙂 I could have done things differently if it was. Don’t you have municipal power? If you do you can do things differently. A pump that can last is top of my list. The Franklin start up with two capacitors and it gives me 3 bar on top. It has probably pumped more than 3 mill liter by now in going 4 years. My house pump shows I have used 850 kl in 3 years. And we are two people in the house. If the pump needs replacing I will definitely scale down to a smaller one. But there is always a wear and tear factor to consider for a pump that has to run longer. I am a fan of Franklin (at a premium) now. I use a Dab inverter booster pump to feed the house. Although it is a 1.6kw (I think) it only runs at 350w when it is on. But is has become very very expensive lately.

Is your AXPERT a hybrid inverter? Then it will import what it needs. You need a pump with a 80m head to do the pumping. Refer to the pump graphs. I don’t think a <1.5kw pump will give this head. A smaller pump also takes forever to fill a tank up so it will drain your batteries. My pump takes some 30 mins to fill a 5000l tank - but I am fortunate to have a very strong borehole. It is no use to have a big pump that stops and starts because the incoming water is weak. I have a 2.2kw Franklin pump with a 90m head for a 65m deep borehole. It starts up at 34 a and runs at 15a. On my 4kw inverter it then shows a load of 98%. I know my 9.6kwh Pylontech lithium batteries can handle the startup as it is for some seconds only. However, I switch back to municipal supply when I use the borehole pump.

Created for overseas markets where you can sell your electricity back to your supplier. And can make a profit out of it, off course. Then you use the supplier as your backup battery when the sun is down. Which is not true for this country.... But is up to each person to make up their minds where they want to spend their money.

Hi @GVC Has he done any work for you? Please pm me with details. Thanks

I am looking at completing my solar installation by getting 20 x280w Artsolar panels installed up to the infinisolar super 4k. This must include installation, all the cables, combiner box complete and all alu frames on a corrugated iron roof. Also all the setup changes required in the Infini setup. I had a back fusion so this cannot be done by me. Any recommended installers in the Witbank area please.

Before stripping test each and every circuit by switching on / off at the db. Make a diagram of the complete house circuits (plugs, lights, stove, geyser etc). I numbered all the db circuit breakers on this diagram. When you redo the wiring this will become your go to information. Mark them as you test them by switching on and off. I plugged a desk amp into the plugs. Switch all the lights on as they share circuits. Once you start stripping mark all the wires - I did it with heat sink tubes which you can write on with a permanent marker. Where you find more than one wire in a connection you need to test it again. Problems raise their head when plugs etc share a neutral. This is what would make the inverter trip. Don’t expect to be successful the first time. This is a job best left for an early Saturday.

R47,4 billion over the last ten years. I wonder by how much this contributed to higher oil prices..... This was the first estimate for one new power station - before they screwed it up. On the coal mines they would not approve R0,5 billion for mines expansion projects to keep power stations supplied with coal for years. But they would steal R30 billion in a year. We are well on our way to becoming just another African nation......

Nope, you will need it when you need to isolate the 3 phase supply. My view is you cannot have too many isolators - I was shocked because of this only last week. Not pleasant. 😞 Btw, it is not nice working on a cluttered db. My ideal one is one that pivots from the one side and also feeds all the cables in from the one side. Redoing mine was back breaking. Did it myself.

In the case of a hybrid inverter, yes.

Hi, Is the data free? How do you access it?