DownTime

SegenSolar is cheaper than Sonop and it's not on special, the only issue you have to register as a re seller or installer before you can buy from them.

UT7 slide lid box with the wooden backing on the inside AC/DC should have them as well as Voltex. Remove the two srews holding the wood onto the box, mount drum busbar insulators onto the wood, put it back and then mount the busbar on the insulator

Then try using WURTH's bond and seal around the hole when the conduit is in, it lasts much longer then normal silicone. I inspected some installations I did 7 years ago with bond and seal and no leaks at all.

Use a 20mm hole saw that you can buy at Builders to drill through the sheet. To seal around the conduit I use Dektite from Kare industrial suppliers, they are on the corner of Vootrekker and Vanguard Dr in Maitland.

Depends on the drugs you are using, apparently they can be pink sometimes

Had an issue on an installation where the ELB would trip one day, reset it, no issues for a week then it would trip every day once or twice and then nothing again for a couple of days. After the electrician ripped the whole DB apart doing tests we still could not find any problems. It would even trip some times when bypassing the inverter to Eskom or visa versa. So I spoke to an electrical engineer and his solution was to install a Schneider ELB as it has a slower de-curve rating to get rid of "ghost tripping" . Did that and problem solved and it never tripped again.

It's a pity about the max PV aray power, only 600w on the 3000va and 3kw on the 5000va

A client of mine extended his garden irrigation pipe onto the roof, put it under the panels and had a small sprayer between each panel. Summer time when his wife cleaned the house and used the vacuum cleaner he would put the water on and it would cool the panels down and produce more power. The panels produced up to 300W more every time he did it.

I agree, panels are flash tested at the factory under perfect conditions (STC value) and that is what it is rated at. But when used on installations there are a lot of factors that can influence the production of the panels

I have a 2 Tb external hard drive that I link to my laptop and then to the tv to watch movies and stuff. My "hit the room like a hurricane" 2 year old boy bumped the laptop off of the floating shelf under the tv. I was thinking of using something else to prevent this from happening again and had a look at multi media players and the Raspberry Pi. What will be the best Pi to use as I see there is a Pi2, Pi3, A+, B+ model etc and do I need to load anything like KODI onto it to be able to watch movies? Thanks

As far as I know even if you do not want to feed power back to the grid using a grid limiter, if the inverter does not have a NRS certificate they do not accept it. When you install a system you have to register the system with the CoCT, same with Stellenbosch Municipality and Drakenstein Municiplality. If you do not want to feed into the grid then you register the system for self consumption. You have to fill in the application form and with that you need to send the electrical CoC and PR. Eng certificate/letter for the installation as well as a line diagram of the installation and the certificate for the inverter where it states that it is NRS compliant. So even if you put a grid limiter on an inverter and the inverter certificate has all the European and whatelse compliant standards on it, if it does not show NRS they don't see it as being save. You can take a chance and install the system but if they notice your system is not registered they send a letter stating that you need to register the system and if you don't do it within a month, they will disconnect you from the grid.

CoCT do not test the inverters they need to be sent to a testing facility like TUV Rheinland or Bureau Veritas to be certified for NRS which cost quite a bit of money if you are a local manufacturer. I know MLT Inverters had a professor from Stellenbosch university do the testing on their inverters for the NRS, but they had to go through a lot of red tape before it was allowed.

Some auto electricians will do it for you and also try Afrox, if they have the cable and lugs they will do it.

The last conversation I had with the City of Cape Town which was 2 months ago, I was told that any inverter that is connected to the grid, even if it does not feed back in to the grid must be NRS certified and the installation must be registered. I'm not sure about other areas in S.A

@Don a 3pole 230v 20A contactor and you can get it at most electrical shops they are between R300 - R400, the mini contactor is about the size of a 3phase 60A main breaker

@Don your idea will work, depending on how the DB circuits are wired there might be a speed bump or two. Check which other appliances work on the same plug circuit, usually the plugs for the microwave, washing machine and tumble dryer are all on the same circuit as the fridge/freezer (as well as toaster and kettle). If you want to cut the power to those appliances you will also lose power to the fridge/freezer unless you install a separate plug circuit for it.

If you don't want to split the DB you can always install an external contactor with the heavy loads connected to it and Eskom power connected to the coil. When there is no Eskom power the contactor opens and all the heavy loads disconnect and the batteries last longer. This works well when you have excess generation from the PV panels and set the pool pump to run during that time. The pool pump will not drain the batteries if you are not at home to switch it off during a power failure.

It can be done but it is not recommended, first check the current rating of the panels. Connecting panels in series that are not the same, the lower current rated panel will drag the performance of the system down. So if the rated current of the 235w panel is 8A and the 260w is 8.5A, the whole string will only supply 8A,

I have done installations where the systems work 100% until winter starts. In some areas of CPT for example Camps Bay, Rondebosch, Constantia and Oranjezicht the grid voltage tends to drop due to heavy loads from underfloor heating and heaters being used. I have seen the voltage drop as low as 195v, with some very upset clients because their systems aren't working. Some suppliers will help with adjusting the tolerance on the inverter to accept a lower grid voltage before shutting down, but then the inverter is not NRS compliant anymore. I have had some clients where their electronic appliances got damaged due to high voltage and they where blaming the inverter. On two occasions we found that the municipality did maintenance on the sub station and used higher tappings on the transformer, pushing the grid voltage up to 260v. Another problem was with a faulty/floating neutral in the substation. When testing between Live and Neutral the voltage was as high as 302v.

Yes you can,all you need is a hot water pipe/feed from your geyser to the dishwasher, I have seen it been done at a couple of houses. The element in the dishwasher won't need to warm the water as much or at all, so you will save electricity. You can even do it on the washing machine if you want to do a warm wash.

I know of one installer that has tested one of these inverters on an installations and he seemed quite impressed with it. According to him the inverter does not need batteries and can operate from solar only and a 48v battery bank can be connected to it as well. It operates very similar to the Infiny inverter and it seems they are in the process of getting the NRS certification..

Once did an installation for a client in Hermanus with a Landis+Gyr cash power prepay meter with the control box outside and the keypad/ display inside the house which plugs into a plug circuit. The meter display went into an error mode and would reset about three times and then just stay in error mode. The client still had Eskom power but could not load any units on his meter if needed. As all the plug circuits were connected to the inverter it seems the inverter caused communication interference in the line between the keypad and main controller causing the error. So I installed a separate Eskom plug circuit next to the DB and plugged the display in and the issue was solved.

What meter did they replace your old one with? Some Conlog pre-pay meters are very sensitive for any export and will trip and reset itself after a couple of minutes, other meters will "see" the export as power being used and then you use more units. It can be quite a headache as some of the grid limiters that can be installed on the SMA, Socomec and Solar Edge Grid Tie Inverters can take up to 3 seconds to react, which causes the meter to trip.

If you have a look at Drakenstein Municipality (Paarl, Franchhoek) and Stellenbosch municipality's SSEG application forms and rules they are very similar to CoCT. Some just add extra rules and their own tariffs. One of the rules that Stellenbosch municipality requires is that a fireman's switch be installed on the PV system with notice signs. The head of the Fire station needs to do a site visit once everything is done and then notes it down in their records. Neither of the other two municipality's state anything regarding a fireman's switch.

I can get you one for R2120.00 ex vat, I will have to check with my suppliers if they have stock on Monday as they are closed.