Doug

I was given a link to this forum by Richard Mackay who thought I would be interested in the topic. After reading through the posts it would appear that no one on this forum has used, or owns, the Geyserwise product. We lost our house in the 2017 Knysna fires but rebuilt on the same site in 2018. In the process, having always being interested in the solar topics, I decided to invest in the Geyserwise system for the new build. I have found, over the last two years, that the system does what it says on the box! The installed system is as follows: 1) Panel orientation, North East 2) Panels set flat on the roof with a pitch of 30 degrees. 3) Panels, Renesola standard 250 watt, 3off. 4) Geyser 150l Kwikhot mounted vertically on South wall. 5) Standard geyser blanket fitted. 6) Element Geyserwise dual AC2.2kW/DC(8-72volt) 7) DC element set to a maximum of 60 degrees. 8) I have installed a voltmeter and ammeter on the DC input to the geyser so that I can see what is going on. 9) Electricity availability charge roughly R4.00 per day. 10) Electricity charges are roughly R2.00 per kW. My personal details are: 1) Retired. 2) 2 persons in the house. 3) Hot water is used for showering(no bath in the house) , generally once a day in the evening. hand washing etc when necessary and sink duties 2 times a day. We have no dishwasher, never have had. 4) No domestic help. 5) Cooking is carried out using a combination of induction hob combined with two gas burners and a double oven. My wife does a fair amount of baking. 6) We have two cooked meals a day, full English breakfast and lunch. We do not eat out a lot. 7) There is one large fridge/freezer unit. 8) All lighting is LED. 9) We have no electric space heaters. I have tried to insulate the new house as well as possible and our climate is fairly mild. 10) I have a number of fair size machines in my workshop. I am sketching this all out as a previous poster has mentioned, quite correctly, your power consumption depends entirely on your lifestyle and without this information you cannot make an informed assessment! Also, as someone has posted the solar salesmen are salesmen…. Because of my interest in solar water heating I kept a detailed record of power consumption in the previous house. The long term average was 13kW per day. With the Geyserwise system installed our household power consumption is now between 7 and 8 kW per day during summer and 9 to 10kw per day in winter. From the above detail I am saving approximately R5.00 per day in winter and R9.00 in summer. In retrospect I would consider an additional panel to support the winter power generation. This power would however go to waste in summer?