Peter V

My installer wired in a red led voltage indicator (shines red and shows battery voltage) which illuminates when load shedding. I think he used one of the auxiliary outputs on my Multiplus.

How much electricity do you usually use? Your bills will tell you that.

Looking at my home as an example, we usually use 13 to 14 kWh per day. I have about half the panel power you do. On a sunny day my system is usually charged by 11:30.

You could look at selling your excess BUT check the tariffs that apply where you live, and the accompanying regulations, very carefully.

I am supplied by City Of Johannesburg, and as I read the current tariffs that are in the public domain, I won't even break even on feeding back, so I don't. Also I'd have to work my system harder, which is not going to do anything positive for the life of the inverter.

I do wish I had more panels. On a sunny day, as I said, the system is charged by 11:30, sometimes 11:00. On overcast days it can take a lot longer, and if I had more panels I would recover more quickly on those days. 

So (we get to the conclusion eventually), live with this for a couple of of months. Watch how it behaves on overcast days. THEN decide if you want to feed back your excess. A sunny day is a poor test of a system. 2 or 3 overcast days in a row... now THAT is a test.

My installer wired in a red led voltage indicator (shines red and shows battery voltage) which illuminates when load shedding. I think he used one of the auxiliary outputs on my Multiplus.

I know how it is with family.
Just today I spent two hours at the wife's grave.
She thinks I am digging a pond, poor thing.

Peter my wife saw someone advertising a few weeks ago. I'll see if she can find the details. 

In an ideal situation I would have the fuses as close to the panels as possible incase there is a PV cable short on the long runs to the inverter. Then have just an spd and breaker near the inverter. 

I have Victron and happy with my choice. Sunsynk was in its infancy at the time. Retrospectively, I could have left R40K in my pocket had I gone Sunsynk. 

The SA public are being hoodwinked by installers. The installers push a brand of inverter that suits them, not necessarily what's in the best interest of their clients. The sunsync vs luxpower point above confirms this. It used to be Victron or nothing, now it's sunsync!
Who really needs a bidirectional inverter. Most installs actually limit the feed to grid anyway...

A nice idea until it goes with the old tank when the tank gets replaced. I've been toying with the idea of building an IOT scale to monitor the weight and thereby ascertaining the level.

A lot of information. You are already developing an understanding of where your energy goes and that is the right starting point.
Put in enough panels to get your battery charged and run your day time load on a partially cloudy day or that low yeild period of winter.
My big win in saving grid usage was the bigger battery which gets me through the night with enough in reserve to deal with load shedding should we get to a very overcast morning (open to debate as this is almost a double jeopardy situation as my battery (10 kW) normally does not discharge below 35%).
Understand what your demand is for load shedding. This will help in sizing your battery. Fortunately I could monitor for 15 months before installing panels and upgrading my battery.
 

Any geyser is either on or off. Might be your timer might be your thermostat. Splitting db for non essentials and essentials will not cause extra power consumption.  Best way to check this is by putting a clamp meter on the live geyser breaker and see if there is current flow when the timer output is off and check the current consumtion in amps when it is on. Times the current by 230v to see the actual wattage consumed. 

Done
 

Anyone running a heat pump in conjunction with solar water heating? Interest is academic at this stage as I probably use less than 150kWh of power pa (mostly from battery) to boost water temperature first thing in the morning.
Even though I have PV, it still makes no financial sense despite the horrific power price increases of recent times. Similarly I do not believe there is an economic case for a heat pump other than a leaning towards the green brigade.
If we have loadshedding, we have cold water on cold nights unless I remember to choose another timer on the smart geyser switch.

Done
 

I live in #6 in my street. We used to have a very nice man living at #8. The lady at #10 is... financially stressed. She owes the City a lot of money and gets cut off at regular intervals. #8 used to sling an extension lead over the wall so she could keep her fridge and a couple of other items going. 
I admired his unsolicited display of good neighbourliness. 

How many of us have thought about sharing our systems with a neighbour, at the very least with a couple of security lights running off your own system? Reason I mention this, is because really and truly solar as an option is not cheap for everyone and if we shared a line at least on a neighbour who does not have the same wallet, this makes our neighbourhood or more households more secure. Food for thought. It may even be with a stand-alone street solar lights. We also need to be considerate of elderly folks whose limited pensions do not enable them to think beyond their daily meal.

Thank you Gents- I’m going to go with 6x on the North Roof.
I’ll report back on how I go.

A technology I understand and have implemented in many industrial applications over the years. It is not cheap to implement, membranes have a finite life and roughly speaking constitute around 80% of the initial installation cost. RO plants are also quite energy hungry.with high pressure pumps. The RO company was based in Stellenbosch and as I recall was started by a bunch of Stellenbosch Univerity whizz kids.
I will differ with you on rights to water but agree on the total lack of competence or integrity in managing the resource these days.

That's where you have it wrong. Water constitutionally belongs to the people of South Africa. It's a scarce resource and access needs to be managed. Imagine a farmer putting up a major dam on his land and the 50 farmers down stream are then left without.

A technology I understand and have implemented in many industrial applications over the years. It is not cheap to implement, membranes have a finite life and roughly speaking constitute around 80% of the initial installation cost. RO plants are also quite energy hungry.with high pressure pumps. The RO company was based in Stellenbosch and as I recall was started by a bunch of Stellenbosch Univerity whizz kids.
I will differ with you on rights to water but agree on the total lack of competence or integrity in managing the resource these days.

No, they are not. The batteries are shot. Lead acid batteries are not designed for solar applications, even if they are called "Deep Cycle" batteries. In my experience, lead acid batteries need at least 24 hours to be fully charged. Once they achieve their float voltage, they need to trickle charge for many hours in order to reach full capacity. If you load shed more than once per day, you are dead. Then the batteries will discharge at a faster rate the second and third time round you load shed in 24 hours, as the batteries had no chance to recover. Your system will go below 50% SOC very quickly and you damage them even more. I give your system another 3-4 months and you will be down to 30 minutes before the system switches off due to low voltage. 

I will probably be in our home for another 5 or so years so both my investment in PV and my battery upgrade made no sense at all but I treated the investment as sunk capital and saved ourselves the frustration of load shedding and given myself R1500 per month to spend on beer.

If you are able to set the bulk, float charge voltages and cut off manually, then yes, you could use Li batteries.
If the charge (bulk and float) voltages are preset and you cannot override them, then no, do not connect a Li battery.

Also have a slate roof
The house was built in 1949 with wooden shingles.  In 1984 when I bought the house, the roof was replaced as follows:
Two layers of malthoid.  New battens on top and the slates attached with copper nails.
For fitting panels, we drilled right through the slate and roof underneath (80mm) and bolted the channels directly.  Put rubber washers between the channels and slate and also filled the holes with silicon.  Used stainless steel bolts
This was done in 2015 with 8 panels and it never leaked and is firm

Colleague has the water running down the roof problem. His solution is that twice a year he has to get on the roof and use shadenet to cover a portion of his tubes so the water doesnt get too hot. In winter he has less covered than in summer.