Basil Katakuzinos

Thanks, i just did the first room conversion today, went great. Everything earthed. New lights are great and my room is now so quiet without the transformer buzz.

I think the CT coil and correct settings should be sufficient.

As I victron user, I strongly agree with the advice of the people above. Their are some great options in the market that do nearly everything you can with the victron. I think you will feel happier with a system that fulfills your energy needs than a system that does not. You have greater potential for future expandability and much better firmware with a victron system as @Sarel has mentioned. You also have the ability to create a great ecosystem of parts that work flawlesly together and integrate well with other brands products like @Sarel with his Fronius inverter. I enjoy being able to monitor and understand exactly what my system is doing. Get a few quotes for systems and see what the different systems can offer for your budget. If you know your budget is going to become larger though in the near future then maybe you will be happier with a victron. Especially as adding more solar pannels is as simple as purchasing an additional MPPT and adding it to the system. Edit: Those sunsynk inverters are looking very appealing right now. They appear to do everything most people will need quite well. Keep in mind when pricing systems that when you purchase a victron system you need the inverter + GX Device + Solar Chargers while an inverter like the sunsynks come with an integrated MPPT charge controller.

Okay so the problem with most of the kodak range can be seen as in this video. This is true for any inverter labled off grid. In terms of cost and performance many people find that sunsynk is the best place to be. I have a victron system and as much as I love it i do have to admit the sunsynk is a very compelling system as it offers nearly all of the victron functionality that i use at a much lower price. You dont need a 3 phase inverter, just move all loads onto one phase. Panel brands, i have experience with canadian solar and JA solar. See what the market has to offer. I trust both those brands. As for batteries, make sure they have compatible coms with the inverter you chose, i have pylons, have experience with FreedomWon and Bluenova also many people on the forum who are happy with the Hubbles Edit: I am by no means an expert on the axpert inverters, many happy people who use and install them maybe @87 Dreamcan help you out with deciding what voltronix inverter suits your needs.

Changing my geyser battery out for a bluenova lithium, ill give you all an update on that once its done.

My guess, it just wont charge fully(as it will just take even longer and not charge between consecutive load shedding). Doubt you will do any damage but dont take my word on it.

Sherlo makes a battery backup that you can add to the alarm also, probably the most accepted way of doing this. power supply 12vdc 3.2a - Sherlotronics Larger one power supply 12vdc 6.4a - Sherlotronics

What parts are you interested in getting, inverter, batteries etc...

I had good luck with green wave energy and above mentioned friend had luck with green sun the second time round. I also got quotes from green sun with my install, they where professional and knew what they where doing.

Have you gotten a quote from powerforum store and one of their installers.

They installed an infinisolar for a friend of mine... install went fine but the hardware (full circle solar infinisolar) died after a few months. He ended up changing it for a victron. Installer also wanted to charge a monitoring fee... no thanks.

ITS solar sells a 4watt electric annode, unbelievably expensive though, might be worth the expense though if it saves you the inconvinience of having to change your annode so often.

Just out of curiosity would the HVDC line to Mozambique not be down also as if I am not mistaken, Mozambique and RSA are still AC Coupled through other lines. My knowledge of electricity is minimal(please dont judge me 🤣), i am though passionate about such things and quite curious.

Don't have an electrician to recommend but have you considered turning all the breakers off and then pushing them up one by one, faulty and old appliances can cause an earth leakage to trip. From my limited experience old/faulty motors(fans or pool pumps perhaps) as well as fridge compressors are generally the culprit. I had an interesting case earlier this year where a faulty incoming supply line (insulation broke down on the municipal side) lead to an earth leakage tripping. (very unlikely but i thought id mention it.) I see no logical reason why an electrician would suggest rewiring the house(besides them being a bad electrician)

Quick question, is your inverter input powered through the earth leakage?

I guess it could be possible, i just went to the hardware store and bought a little solar light that i mounted on my wall. I think that will cost you a lot less than trying to convert your existing lights. 30 Watts continuous for 8 hours = 240Wh of battery storage. (You can probably find outdoor solar lights cheaper than the battery alone)(also remember to double the battery capacity if you are using lead acid) 100W solar panel + 12Volt DC charger. + A way to turn the lights on and off. + If the lights are AC you will need an inverter which for something this small will be quite uneconomical.

I never used to get load shedding in ekurhuleni (i think the entirety of the bedfordview area did not also), i always thought someone important just lived here 🤣. Eddit I do most definetly get load shedding now! have for the past few months

I am generally quite skeptical of statements accusing eskom of things like this but your outages are forcing me to reconsidder my stance on that! I have never gotten loadshedding when their is not supposed to be and i can not imagine having to deal with intermittent power like that. I guess it is a possibility that eskom is targeting eskom direct customers as an easy source of demand side management.

Thank you for your response! I have tried to answer your questions below Victron Multiplus II 5kva + 3 X Pylon US3000C (They are connected via 70mm2 cable that is about one meter long) Inverter is connected to BMS via CAN BUS and i can see the battery in the settings page. running ESS Assistant( I will screenshot the settings pages below.) I also have DVCC enabled. I have a Venus GX Load was a consistant +-800 watts when change over happened, i suspect the fridge was on also. Towards the left of the graph below we can see the instant the power from eskom tripped, I can see a massive spike in current but do not know what to make of it. Here is a graph of the DC Side from the perspective of the inverter, i am hovering my mouse exactly over the time where the AC IN disconnected

So... removed basically all of the loads except a computers, a tv and 8 lights... this change over seems rather significant to me, as if all the lights are going off and then coming back on. I also notice obvious brown outs (very small during eskom). I am hoping someone with a victron (perhaps @Sarel?) could tell me if this is normal. I have attached the video of the power going out recorded on a selfie camera at 30fps. Excuse the messy view, i just left the camera proped on my desk waiting for load shedding. Recording was at 30fps and the flash appears to be 2 or 3 frames so thats 0.1 seconds, 100Miliseconds!!! The Victron Flicker.mp4

Just saw it. Very interesting reaction your inverter had... i am intrigued

You probably want to check the frequency settings on your inverter... 65Hz... something must be very wrong...

I will crunch the numbers in this post so that if i made a mistake someone can pick it up and explain it to me. When i talk about solar I am referring to solar water heating through a vacuum tube or flat plate solar water heater, not PV. The unit I will be using for these calculations is the ITS 3.6 Kw Heat Pump (This unit has the lowest COP therefore the larger units should perform similarly or slightly better in terms of the ratio of kWh in to kWh out. In other words they will have a similar efficiency but will just get the job done faster) You will notice that if you divide the heating capacity of the heat pump by the input power you will get 4.1 (The Coefficient of performance). This COP means that for every one kWh of electricity the system consumes it will produce 4.1 kWh of heat, it does this by taking heat from the surrounding air and putting it into the water. This means that its performance is effected by temperature(The colder the air is the harder it is to pull energy from the air), Humidity and altitude. Also one needs to consider some energy loss will occur in piping. Therefore i will be assuming a COP of 3 as a conservative annual average estimate. (From my experience they perform significantly better than this but i would prefer to underestimate than overestimate their performance) a COP of 3 means that our 3600Watt unit will now only produce 3 times its rated input (860 * 3 = 2580 W) Lets first calculate how long the unit will take to lift a geyser from 30 degrees (where mine normally sits in the morning) to 55 degrees. We can use the following formula (Mass (Kg) X Temperature change (degrees C) X Heat capacity of water(4186) )/ Heatpump power = Time (seconds) Therefore for a 200l geyser =200 X (55-30) X 4186 / 2580 = 8 112 seconds = 135 Minutes = 2.25 hours We know the unit consumes 860 watts therefore we can multiply the kW and time to get the kWh consumed, this gives us 1.93 units to heat the geyser. this is substantially better than the 5.8 units of power a traditional element would consume but no where near the efficiency of solar (where your only load is a small DC pump that can cheaply be powered by a small solar panel). I do not believe that there is a single solution for every household but my problem with solar is that if two people shower in the evening the geyser becomes extremely cold and necessitates heating if another person wants to shower the next morning, This means that without a heat pump it is necessary to use a traditional element, furthermore during days where their is significant cloud cover, a person with a solar system will have to resort to using a traditional element for heating in the afternoon also. For me these present significant problems as my hot water usage is split evenly between early mornings and the evening. Therefore a solar geyser could really only offer me a 50% savings(assuming the solar panel works perfectly every day) while a heat pump (using the above numbers) could offer me a savings closer to 66%. While i have no doubt a solar heating system will offer the cheapest upfront cost (and it is better to have solar than not to), i do believe that a heat pump is money better spent if one can afford the greater upfront cost. As for maintenance I have no doubt solar geysers are cheaper to maintain (because you can do the maintenance yourself and their are less complex parts) but i have seen heat pumps that have worked for 7+ years without issues and have not required anything more than a routine service every two years.

Yes i based it off of a 3.6Kw unit with a COP above 4. but for the sake of reality i D rated the COP when i did the calc just to make the numbers more realistic in less ideal conditions.