cbrunsdon

FYI: For CoCT it is now required for all solar installations to use an Installation Electrician. My installer had to send one out last week to get my application up to scratch (again) - the longer the City takes to finalise, nine months now, the more red-tape my installer has to go through. Oh, this is all at my installers expense, not mine. I've a growing mini filing cabinet next to my inverter with all the documents.

Interested as I don't find any information to back this up. The 16kW inverter can be configured to limit export, or zero it. I'm only aware of the approval list and stricter enforcement of installation requirements - a good thing. You can always apply for a 16kW and then see what happens. You need to get preapproval anyway.

In Somerset West, my generator for our business said that it was 120 hours from Easter 2019 till December 2022 - then it went totally pear shape after that. I'm guessing we had another 120 hours by Easter - we only used the generator as needed to reduce insane fuel bill, adding only 60 hours. No idea since then as we went solar after Easter.

CoCT have current and historic aerial photos : https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/EGISViewer/ With little effort, machine learning imagery tools (eg Computer Vision) can easily extract the delta on a property to confidently pick out unauthorised panel installations. Example from a neighbour: March, 2021 vs Jan, 2020.

Last month I opted to add a second battery to take my setup from 5kw to 10kw, connected to 8KVA Deye. I set the 6am SOC to 40% from 60% and this has increased my savings that my ROI is capped at 5 years. Our SOC was high as we run a small business from the property and need to make sure we have enough power in mornings. Not only are we no longer tripping our inverter, but we noticed a massive improvement in stability - my dimmer switch no longer causes flickering during load shedding, I no longer see dips when the fridge switches on and the inverter draws from the batteries quicker when I experience clipping on the panels.

Update: Installed second BX51100 last week as prices where insane back in April (R30K vs R22K). For a hair salon my initial setup weathered the Cape winter load-shedding storm rather well with some nuisance shutdown when we exceeded available capacity. With enough data on-hand, I was able to determined that in the previous three months that we only needed to add another BX51100 (0,5C). Now with enough output for my wife to iron at night and me not trip the power when I make coffee, we are having a normal life. The second battery allows us to be more aggressive with our power draw from the battery at night we are seeing some big savings in Eskom power usage. Under 7 units a day with a battery discharge of 7 units. Considering replacing my petrol generator with a diesel to wire into the inverter as we had a 24 hour outage during middle of winter, running our battery flat.

Setup: Solar + 8KVa Deye Inverter and 2 x Dyness BX51100 Batteries Last week I installed my second Dyness BX51100 and immediately noticed the evening during load shedding that the power seemed more stable, especially our LED dimmer lights. I also noticed that when one of my many fridges starts that the light dip is now no different to when we have Eskom power, previously it was very noticeable. Our draw has always been under 80% of the single battery (0,5C 5,12KWh) and now it is 40% of the two combined. I'm also noticing less "dipping" into Eskom grid power during the day when there is clipping on my panels. Is it possible that the improved stability is from a lower draw of the combined battery pack.

I did a needs analysis based on factual information and assumptions. As there was urgency to give our business uninterrupted power, I accepted a margin of error in my assumptions when doing the installation. These were: * I would have acceptable solar production on bad Cape Winter days. I did not realise how off I was on this one. * I used the bulk of my power during the day, and virtually nothing at night. I was very wrong about this one. * We could use all the battery power at night. This one got blown out of the water when we sat without power for 24 hours on an overcast day. We started the workday with a flat battery. Was the longest I've ever run my petrol generator for the business, think it was around 10 hours as it was a very busy day. * We would not change our usage pattern as cooked dinner during the day. This changed as having uninterrupted power during the day resulted in us being busier with work. The business has also grown, which requires us to add more battery storage to help when the grid is down and we need to pull a higher load. This should also help cover nighttime usage without affecting availability in the morning.

My 8kv Deye adds 2kwh to my daily usage. I also found our electricity increased because we are no longer restricted by Eskom outages. In our case we shifted load off the generator back onto Eskom and never realised how hard the generator was working (we run a business from home). We also need a full battery by 8am and this often charges at night, adding more units used. Our nighttime usage is higher than anticipated and only seeing it now that we can monitor it. Solar is only supplying 30% of my usage.

As per title, what is the effort to do this? The geyser with a collector, which is 7 years old, has stopped heating up and we have not replaced the glycol. We had extreme hot weather the past year that could cause the glycol levels to drop through evaporation. I can feel heat conduction on the pipes from collector to geyser, so don't think the collector is the problem. I also have to drain the system because I need to replace a broken stop valve on the collector pipe. Sizing the effort to understand if this is something I should do on a Sunday, or phone up my plumber.

By installing the Gesyerwise with Tuya module, I gained valuable insights into my geyser's activity. The solar geyser isn't working because the anti-freeze needs to be replaced. But I've adjusted it to use the least amount of grid power when there's no sunshine. Now my solar panels heat up the geyser to 65C during the day and Eskom 45C at night. Yeah, yeah, I hear the mother Grundies going on about legionnaires diseas, but a geyser cools down to lower than that multiple times in the day. My geyser is on non-essential and my Deye inverter sends extra power to it. Electricity use is down enough to make a difference. Your mileage will differ, but we are saving R500 plus a month already. * 4500W panels * 8Kva Deye Inverter * BX51100 battery 5Kw

Once you have installed your inverter you will understand that it is just a tick box on the inverter settings to sell back. A properly installed system will also supply power to your non-essentials like your geyser. This is how you save money as you can use your battery power before sunrise, after sunset as well. If your house wiring is up to code, then a CoC will be cheap. I paid R3K for mine, the work included getting my house to be compliant since the previous CoC a decade back. The solar installer only issued an update to my CoC that was in their installation charges.

@Oelof congrats. I found the night usage would be a trial and error. You need to work out how much power you need in the morning and then work back. In my case, I need a full battery at 8:00 am as we have a business on the property. So I set mine only to draw 20% at night. Really makes no difference when I allow the draw (that is the first mindset I had to change). The installer recommended 60% draw but we bought the system to protect us against load-shedding first, saving money second. His setting was only an extra 2W saving R6 a day, or R200 a month - not worth it if the business could not operate. You can shift some usage to the day to really save money. We started using the tumble dryer again instead of the iron during the day to save on electricity and time

My solar geyser is as helpful as a trap door in a canoe this winter. Hot sunny day yesterday and when I switched it on at the DB board, around noon, it pulled power as it was not warm enough. Same story today as I just switched it on at 14:15 and it is drawing power. I will replace mine with a collector and pump and add more panels. Will be better as in winter I get an ice-cold wind cooling my unit down in the evening.

At last, someone has been able to explain the N&E in a way I can understand. My geyser timer was tripping the earth when Eskom came back when the timer is on. This explanation helps me better understand why it stopped when I bypassed the timer.