Charl_CCU

I thought going straight to Conlog would be the best bet as I had nothing to lose besides a 2 minute phone-call asking if it's possible. My logic behind that was that Conlog support staff are probably better clued up as they don't have to focus on non-technical stuff like account/billing/fault management like what the majority of CoT staff do.

Nope. Conlog just as useless as the rest. Strung me along each day with a different story for almost a week and then yesterday afternoon after following up again they said, "Sorry we were told we are not allowed to deal with this issue and you will need to go to Tshwane and sort it out." I can't believe that he (Nevo/Nebo? - I dealt with him most days) even sweet-talked me in the beginning about how apologetic he was and how he would make sure it was taken care of. Explaining this setup to a Tshwane call center agent is going to be interesting. Do they have procedures in place to get the token? My solar installer's technician is going to remotely login sometime today and try sort it out. Apparently my inverter (SolarEdge) has a setting to take care of this. Let's hope it's true. I've got nothing to lose. @4Gert what's happening there on your side? I see you say yours was installed on the 14th. Mine was on the 15th. Who have you spoken to over there and what do they say? I got the number of 2 people in charge/involved with the meter migration. I tried to phone them multiple times on multiple days. The one, Tom (0836510388), always goes to voice mail and the other, Refilwe (0826509923), answered for the first time yesterday and told me she is busy in a meeting and that I must send her an SMS with what the issue is. I asked if I can rather phone again later and she said, "No, I will get back to you if I can do anything about it". No response. I'm going to be optimistic and give Tshwane the benefit of the doubt here seeing as I've only been actively pursuing the route of getting them to sort it out since yesterday afternoon but things aren't looking good. I sent an email with the issue I'm having to my ward councilor who then forwarded it on to about 5 different people including the 2 contacts I mentioned. I did receive a missed call yesterday from the CoT customer support number yesterday at 6PM so maybe that was from them. Mods/Admins: Feel free to remove cell numbers if that's not allowed.

I can't see why you would need to charge it up quickly besides for EV usage. Tesla's current supercharger supports 150kW DC with plans for the next generation to support 350kW. It just amazes me how they can put these just about anywhere they like. How is there infrastructure to put down a 10 bay supercharging (Decent size. Biggest stations are 40 bay whilst the average is 8.3) which, from what I've gathered, has capacity to charge all bays simultaneously at 50%.

Wow that battery looks amazing. I'm sure it'll be rock-solid. I see that their calendar life is 45 years which is still really great. http://www.greenfoxagencies.co.za/Kilowatt_Labs_Sirius-Technical_Data_Sheet-7100-48-B-2C-M-SD-L-G-v051018.pdf

I phoned for an update yesterday (Monday). It sounds like it's a small office because the support agent said he did not see the engineer come in today. He said that he is not away on training or leave so he should be back soon. Perhaps sick? If this was a gov company like Tshwane or Telkom my BS meter would be going off the charts but I'm going to give them a chance before I make a judgement. It's only been one full working day since the ticket was opened.

Oh yeah. I read about those long ago but forgot about them. Unfortunately you still have to buy an additional module. I see it in a local distributors catalog but with no price. I will inquire with my solar supplier. In the UK they are about £350-400. The cool thing is that they can regulate exactly how much goes to the geyser and it's not as simple as an on/off relay. I'll definitely look into that. And the hardware is probably dirt cheap now. Thanks for that. The calculator you mentioned seems to be a bit more scientific. The values I mentioned were values of what my system is actually now. I don't think it's accurate to say 6kW or even 7.68kW as the input power. It's probably more accurate to put in something higher than 6 as I hardly ever reach the peak output. Thanks. Yeah I phoned Conlog and they determined it was indeed the feedback protection. They are going to send me the generated token to disable it once the engineers get back to them.

Can confirm. Just had my smart meter replaced with a Conlog BEC44 and now it is tripping with my solar system. It is a lot more sensitive than the previous meter which never tripped at all even with the 25kWh/year diverted into the grid. Perhaps the Siemens smart meters didn't even have feedback protection. Phoned Conolog on Friday 4:30PM and the support guy took my meter number and said he would personally contact me with the token to disable the feedback protection as soon as he gets it from the engineering team. I'm very impressed with their service thus far. He apologized and said that they take their customer satisfaction very seriously and it sounded like he actually meant it. I was expecting him to tell me to phone Tshwane and sort it out with them since I'm not even really their customer.

I was moved over to a Conlog meter on Wednesday and have been having tripping issues since. I'm having a look on here on how to resolve it.

Hey guys So I've had my solar system now for just less than 2 years and I'm not entirely sure if I'm happy with what I'm getting. I've got some questions and I would appreciate your input. 1. Is this something else or does Tshwane really credit 10c/kWh for SSEG home power-production? See "Credit (reverse) energy charge" 2. Does SSEG home power-production make any sense? I can't even find any info from Tshwane about the tariffs, qualifying requirements or even where/how to apply. I've sent an email to [email protected] with no response. At that their rate it would probably cost me more in increased wear & tear than I'd be saving. Never mind the expensive meter and daily access fee. If Tshwane's requirements are the same as CoCT then my system will not be allowed as 60A homes can only have a system which is about 3kVA. Does this apply only if you want to be a part of SSEG or does it apply to all grid-tied systems? If the latter, what happened to all existing grid-tied systems in CT when the bylaw was passed? If Tshwane implements that, it would be an issue. 3. Should I be happy with what I'm getting? The system is a SolarEdge 6kW (AC out) inverter with 7.68kW of Canadian Solar panels and an optimizer on each one of them. It almost never maxes out the inverter so I don't think that is a bottleneck. Perhaps on the odd occasion in summer. My supplier/installer said this sort of configuration is normal. Is this true? I suppose once considering the DC to AC ratio, that is not such a huge amount. According to this calculator using the input of 7.68kW, 15° tilt roof-mount, 30° azi, my location (Pretoria) and Joburg solar yield/weather data (is there a big difference there?) my output should be 12 400kWh per year - which factors in an 18.5% capacity usage factor, system losses (14.08%), inverter efficiency and panel efficiency of 15% (mine are 16%). My output for 2018 was 6200kWh (43% of total consumption - which was 14 441kWh). I don't think the issue is with the system itself but rather with my consumption patterns. If anyone would like me to give them access to my daily usage/production charts to help support/disprove my view, I'd really appreciate it. When I got the system, I made an effort to shift the big loads to the day: 3 geysers all with timers set to only come on during the day and all start at different times and a dishwasher which is only put on during the day. What more can be done? Here is a screenshot of a day where the capacity factor % was really low (31/07/18 - so more or less winter). Based on the theoretical yield, it should have been able to produce 31-35kWh even taking into account their mentioned capacity factor. Also bear in mind that I hardly ever use this amount in a day and the capacity factor is hardly ever this good. The daily average for 2018 was 39.5kWh. I just want to show how the system performs when the capacity usage is high. 4. What is the best angle for the panels in Pretoria? Both azi and tilt. 5. Are optimizers a sham? It seems like nobody online has an unbiased opinion on them backed up with data. They cost about R1k each. From late afternoon there are a few panel covered by some palm trees so perhaps they do make a difference in my case? See below (total production to date). 6. Is there anyway to get back onto a meter which spins backwards? Perhaps by somehow using a 3rd party metering company? If it wasn't for me being part of the 12 500 Tshwane homes to get a smart prepaid meter before the rollout was put on hold for being heavily corrupt, I would still be on an old-style post-paid meter. A friend of mine who has an old-style meter got the same system as me at the same time and he says he hardly pays for electricity at all. 7. What would be the best size battery to get right before I reach the point of diminishing returns? From 17:00-8:00 I use about 11kWh in summer and 19kWh in winter. Does a battery even make financial sense? It seems like if I wanted to make this system as off-grid as possible, I'd need to get more panels and another inverter before using a battery would get it to 95% self consumption. If I wanted to be optimistic and get 5000kWh of the unused 6200kWh each year using a battery that would mean I would need a battery which can handle a cycle of 13.7kWh per day. Freedom Won's 20kWh battery is rated at a 70% DoD of 14kWh. At 70% DoD, their cells are rated at 5500 cycles = 77MWh in its lifetime (13-15 years). At a rate of R1.6/kWh that's a saving of R123.2k in its lifetime. The battery costs about R155k excluding installation and any supporting hardware. Factoring in inflation on each year's accumulative savings, that's about R170k which hardly justifies the huge investment because things go wrong and it's not insured, as well as the fact that once it hits 10 years old it's out of warranty. And then also purely from a ROI perspective, there's much better things you could do. It seems quite bleak so it seems like if my assumptions are correct I have the following options to make use of my "wasted" solar capacity: waste money by paying the municipality to take it, waste money by investing in a battery to store it or waste money and just not use it. Freedom Won says that they do not see the price of batteries coming down in the near future. I'm sure that in the next 5-10 years as more car manufacturers start focusing on electric vehicles, the energy density will get better and the cost will get lower. Thanks for reading this long post. I look forward to seeing what you guys have to say.

I don't suppose this ever got anywhere? 2020 early-bird (Half price) registrations are ending in a few months. It would be really challenging and rewarding to be a part of a team for this. I've seen teams spend big bucks on this project even when manufacturing as much of it as possible themselves. Usually at least R2m.