Johandup

People in the USA have been rebuilding cars to battery power for ages. So no, Tesla was not the first. And they have been doing it very successfull.
Much more reliable than fuel cars. There was a recent report where Toyota replaced an old battery pack for free.
And services will be short hours for brakes etc.
Any garage owner should look long term and ensure he has access to enough electrical power for conversion to chargers in future. Somehow I don’t see the South Africans recharging cars at charging stations on the highways in the middle of nowhere. Safety will remain a big concern.
At a point in time mankind will have to choose between fuel for aviation or motoring. But I will be a goner by then. Not my problem lol.

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

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/

With an 80 meter head using a Vega pump setup, you can bring out between 1800 and 2100 liter per hour with a 0.75 kw motor. This will fill up an 5000 liter tank in 2.5 hours max and the 0.75k will be much kinder on your solar setup than a 1.5kw pump, but the choice remains yours.. 
Before I started using solar i always wanted the biggest motor for everything, the one that could get the job done the quickest, now I always look for the smallest motor that can do the jod, even if it has to run longer, overall its better for my system.. 

You can buy 10mm per meter. Smaller only in 100m rolls in my town.

There are a few systems in South Africa. The latest one unfortunately not good due to (in)famous Eskom expertise.
Eskom, and South Africa, has two pumped storage schemes, both operated in conjunction with the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry as part of water transfer schemes. Palmiet Pumped Storage Scheme in the Western Cape can be used to pump additional water from the Palmiet River via the Rockview Dam to the Steenbras Dam to supplement the Cape Town water supply. Drakensberg Pumped Storage Scheme in the KwaZulu Natal Drakensberg is able to transfer 20m3 of water per second from the Kilburn Dam to the Sterkfontein Dam from where it flows into the Vaal River to augment water supply to Gauteng.
 

had a look at the Atlantis open cycle turbine power plant today. There was no action except that I almost got shot. An Eskom guy was not happy that I was filming. Anyway after some explaining he calmed down and was quite friendly. He told me that today the grid is stable and there is no need to produce power. There is a lot of construction work going on there at the moment.  Lots of new Siemens equipment all over. He confirmed, that they are substantially increasing the power generating capacity.   
 
20190503_124155[1]_x264_001.mp4

i am sure the secretariat of the ruling politbureau has made it VERY clear to cp that as he is now in power [natural or any other gas?] the wheels of those units better keep spinning until 24:00 on 8 may - they will concoct some story as to how things will be sorted out from then onwards if they are still in charge, if they are not in charge, the blame card will be played again - i.e. what is new under the african skies?

I have 4 off the 2.4kw units and they charge very quickly at 49a from a 4kw Infinisolar plus.
They do tend to drop quickly from 52v to 48.3v where they stay.
With hindsight the charging rate should have been set at 24a. I use mine as a backup with charging from the mains or a generator.
I've never succeeded in emptying them up to the point where  a bms shutdown occurred. Even with a 4 day no power once. I would only top them up now and then with the gennie.

I  need to order new mcb’s to replace faulty AcDc circuit breakers.
Imagine my surprise to note the price has increased from R58 to R93 per item from Livecopper in a years time. On what could they base increases like this?
And comparing items ordered last year April this seems to be a general trend.
So I’ll be voting with my feet - looking for another supplier now....

I'll see @plonkster, and raise it a step further.
It is a misconception that all panels to an MPPT have to be the same pitch and direction.
Only the the panels in a string should be like that, but an MPPT can have multiple strings.
It is not long in your solar journey before you'll conclude its better to have power throughout the day than a glut of unusable power at noon.
So I'd advise not only over-paneling, but over-paneling in the morning and over-paneling in the afternoon.
So some strings are picking up as others are dropping off, and at noon they're both doing half/half.
So yes, there can be quite a bit of headroom if you do it right.
By the way, the panels in the morning are colder than the panels in the afternoon, and warmer panels are less productive.

Jaco, just ask around. The people who do your town water reticulation should be able to help.
Have it tested for minerals as well as contamination. Should be about R1000 for both. Iron problems raise its ugly head much later. Even if it is inside the parameter I recommend hat you put a filter in place. My gas geyser bombed out because of this.
And a 1 micron filter system is a must. There is a place in Modderfontein close to Sandton where the prices are very reasonable.
How deep is your borehole?
Lots of info in the forum on this topic.

in order to discharge the batteries further you would have to change the DOD setting of the inverter. Not a good situation to be in sitting in the dark with wife and kids screaming 😱. That is why i have changed the inverter settings during the recent stage 4 load shedding disaster to "back up". In this mode the inverter keeps the batteries always at 100%

Bit more complicated than this. 
The capital required to expand the mines was stopped in 2015 by Molefe. 
Main reason why Anglo sold All their power station mines. 

Bit more complicated than this. 
The capital required to expand the mines was stopped in 2015 by Molefe. 
Main reason why Anglo sold All their power station mines. 

Which I still have - now next to the inverter side main isolator.

My father once explained to me, in terms of tractors, how you decide what to buy. I may not remember the exact numbers, and these have surely changed in recent years, but let me see if I can retell it: A Massey Ferguson is 10 000 hour tractor. A John Deere is a 15 000 hour tractor. You pay a lot more for the latter compared to the former. Depending on your application, you should buy the red tractor.
Similarly, I put an Axpert around the 5-year mark (I know there are a few people here going into year 6 now, this is just a round estimate). I put Victron inverters around the 10-15 year mark.
Edit: One of the tractors I learned to drive on.

Hi Jaco,
I will not buy a AC/DC product. In total we've had five of their  rcds faulty.
I've also had a faulty brand new Hager rcd.
I have a earth leakage tester which I use for determining the ma at which a rcd trips and I have yet to see one that meets its specs.
It would be interesting if you could measure the ma at which this one trips - also if it is a fast or slow tripping one.
When I rebuild my boxes I bought the expensive rcds - the one looking after the high amp side was going for around R1200.
I am having nuisance earth leakage trips now which is indicating a fault on my outside pumps circuit with the current wet weather. This box was done by qualified town sparkies but needs to be redone due to the poor installation quality. But I am laid up because I had a back fusion operation and my wife was shown how to reset it until I can attend to it. 
I rather measure the stray current going to earth than the live load.

Hi,
Here's a little test on my side - I discharged my two Pylon US2000B batteries to about 48% SOC, and then put them on charge.  My charger set to a max on 25A (12.5A per battery) and then a max voltage of 51.5v,  There are 15 cells in the battery, so 51.5 v is 3.433v per cell.
The charger was programmed to turn off once the charge current had been <1A for 30 minutes if I remember right.
It came out like so:

The battery ended up charged to about 91% SOC.  As you can see when the charger went off the voltage dropped to about 49.9v, but the state of charge still around 90%.
The batteries each reporting about 2275Wh stored - actually 100% SOC on these batteries is a bit more than 2400Wh.
At this point there is no problem with the cell balance but it might change over time of course.
Elbow
 
 
 

Be very afraid of desperate people.
And I am referring to the current guvament in all their different forms (disguises).
They will do EVERYTHING in (legal or not untill they are challenged right up to the highest court) to retain control of purse strings. They are desperate for every cent (and we know why).
There is already a public resistance to transfer money from our pockets to theirs. It is public knowledge. We hold the power, at least till the exchange rate hits new highs.
Much of what is asked for is totally not relevant for running the country.
I would insist that my municipal representative start voting against proposals like this. There is this perception in our country that political representatives do not work for us.
Its time to prove them wrong....
Etolls is a good example of public power.

Cape Town doesn't have FIT. Technically nobody is allowed to do that, because legislation says only Eskom can buy form you. What Cape Town will do is rebate you on your consumption, and you must remain a net-consumer as well. You could probably see the rebate as a kind of feed-in tariff if you want to. Cape Town credits you 84.95c for each kwh you feed in. But remember that you pay a grid connection fee of R14.21/day, as opposed to around R150/month on the home tariff and nothing on Domestic tariff (I suspect Cape Town will eventually migrate more or even all people to Home tariff though).
So even though they have a tariff of some kind, it might not be worth it. You have to "sell" them a good 350kwh to cover the extra connection fee, and since you must remain a net consumer that means you must buy at least 350kwh from them too. So you will have to do the math, but to me it seems far better to use your own electricity as far as possible to remain out of the >=600kwh bracket, in that way you essentially get R2.56 (in savings) for each kwh you generate :-)

[Joburg] In order to access the piddly feed in tariff of 42.79c/kWh you will need to jump through various hoops of diminishing diameter in order to register as SSEG, and then you will be forced to migrate to Time Of Use metering - with very high monthly fixed cost of R400-R500/m before any power consumed, and very high power costs when you need it and low power costs when you dont need it.
It is just not worth it, which is by design by City Power because they dont want high earners (reliable payers) installing PV systems, they need the money for cross subsidies.
COJ Tariff - TOU.pdf
Embedded Generation Tariff.pdf

Compared to Oz, SA is vehemently anti-solar.
This is fairly obvious from the tariff's.  So, most people are going under the radar, and feeding back with older meters that roll backwards. 
Cape Town (probably the only muni which is run semi decently) has finally cottoned onto this and is mandating everyone register their solar or get fined, even offgrid people like me.

They actually don't need to do that, what they need to do is install pre-paid meters everywhere like they were supposed to in 2007, as mandated by NERSA.
 
Here there is no carrot  /stick, its just a stick.
 
Eskom is threatening to raise prices 15% yearly for the next 3 years; we're already at the point where storage + solar is cheaper than grid, so that may just be the tipping point.
The paying customers are gatvol of getting charged while the majority don't pay. Eskom hasn't really planned for this either.  Death spiral is coming whether they like it or not.
 
I could write pages and pages about this (I have done on other forums like mybb), but suffice to say, the future isn't bright.  No maintenance, no money for maintenance, a far too large inefficient labour force thats overpaid at Eksom, and a (paying) customer base thats rapidly emigrating or going offgrid.  The World Bank should be fucking shot too for loaning a questionable amount of money for two monstrous coal stations in a region that has insufficient water.  Corruption all the way...
 
 

You Aussies are really onto a good thing😄. Those who had the foresight to capitalize on incentivised solar feed-in contracts are reaping a fine reward.
As the cost of grid-tied PV has reduced well into the space of “no-brained” economic viability, the need (and the appetite) for incentivised or even attractive FITs has evaporated.  On the contrary, Munics and Utilities are without answers to the Utility Death Spiral, and rooftop solar is a massive contributor to this.  For those looking to invest in residential solar, my advice is to build a solution around optimized self-consumption.

My system is set up as a backup system without solar panels.
The inverter is in use all the time but is basically wired to supply pure sine-wave power to my low amp side, that includes the normal appliances i.e. tv, computers, fridges, alarm, lights, borehole pumps etc. As it is a hybrid inverter I can leave it alone to do all the switching on auto. The generator can also supply 230V to it to charge the batteries.
The batteries are only utilised when there is no municipal power for whatever reason. I would also disconnect the main supply when there is a big elctrical storm.