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Bobster.

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Everything posted by Bobster.

  1. I don't see that it makes a difference. No matter what heading the credit is under, the total of my bill is reduced. What COCT are doing is making a lot of noise about how fantastic it can be. So they're advertising that you can sell back and save some money. And they have a more attractive tariff than COJ do. So they are getting uptake. Whilst some googling I have done shows that COJ have had their regulations and a registration process in place for at least five years, they have not made a song and dance about it, so nobody thinks about selling back and so nobody does. Well not nobody, but not a lot of folks. And they also need to work on their offerings. Last time I looked at their tariffs it was going to cost me about ten grand for a new meter, and about a grand a month in admin fees to get maybe twenty bucks credit per month. So no thanks. COJ trapped themselves years ago. Their per unit cost is lower than a lot of other municipalities, but they compensate for that with high admin fees. Probably a good idea at the time (at least 20 years ago), but now a problem for them because they have to impose those same admin fees on the reseller's tariff, and that now becomes a discouragement. Unless you're still on the post-paid tariff in which case the admin fees are the same and you can make some money back each month - but there's still the meter and the cost of that. I hope to have these conversations in the next while. I was actually hoping to have them today, but the guys from the City had to get going to do another inspection.
  2. There's so many rules! It's worse than rugby. So far it's all been technical and safety. There's been no discussion about tariffs, and under the current tariff structures as published, in Johannesburg I have no interest in selling back because it will cost me money. I hope they can come up with a set of tariffs that will change my mind. Qualifier: If the new meters that they are installing can cope with two way transmission and so don't have to be replaced at the householder's expense, and if one is on the post-paid tariff at time of install, then there may be a small win to be had.
  3. Whilst we were waiting for the installer to arrive, I asked the City's engineer about the stories going around about arbitrary disconnections. He said this is not City Power policy. He said that the most common means of finding out about a PV system is that the meter is misbehaving (according to the householder) or that they go out to check why your meter readings have dropped off. They may advise you on the process to register your system, to get your installer to check the installation, or they may suggest that you switch to the reseller's tariff, but there should be no disconnections just for having PV.
  4. OK… so the City Power engineers were just here (in a hybrid vehicle). They require a representative from the installer to be present at inspection time. The engineer who did all the work until now may be present, but doesn’t have to be As far as I could see and ask whilst they were busy, they checked That the inverter is as described on the documentation the engineer submitted. This includes the serial number. They had already checked that the inverter (as described) was on the approved list That all the necessary safety labels were in place. On the outside box that houses the main breaker, on the main DB, on any sub DBs for the PV system. I chatted to them about this. They said that there have been cases of City Power electricians thinking the house was dead because they had thrown the main breaker outside on the street, then getting a surprise. So the labels alert any electrician to the presence of a second power source. They had the installer rep demonstrate that the inverter is connected as described in the line drawing. He didn’t have to open up the whole thing and take them up into the roof, he did have to answer any questions they asked him: “Please show us [whatever]” They checked the functioning of a three way breaker that was installed so that the house can be suppplied by the PV system, by the grid, or get no supply at all. They measured the time taken to reconnect after grid power returns. They are looking for 60 seconds or greater. They will now take the test results back to their office. They don’t liaise with me or with the installer, they deal with the engineer. They said that they were happy with what they had seen but pointed out to me that the actual certificate was not yet issued, and the system is not deemed registered until the certificate is issued. They also told me I shouldn’t change anything because any certificate that will be issued will be for the system as tested.
  5. OK... so if you turn the main breaker off (I presume this to be the breaker that isolates the whole property) then we would expect that to stop the meter as the connection between your property and the grid is broken. So this gives us some degree of confidence that the meter is correctly linked to your property, and that nobody has snuck a connection into the street box that effects your meter. Earth leakage doesn't necessarily kill all circuits in the house. That is my understanding, and I hasten to add that I am not an electrician. If the previous test where the meter kept on moving was undertaken by you tripping the earth leakage, then it looks like you have something in your house, not connected to EL, that was drawing that power.
  6. I have had two brands of battery with the same inverter. The brand I currently have is Freedom Won, and I have only good things to say about that battery. It certainly laid to rest any ideas I had of batteries being batteries being batteries. Before the FW the system was always a bit unreliable. The battery would shut down for no apparent reason, I got used to restarting the system in the mornings. And I thought that oh well, this is just how life is with solar - it's a bit flaky, all these different bits from different manufacturers don't work neatly together and you put up with the flakiness to get through load shedding. Then the FW was installed and all that unreliability and unpredictability went away. Not the cheapest, but a good product. Locally made, so there is good support.
  7. I was about to say this. I am running a 200ah battery on the Default 100ah battery selection, and it works quite happily. Though I suspect this depends on the BMS and the BMS cable. I have a Freedow Won LITE. The Goodwe doesn't use a standard cable, but Freedom Won include one in the packaging. So the installer set the inverter to Default 100aH, plugged in the cable, and the BMS took over and changed the settings on the inverter (and if I try and override it, it just changes them straight back again). It is 100aH not 100A, so you can get up to the charge limit of the inverter. In my case 125A, though the BMS may throttle that back to 90A for it's own reasons. So with that setting, the BMS is really calling all the shots. If the BMS has CANBUS.
  8. OK... so the meter is in a box in the street, and you turned off the main breaker that is inside your property? If I understand the situation correctly then a couple of possibilities come to mind 1) The meters are not connected to the correct property. This has happened to me. The street was recabled, the contractor just put meters in a box and hooked them up but didn't properly check which meter was supplying which stand. City Power came out with a cable tracer, had to remap all the meters to the correct stands, and pass lots of correcting entries on accounts. This was not good for some folks mood. I had put in a solar geyser around the same time and couldn't understand why my bill wasn't dropping. My neighbour was happy because he was being billed for an ever lower amount. Turned out the meter linked to my account was supplying his stand. And etc. 2) Somebody has connected a cable to your meter. (1) fits with your observation that there are multiple complaints. Follow @Scorp007's advice and get a second measurement device put in. Now you can keep your own readings for the municipal meter and your own meter. It doesn't matter what date you read them. What matters is whether or not they give a similar picture of consumption.
  9. Is the meter on your property or in a street box with lots of other meters? Do you read the meter yourself to verify the figures on your account?
  10. Do you have something to check the meter against? One of the first things you will be asked if you complain about 2104kWh is how you know it's not correct. If you have a PV system with access to some sort of tool that tracks usage then you can make a start. But if you're getting those sorts of figures then you probably don't have a PV system. Is this post-paid or pre-paid? Do you have any sort of inverter or generator that could possibly be sending power back to the grid? Any changes in your circumstances? Meter thermostats replaced or turned up? New electronic/electrical devices? Timings changed on the pool pump? Have there been voltage fluctuations in the area. For a while where I live the grid voltage was low, and people on pre-paid complained that their credit was running down more quickly than usual. This makes sense if the the meters were sensing current rather than power.
  11. Do they give you the CIU if you're not on prepaid? City of Johannesburg do not (though it would cost them nothing to do so). I am watching these smart meters people in the UK are getting (they have to apply and pay, but I doubt it's full price). They get a real time break down of how much they are using, how much that is costing, bill for the month and so on. So quite useful information. It seems to me that what's really happening is that they're trying to make you aware of how much you're using, which gets you thinking to how you can save. I have seen the same happen in COJ with the not so smart meters we get. Even that, having to watch your consumption and make sure you have enough credit instead of just letting the bill arrive and be whatever it is, has the effect of making you more aware of your useage. So really they should let us all have the CIU. "My goodness, Clara! Have you seen how much energy that toaster is using!" I think that a lot of people could make a decent saving on their bill if they knew where it was all going, which would reduce the load on Eskom. OK... conversation around the dinner table could get a bit strained.
  12. Well done. Good troubleshooting. Probably saved yourself a nice little amount too.
  13. Why do you need it to be compatible with both? If you have comms between BMS and inverter, then the BMS will report SOC etc to the inverter, and the inverter can report that to ICC or Home Assistant or whatever else you are using. Make this two smaller problems.
  14. I apologise. There's an error in my replies. I'm saying "Narada" when I should have said "48NPFC100". But you seem to have already done what I'd thought of. I intially had a different brand of battery. This battery could not communicate with the Goodwe, so self define was used, and that worked, sort of. The battery was never entirely happy. But this may have been more to do with that particular battery than with the Goodwe.
  15. There isn't. But the Goodwe doesn't know about my battery. The battery is a FreedomWon. Fortunately it knows all about the Goodwe, so once you have a proper comms cable made up, and the inverter in "default lithium" mode, the BMS tells the inverter what settings it wants.
  16. The first thing I'd do there is get a spec sheet for the battery, or see if you can get all the settings from that expert. Then go through each setting on the Goodwe and check it against the spec/previous working figure. Better still would be to get comms in place between the BMS and the inverter. But I can't help you with. Maybe there is a specific Narada setting on the Goodwe, or information from Narada on how to make a cable that will work with the Goodwe.
  17. Sorry. I've run out of knowledge
  18. I must say that I there are things over which my ward councillor and I will differ, and she was not elected because she knows a lot about how substations or sewers work. But she does put in a big effort, and I wouldn't have her job for all the tea in China. They have to put up with a lot (at least where I live). Our suburb is split across three wards. Recently a substation went pop in the suburb but a different ward. Councillor monitored the situation, and when City Power came to install a replacement she sent out a member of her ward committee. He was reporting to residents from the site. THEN I don't know exactly how things got out of hand but residents in the same street as the substation first started bossing around the City Power team, then threatened the ward committee member with physical violence. He then left for his own safety, reporting that that was it for updates from the site. Something else was said. No details, but it was so vicious that the councillor is now considering sueing for defamation. So it's not a nice job nor an easy one. As I said, I have points of disagreement with the councillor that represents the ward I live in, but I will try to help where I can and I certainly don't share in the dishing out of abuse that I regularly see on various platforms (and which the councillors see as well, because they use those platforms to spread information).
  19. OK... so if we look at steps (1), (3) and (4) there is one test that can still be done. Disconnect the HT cables at the fence and then measure the voltage at that end of the cable. If that's 10kV then something on the fence is pulling the voltage down. This needn't be a plant that is touching. Weakened insulation can cause problems. I like to do my fence walks at night. Sometimes arcing will make visible things that are not easily seen during the day.
  20. This means that nothing is ever the fault of whoever is currently in power. This leads to things like a DA led coalition regaining power last year and then blaming everything on the previous DA mayor. That coalition mostly are now in opposition and kicking up blue murder about the property revaluations, overlooking that the revaluing process actually was conducted on their watch.
  21. LOL. Well, I don't know about where you live, but up here nobody gets elected for their competence in electrical matters, water matters, transportation or anything else. That's the job of municipal staff. Our lot sit and discuss policy (when they all turn up at the same time, which isn't often) and pass budgets. They famously got caught napping by SAP who proposed a figure just to get the ball rolling and were happily surprised to find council all nodding their heads. So my guess would be that the mayor and his committee in Cape Town were smart enough to know what they didn't know and got in some people with actual expertise to advise them. COCT have the big advantage of in that they have no coalition and a stable government. Johannesburg has had NINE mayors since August 2016, all of them heading up coalitions that spend most of their time squabbling. So to actually get anything done is a big challenge right now.
  22. NERSA (not any municipality) have a "net consumer" requirement in place. This means that, as you say, you can't get paid for more than you take out. COCT got a waiver from that clause, but the waiver is not indefinite. This was publicised a while back.
  23. This is strictly a COCT thing. The 0.87 (does that get VAT added?) is the NERSA tariff. The 0.25 is an incentive that COCT have dispensation to add for two or three years. Just as they also have a temporary exemption on the net consumer requirement. So nice for you, but cold comfort to those of us who live elsewhere. COJ, for example, will only pay the 0.87, and only that if you sign up for the reseller's tariff, and AFAIK they play the net consumption gain - which doesn't mean that you can't send back more than you consume (which is hard to control) but that you can only get refunded for as much you actually draw from the grid (minus a little bit). The net consumer requirement is stipulated by NERSA, not by Eskom or municipalities. IMO it's a big impediment in the take up of sell back tariffs. COCT have found a way around that (though, it seems, not indefinitely) and if COJ do the same then maybe it starts making a bit more sense up here.
  24. Some googling (and some searching on this forum) leads me to conclude that what COCT really mean is "grid connected". But that doesn't seem right, as what I call "grid-tied" is connected to the grid (though on the customer's side, so maybe not) but can't send anything back. I am not the first person to wonder what excatly the City want, and why they use the term "grid-tied". They changed their rules last year. See https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/718812/big-changes-for-inverters-and-solar-in-cape-town-next-month though there is no word of that being changed retrospectively so that you may already have registered but now find yourself illegal.
  25. I get confused when we start chucking around terms like "grid tied". Everybody seems to have a different idea of what this means. Now we also start talking about "full hybrids". I know what I think of when I see the term "grid tied", but it may be helpful to understand what is being referred to here. Clearly COCT mean a specific thing when they say "grid tied".
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