LMthethwa

Scrarfussi,

Apart from the cost factor there are many other reason, most related to why Cell phone companies are struggling to get sites built as quick as they would want.

1) No one wants a tower next to their house or estate. now consider a tower and turbine combination.
2) Tower loading limitation (load of amount of installed equipment on tower vs structural design integrity), space requirement for standalone turbine, let alone the unknown regulatory framework for turbine in residential/urban areas.
3) Wing span consideration for a turbine size that would be required to carry the load of a typical cell phone tower site.
I wonder whether there would be any interference to the RF equipment on the tower due to the proximity of the rotating blades and whatever harmonics would emanate from the turbine.
Lastly, give us South African time, we will figure out something worth repossessing from that turbine infrastructure .......cheap passing shot I know!!!
LM
 

Scrarfussi,

Apart from the cost factor there are many other reason, most related to why Cell phone companies are struggling to get sites built as quick as they would want.

1) No one wants a tower next to their house or estate. now consider a tower and turbine combination.
2) Tower loading limitation (load of amount of installed equipment on tower vs structural design integrity), space requirement for standalone turbine, let alone the unknown regulatory framework for turbine in residential/urban areas.
3) Wing span consideration for a turbine size that would be required to carry the load of a typical cell phone tower site.
I wonder whether there would be any interference to the RF equipment on the tower due to the proximity of the rotating blades and whatever harmonics would emanate from the turbine.
Lastly, give us South African time, we will figure out something worth repossessing from that turbine infrastructure .......cheap passing shot I know!!!
LM
 

Hi BoxFish,
I recently built something for my old man is December using the Luminous 850VA Hybrid (can take solar panels if needed) and 1 x 120AH Omni Power Battery. Powers all house lights and TV/DSTV. Load is more less ~ 150W at most, but generally less. 
I am happy and my old man is happy, he has recently survived a 4 hour outage without issues (average loadshedding 2 Hrs). AVG DOD 26%
Hooked up to DB for lights only with C/O switch.
I needed an all-in-one hustle free small system for an old man and it does what I needed and more (Happy parent)
See pictures
LM

It depends on your intended load usage and budget, you can get from R3k and all the way up.
You need to compare not just the price but also the battery Life Cycles vs DoD. Anything with less than 500 @ 50% is a “cheapy” and will cost you more in a year or two that the saving you will make buying them (Remember eskom is projecting 18months of pain which means 3 years😜)
Anything with 1000+ @ 50% DOD should last you a few year. Lookup up AllGrand looks promising and not badly prices at about R4400 a pop, if you have the bucks, OmniPower is a nice one too, I think they have 240AH variant too just over 7k each.
Howver, I am no expert all above is just my opinion from my journey thus far and from the esteemed residence experts information sharing readup in this forum and others.
 
Good Luck
LM
 

Scrarfussi,

Apart from the cost factor there are many other reason, most related to why Cell phone companies are struggling to get sites built as quick as they would want.

1) No one wants a tower next to their house or estate. now consider a tower and turbine combination.
2) Tower loading limitation (load of amount of installed equipment on tower vs structural design integrity), space requirement for standalone turbine, let alone the unknown regulatory framework for turbine in residential/urban areas.
3) Wing span consideration for a turbine size that would be required to carry the load of a typical cell phone tower site.
I wonder whether there would be any interference to the RF equipment on the tower due to the proximity of the rotating blades and whatever harmonics would emanate from the turbine.
Lastly, give us South African time, we will figure out something worth repossessing from that turbine infrastructure .......cheap passing shot I know!!!
LM
 

That domain was registered 23 December 2018. The registrant is indicated as being "Peter Salanje", and there is an email address. Googling the email address finds a gumtree ad that is selling a share in a business. Then I googled the name and it got worse...
Seems Mr. Salanje is running a business from his father (a pastor's) church offices.
Now I would have loved to dig into what this church actually teaches (I'm betting it's not completely orthodox), but sadly their website is a bit thin on details... no confession of faith sort of stuff as you normally see.
Definitely sketchy though.

Rolo, Batteries in my view are the most delicate part of the system and require much more attention. Mistakes with batteries are generally irreversible and costly.

1) Yes cycling refers to exactly your understand.
2) As a general rule "not sure where's the rule book", you do not mix old and new batteries and therefore getting the right capacity from start is ideal.
Only when you are ready to replace your old batteries, a few years down the line, should you be able to add without worries.

Hi Rolo,
I am currently running a 1100W pool pump between 5-7 hours, a 1170W Heat pump (plus all house small loads lights, tvs, Dstvs, alarm, wifi.....) using a 4000W  inverter with 9 x 330W panels (Hybrid configuration) (8 x 12 V @ 110h batteries).
I have reduced my utility  daily utilization from 30-37 KWh to an average of between 12-14 KWh. I did not change my pool pump, I just changed the time when its running, the same with the heat pump. While my ultimate aim is to go with evacuated tubes, for now while I have the excess power from the panels it just made sense to connect it to the backup. The only concern is remembering to switch the Heat pump off in case of after hours load shedding. I am also new to solar (1 month) and still figuring out a few things with the help from this forum. My advise to you if cash is tight would be:

1) Don't change the pool pump
2) Spend extra on panels and inverter
3) Try and over spec your system, once the bug bites you will regret not putting a buffer of capacity in your initial design.
4) If time is not an issue, try and go in stages and break down your final system design in stages eg. Backup system first, solar panels next, this helped me understand my system in small chunks of information.
I did make a R18 000 mistake with my batteries on my backup by not cycling them enough but.....education is not cheap....except in www.powerforum.co.za
Most importantly do your homework it helps when you have a clue what you want otherwise people sell you all sort of junk and you end up not getting what you expected.