Bobster.

I think I did understand that. In my experience neighbours aren't always obliging when they have something that's interfering with something of yours. Well I agree in a way. I just think that these services are not up to much at the moment, and whilst one might have a case in terms of the law and regulations, nobody's likely to do much except acknowledge receipt of your mail. We have schools and businesses in our area that are clearly breaching by-laws. Our elected representative for the area agrees and has spoken to the relevant City departments. Does anything happen? No. OK... I'm Mr "The glass is 1/8 empty"

It will be interesting, but also fruitless. If you knock on the neighbour's door and ask him to do something about the noise his system is generating what is he going to do? Say "oh I'm sorry" and disconnect the system that he bought because he needs it? Eskom are unlikely to go and tell him he's breaking SANS such-and-such. I'm wondering if it has to be a something generating back into the grid. I remember many years ago I was working for an IT company in the South of JHB. They had intermittent power problems that were eventually traced to a panel beater up the road. This was about 1988. The company was trying to sell fault tolerant hardware that came in from the US. The problem was that you could pull disc drives and processors out of the machine whilst it was running and it would carry on, but the moment that panel beater fired up a certain piece of equipment the hardware demonstrated that it was not tolerant of that particular problem and would promptly stop. In the end they put lots of earthing straps on it and stuck it inside a faraday cage. Which was not the best advertisement.

I just had new panels installed. The quote was for 550s. I didn't specify more than the wattage. Installer arrives with 585s, says that it's the best deal he could get. They were bi-facial. I don't see that you can lose anything if you put them on a roof, and you're not going to lose financially. I actually thought of getting a reflective surface under them, but I don't know what to use and I am really not keen on having to get up on the roof, unmount the panels, lay the reflective stuff and so on.

I have sockets that are not backed up and so can be used, in the outbuildings. But you have to go out there, plug in the CIU and then hold it in one hand whilst you try to read that long number and punch it in - which is really a three-handed job. All the sockets inside the house are backed up and thus pre-paid unfriendly. My wife has mobility issues and so I had that extra socket put in.

Prepaid meters and any sort of inverter are often a problem. When the tripping is sorted out your neighbour may find they have another problem. They may not be able to load more units. There is always the actual meter and a CIU (customer interface unit) which the customer uses to track the balance & to load units. Usually the CIU and the meter communicate over the wiring of the house. There needs to be a direct connection between the two. So if there is an inverter between the CIU and the meter, that direct connection is broken. So if your neighbour can't use the CIU they will need to plug it into a wall socket thst is not backed up. Many folks have a socket installed that is connected directly to the incoming grid power. The CIU is then plugged into that

My attitude to all this registration stuff is that if we connect any kind of generator to a grid, then the guys running that grid have a legitimate interest, including any checks that they need to do to be sure that their regulations are met. So I didn't ask myself why they feel the need to do the tests. I just accepted that they had that right. They checked more than that. I did ask the guy from Pure Energy and he said they don't have a fixed set of tests, but they have the right to check anything that is on the application forms, which, from one POV, are a declaration: This is what I'm connecting to their grid and this is how I connec it. So part of what is submitted is a line drawing. There was a representative from the installer there. They pointed to a couple of things on the line drawing and asked that representative to show or demonstrate whatever it was. I had other things to do and they were talking about stuff that I don't understand so I got on with my job and left them to it. It may be that they don't do those checks every time. OK... I'm definitely no Pr.Eng, nor any sort of electrician, so be wary of taking what I say verbatim. The point I was trying to make is that City Power reserve the right to carry out an inspection. Maybe I should have not been so specific, but then there is always the chance (not so much on this forum, but I have seen some angry responses) that somebody will say "oh so now they want to INSPECT. What business is of theirs anyway? They should be happy I'm taking load off of their grid" and etc etc. So my point is that they reserve that right and it's not unreasonable.

Power problems can be quite localised. Where I live we have poles carrying cables along the street. Each cable supplies three properties. We have twice had issues that affect only the properties hooked up to a specific pole. In one case it was a lost neutral connection. In the other (which affected me) it was very low voltage (like down in the 180s) in three houses only.

Well it depends. I have a 4.6 kW inverter (short bursts to 6.9 when there's grid) and on a sunny day, with a little bit of managment we can run the whole house off of that. Qualifiers: Airpump for water heating - on a time switch which limits it to runs a day. And full gas for cooking. All lighting is LED. So it depends on circumstances, and what the household MUST have and what they can sacrifice. Because the heat pump is so efficient and draws less than a geyser element I can run that on the backed up side of the inverter. So all the way through stage 6 we had hot water. I do have to impose a rule in the kitchen though: Only two appliances may be on at a time. So, for EG, you look around and see the dishwasher and the microwave are running then sorry, you can't use the kettle. Wait until one of the others is finished. This really is not much of a problem for us most of the time. In the evening we might use the air fryer or the microwave and will definitely use the kettle. At night we have 250 to 400 W at any given time, until 6:00 when the heat pump switches on again. I agree with your general point, but it does depend on what you can live with and without and on the habits of the people in the household. If I had an 8kW inverter I wouldn't have to impose that rule in the kitchen. But as an example... during the day we can run fridges, lights if necessary, security, wi-fi, dishwasher, the washing machine (on a cold cycle), three lap top computers, a TV, and charge our phones. So you can do a bit more. Especially if you have fairly new appliances which draw less when they start up. I would like 8kW though. Then I would just carry on pretty much as we do, but put EVERYTHING on the backed up side. The pool pump, the whole tooty.

If they are the same hardware but have different firmware then they could perform differently. Any Goodwe owner will tell you about getting a firmware update and then finding your system behaving diferently.

OK... so that's one big ass system. Commercial, not residential

But earthing is there to protect people, not circuits. So the explanation is perfectly plausible.

Using the banking app on my phone I can buy units and get the token anywhere. And I can send that to any cellphone (SMS, so doesn't have to be a smart phone). So if you have somebody at home you can send the token to their phone and have them punch it in. Let the meter run down when you're at home and recharge yourself so you know what the confirmation sequence on the meter looks like. This is in case you have to talk the other person through the procedure.

No. You have to keep an eye on the meter and pre-empty the running out. The meter City Power are currently installing gives a warning when credit is running low, but you will still have some credit at the time the warning light comes on.

As a lay person I get irritated by these reports. 50kva. What's that? The amount your panels can produce or the amount your inverter/s can output? Guys writing these articles should answer these questions. And cost of sign-off... Does this include bringing the system up to standards? Drawings and a signature? Eskom (nor a municipality) cannot control what an engineer charges. Again we need a breakdown.

What's the frequency and voltage on the output side of the generator? Under a load. Most inverters in SA will be set for the SA grid code, so if voltage or frequency varies too much the inverter will ignore the generator. The inverters do this for incoming mains as well.