debeerx2

I installed an 8kW solar system at my house in JHB about 2 years ago, and remained on City Power post-paid. My electricity consumption is minimal every month and I would benefit quite a bit if I move to pre-paid. City Power sent out a communication earlier this week (see article below) City Power sets record straight on getting solar energy installed in Johannesburg | News24 The communication has limited information about pre-paid metering for homes with solar installations. I would like to know if there are any by-laws or rules from City Power which would prevent me from moving from post-paid to pre-paid metering? PS: I have given up on the idea of feeding excess electricity back to the grid - I would rather just have a reduced electricity bill by going from post-paid to pre-paid billing.

I recently discovered a very interesting situation in our solar system after the installation of 2 additional batteries. The system now consists of a Sunsynk 8kW single phase inverter, 4 x 5.3 kWh batteries, 16 x 545W panels. The inverter was set to accept 0W of trickle feed from the grid. After the installation of the additional batteries the Sunsynk app showed that the household used 45 kWh for the month of February, but the utility bill showed that we utilised about 150 kWh of power from the grid. I then started monitoring my electricity meter and app on a daily basis and found that the electricity meter still showed around 5kWh of grid consumption per day on days where the Sunsynk app showed zero grid consumption. Some research on the Internet pointed me to a possible problem with the CT coil, which was connected with 30m of flex cable running adjacent to the 230V cables to the inverter (similar thickness to the original black and white cable attached to the CT coil supplied with the Sunsynk inverter). I installed a new cable from the CT coil to the inverter. It was a CAT 6a foil shielded cable where the 4x internal white cables were joined together to form one conductor, and the 4x internal coloured cables were joined to form the other conductor. It would have been ideal to ground the shield of the CAT cable on the earth connection of the house, but my house has a neutral to earth bond which caused problems, and the shield was left unearthed. The CAT cable was also installed so that it did not run directly next to the 230V cables to the inverter. The results were excellent: in a 24-hour period where the Sunsynk App showed zero grid consumption the actual consumption via the electricity meter dropped to around 300W for the same period. This result was also confirmed over the next 7 days where the App showed zero consumption from the grid and the actual consumption remained around 300W per day.