SilverNodashi

Has anyone tried these panels yet?

well, here's the problem. If you had to earn R350/hour for yourself, it's fine. But if you offer a service, as a company, R350/hour is quite cheap. As a company, you need to worry about travel expenses, rent, wages, UIF, tax, insurance, marketing, etc, etc, etc. And decent skill don't come cheap. A qualified, and legal, "wiremans license" these days cost 4 years training.

What does your Doctor charge? Solar installers can be seen as most other contractors. Electricians charge anything between R350-R950 per hour, depending on their skill/experience/qualification, and the job/market segment. My dentist charge R200 for a filling while another dentist with more degrees behind his name, in a wealthier part of the city will charge R600 for the same job.

You don't ^need^ todo this. 9 panels on a single axpert will work fine. The 2ns Axpert will be used to give more KW energy to the house.From experiments I didn't see any difference between running 6 panels per inverter, in a dual inverter setup VS running all 12 panels on a single inverter in the same setup. The inverter doesn't need to know when it's day or night

Yes it's a taboo topic, since people want to make money and don't want to be told they are not allowed to. So you figured you could buy directly from one of the suppliers, this immediately cuts out the entrepreneur's profit. Some add 10%, some 15% and some even 30%. Your example price And that's what makes this topic (not yours alone, but the topic around cost in general) taboo. And now you comes the cost of installation. Would R6000 be too much? Would R4000 be too much? Yes on both occasions. But R1000 - R1500 would be fine in most people's minds. Then they expect you to come with your own staff, own tools, own ladders, van or something big and strong enough to safely transport those 12 solar panels, 8 batteries and expensive inverter, along with cables, etc. Those 12 panels will weight about 350Kg, 8 batteries would be another 230Kg (or 460KG since you need 16) and the inverter weighs 30Kg. Courier fees on these items would be exorbitant so the installer would probably have to rent a trailer to haul the 2m long panels to you. So since he can't add markup to the products and he can't charge too much for the installation, you get a sub standard installation. Bringing this up in a public forum opens up the whole process to a can of worms. How does one justify your cost, and then turn around and give a client good service if he insist on paying peanuts, cause he could do it cheaper himself?

Yup. An oil spill is an oil leak. Using oil, through normal combustion is generally worn rings or something else inside. An oilspil could be a hole somewhere, or broken seal or worn gaskets

Sounds like you spoke to Pieter, or Petrus? He's quite knowledgeable on the product, but I won't "hang on his lips" with this. Trojans are good but some other brands deliver the same performance. I have seen forklift 2V cells which can be drained down to 0%, get fully recharged the next day and still happily continue along. This particular bank is an unbranded bank. Some of the more expensive brands also do this very well.

I know someone with a 10Kw Solar Frontier, and a 10KW Polycrystiline installation, and the SF performs on average 10-11% more than the Poly panels, on the same day with similar loads.

the pump controller has some fancy sensors in for this purpose.

I don't have a borehole, but would have done that as well. Interestingly, on the farm, the borehole pump runs on 16x 200W panels and it used to pump 20Kl within 3-4 hours. Now it runs 3 days to fill the same tank!

so, @DeepBass9 what other ideas did you come up, to use all this excess solar energy? I wish I could sell some of it, even if just to my neighbors!

well done! looking good.

I can't post pictures due to my commercial involvement, but as a cheap installation, my dad glued some 250W solar panels to his roof with silicone rubber, many years ago, and they're still there. I never took picks of the panels though.

The prices quoted, are they on special or dealer stock? Let's work with consumer prices, from a random website on the net: 3KW Replus - R16,600 8x 6V Trojan - R12,000 (R24,000 to double up) 12x Renesola 305W panels - R38,262.96 Mounting, labor/COC, etc - R17k-R20k Total: R86862.96 Give-or-take R1000 here, or there, more or less. Or R98,862.96 when doubling up on the battery bank. 225Ah will give approximately 220W/hour over 19 hours (24 hours - 5 hours sunshine). If you get 6 hours sunshine, like many in South Africa do, you score a bit Realistically, you might need more like 600Whr - 800Whr during the night. Check your consumption over a couple weeks to establish a good baseline and work from there.

We buy back old batteries. Where in JHB/PTA are you?

In Gauteng the going rate is between R1000 and R2000, depending where in Gauteng. 3phase is generally more expensive.

Microcare inverters and MPPT controllers are manufactured in South Africa. First National Battery manufacture the M-Solar range of solar batteries. Art Solar manufacture solar panels, though they're fairly new to the game. Helukabel manufacture solar cables. KD Solar manufacture solar mounting structures. All of these companies are VAT registered so you should be able to claim the VAT back, and I am sure they'll all come to an agreement with you for export to Madagascar as well.

aah. ok.

Where did you get it from? Perhaps your supplier could help?

Or there is no interest yet.

Yes it's a pivot point.

I don't think that invert is available in South Africa.

please explain?

haha. our insurance is just as bloody expensive! Luckily never had to use it though.

It depends where you are. I drove past some dams on my way to Middelburg yesterday that was plenty full. Some farmer's "spul punte" was running full blast at 7am in the morning.