Abdul Gool

Hi All, Thanks for all the feedback and patience. I have been a bit snowed under with other commitments but plan on bringing about some of the changes suggested by all of you with my next iteration. Updates will be posted in this thread.

Thank you so much to all for the feedback. Apologies for this late response. I am currently putting some of these changes into action as well as putting some logic in place to handle certain discrepancies. Thank you for the patience. I will notify you all here when a new update is ready. Regards, Abdul Gool

@PaulF007 Thank you for your response. I am seriously so excited to chat to you guys who have been thinking, planning and discussing a tool much like what I have built. So lets discuss: Sure is! I plan on eventually building the grid tied (with and without battery backups) systems based on the user inputs. Right now I have just used complete solar kits to calculate the results, but your factors from the mentioned thread would definitely assist in building the dynamic systems. I agree 100%. The strategy I have taken for optimal calculation precision was to separate the independent factors and work with them only. After just 2 days on this forum quite a few of these factors have been brought to my attention that I will be including in my next updates (glad i built up the courage to request feedback on the tool in this forum). I would be happy to discuss some of my calculations and how I derive my results, as well as the list of factors I currently account for in calculations. Let me know if you'd like me to elaborate. But watch this space, planning a nice update for the coming week on lots of these factors brought to my attention.

Hi jjordaan, Thanks for taking the time to look at my tool and for responding. Usage increase is definitely something I should be factoring in. Will add this to the queue of todo's. Excited to push out my next update with a bunch of new factors being handled for exceptional precision of the calculated results.

Oh, mmm, I'm not retrieving these. When I find a source for consistent updates to these rates, I'll pop them in. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Hi Greenfield, thanks for taking the time to respond. I have included monthly grid connection fee. I have not factored in re-capatalization of the inverter after 10 years, but this is valuable feedback and I will have it in come next week. I did not factor in panel performance degradation into my calculations, I will look into this further, thanks mentioning this 1. Ito, Time of Use, I intentionally left this part out as it would require far more input from the user to use this within calculations. I could look into adding this under advanced section in the near future. For roof pitch, I assume the user has the optimal azimuth angle. However, I do agree. This will most likely not be the case for most uses, so il add this in for next week as well. I've put alot of my energy in making the calculator fairly modular, meaning, extra aspects of the calculation that I did not anticipate initially could easily be added at a later stage. So I welcome this form of feedback with open arms. Thanks again for your time.

Hi Phil, thank you for the response, just to clarify, are you implying, municipality tariffs for systems of up to 100kWp? Would these be commercial or still private homes? I had a look at the commercial aspects of each municipality. The tariff breakdowns are quite complex from off season and in season tariffs, peak and off peak tariffs, as well as different subsets of tariffs based on the industry of the business. Is this what you were referring to? Or did I misunderstand?

In most cases yes. I just realised I should've included this nugget in an explanation as well. There is also logic in place that looks at whether the inverter supports zero export functionality. If it does, and the benefit of being grid tied doesn't outway the cost. Then the user is presented with results where the excess is not exported. Yes, each municipality has its own tariffs. Currently I have only used full kits, but I intend to build the system dynamically using user inputs in the near future. Currently there are links to solar kits I use in calculations. They are all grid tied inverters. I plan on pushing hybrid systems soon. But putting all the required data together is quite cumbersome and time consuming.

Thanks for the feedback. So the break even feature uses an addition of the nominal amounts for each period (this accounts for the electricity growth rate defined in the Advanced section of the form). Once the sum of the nominal amounts surpasses the initial cost. The system break even. The ROI works a bit differently. It is calculated using the sum of the Present Value (this accounts for both the electricity growth and the inflation rate) of the savings over the initial cost of the investment. The ROI gives a far clearer picture of the investment potential. It is inclusive of, not only the savings generated in today's value of money, but also the entire 20 year investment period. In terms of the example below the form on the home page. I understand now I should've included more info. That example was done using a R1800 bill. Monthly bill having quite a big impact on the savings potential of the investment. Have I cleared up the misunderstanding? I will put more information in the about us page about how these concepts work. Thanks for raising this with me. Eager to hear more EDIT: I will also surround the example images with some information about what everything actually entails.

Going to take a leap here and share the websites URL. https://www.solarcalculator.co.za Hopefully this doesn't get me into any trouble. For those who do check it out, and leave feedback (whether in the contact us section of the site or responses in this thread - probably better in this thread to keep transparency with everyone interested), can't wait to here back from you about how I can tailor the calculator to suit you and almost anyone else. Thanks again for your time.

@nikki.adra yes but that calculator is localized to India. This here is The South African Solar Investment Calculator

Hello fellow green energy enthusiasts, For the past 8 months I have been working on building a calculator which handles majority of the general factors that are taken into account when investing in solar for the home, and working out returns of said investment based on your use case. The purpose for undertaking this project was merely to raise awareness to South African's about the benefits to investing in solar power, at least from a financial gain standpoint. I have found quite a few of these international calculators, but none that accurately depicted the financial benefits (or already contained the various rates and tariffs involved) for a South African interested in solar for their home. So I decided to build a Solar Investment Calculator for South Africans that will remain free for all to use. No ads, no logins, no commitments. The purpose of the tool is purely to help any potential green energy enthusiast make that leap over solar, even if its just for financial gain. So the calculator generates 2 savings models (per kit, for a range of solar kits available online). 1 model for paying in cash, and another for taking out a loan (where you can define the loan rate and payback period). This shows users that there is financial gain investing in solar power even if you require financing for it. Now to the point of this post. I'm steering clear of giving the impression that I am trying to promote the site here, but I was hoping to get an experts opinion (if there are any with a few minutes to spare, please let me know) on the work I have pushed out thus far, it's been 100s of hours and I'd like to know if I am headed in the right direction. I have also included some information about how the calculator handles some of the inputs given by users. Any feedback from any user is welcome, my intention is to make this the best it can be, to provide any South African with a fantastic service that will never cost them a cent. And of course, in the long term, pushing for a greener economy. URL intentionally left out to avoid breaking any forum rules. (I will edit in the URL if forum admins allow me to do so). Thanks for taking the time to read this.