ibiza

you're more North than Cape Town, but down there sunrise 0737 and sunset 1750 today.... my sunrise here 0711 and sunset 1751 today, Cape Town is so far south and even though its quite a bit further west than where I am, that the daylight is less, 10 hours 13 minutes there, here 10 hours 40 minutes, at the moment, come summertime, of course, down there the days are longer by probably more than 30 minutes, I'm guessing, at the height of summer.

+100 TO @madness_za
Stick with reputable stores.
If you already doubting then definitely stay away :)
GUt Feel is always good to follow.
My goto known legit stores (I have purchased from them myself multiple times)
https://www.diygeek.co.za
https://www.solarwaysuppliers.co.za <--- they often have great sales so almost top of my list
https://lithium-cells.co.za

Domain registered in 2019 via GoDaddy, Site hosted on AWS.
Ts&Cs reference South African things like the CPA, but the lack of actual street address and landline contact details makes me very wary
As always, if you can't visit them physically and collect, I would stay away

The media always get technical stuff "wrong" for "reasons"
The inverters are where the devices were found, this has nothing to do with the panels.
It is very easy to hide radio comms devices in circuits these days so it is not outside the realm of possibility.

Definitely need to build up some reputation 1st else no one on this forum will support you...
There are already trusted suppliers so you would need to prove yourself 1st :)
And as @stefan44 mentioned, a good start will be posting a decent classifieds listing here on the site with decent info and price.

I would say the easiest way to add the extra panels without interfering with the current setup is have a separate MPPT like a Victron 150/100 just for those 6 East facing panels.

Paying an entity simply because it exists is ludicrous. If paying it for making sure there is supply, then there should be SLAs and contracts as well, which stipulates penalties.
Luckily, I have been offgrid for the last month, just need to add a small genset for overcast days.

Nope, the "state"is a burden to the public, due to their incompetence, theft, bloated and unnecessary departments, insane salaries, thousands of unnecessary taxes, etc.
Now these government muppets are trying new and expanded ways to steal more money for themselves and their cadre's.
All of this has absolutely no benefit for the public or local businesses. Obviously I'm not a fan of bloated governments... 😒

It depends :-)
My outbuildings and my pool pump are not backed up. On a sunny day with the grid up the inverter will run the non-backed up circuits with surplus PV. On a non-sunny day it will use battery, then grid for those circuits. So I still save on them, but I lose them when the grid goes down, even if it's sunny. As suggested in this thread I am thinking of a change over switch so that we can use the laundry when there's load shedding (at present we run it off an extension cord).

For water heating I have a heat pump. This is more efficient than a conventional element and draws a lot less, so I can get away with it on the backed up side.

There is no one right way. The household needs to decide what is essential to them and what they can live without. But the big loads are generally geyser, stove and kitchen appliances. TVs, lighting, wifi, electric fence don't draw much. Kettles and microwaves do, but not for long. Dishwasher... check the manual and see what it consumes on different programs.

There are limits that you need to be aware of
1) The sustained output of your inverter
2) The sustained output that your battery can deliver
3) The capacity of your battery.
4) The C rating of your battery,

Good batteries these days are 1C. That means you can use the entire capacity of the battery in one hour (and recharge at the same rate). This means that a 10kWh battery can deliver 10kW at any given time, but you probably don't want to do that for a whole hour.

Try to do as much as possible during the daylit hours when you have free electricity off the roof. EG I never run my dishwasher at night. It runs in the morning when I have lots of PV. I try to do all the heavy lifting (so to speak) during the day, so the loads at night are minimal and so we easily get through the night on the battery.
Finally, most systems have a way to reserve a portion of the battery for use only when there is no grid. On my system I have this set to 40%. It will not discharge the battery past 40% when there is grid power. So I go into any load shedding our outage with at least that much power available.

I disagree. Rather have power early and late with east and west panels. But make sure that there is no shading in the identified locations. Especially optimise for winter sun.

I cannot explain why lightning would do any damage, especially since you have all the “required” protection in place.
However, I can say the following about my own off-grid system that has been in operation since 2018. I have no earthing on my solar panels and no SPD’s anywhere.
I have been through several thunder storms, and no lightning has never hit my house, but maybe it’s because I never gave it a path to hit via earthed solar panels…
I know that many will disagree with me, but I feel that earthing your panels is an invitation for lightning to hit them and damage any number of components within the system. You are providing a path needed for the lightning to hit the earth.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I will still get hit and have to pay the price. If it happens, I will admit my fault.

My calculation was based off of my current system costing R55000 with a saving of roughly R1100 per month, gives me an ROI of 4.1.
Funny enough, I just did the calculation, if I buy another battery for R14000 (Cyclone F5 from Solarway Suppliers), that takes my overall system cost to R69000. Bearing in mind, this system costs includes all costs associated with the system such as raspberry pi, solar assistant, mistakes I made with wrong conduit, wrong breakers, etc.
R69000 / R1400 = 49.2 / 12 = 4.1 ROI.
This calculation doesnt take winter into account or yearly increases in electricity. I will be able to provide more accurate data after 12 months of continuous use.

My system was considerably cheaper than most because I did the bulk of the work myself, call it 95% the install I did myself. Granted, I made some mistakes, it was still considerably cheaper than using an installer.
System was still inspected and connected to DB by an electrician and electrical engineer has signed off.

System commissioned in December 2024.
5kw Luxpower SNA5000
1 x 5.1kw battery
8 x JA Solar 600w panels
Geyser is solar and have not run element since November
My grid use can be attributed to not having sufficient storage, I need 1 more battery at a minimum to get my grid use down:

Overall, since installing, I've saved R3700, averaging R1100 per month saving. This could be up to R1400 with an additional battery.
At the current price of electricity and my usage / generation, my ROI is +- 4.5 years as my system, fitted, with COC, wiring, engineer report, registration, etc, cost me R55000

@ibiza ,
The photo you've posted gets a bit blurred when one zoom's in.
The following comes to mind:
1) The Isolators seem to be AC ones. You should not mix AC & DC.
2) To terminate cables, one should use ferrules.
3) Fuses. Please include those as well (or are they located in another DB)
4) Same with SPD's.
General: The DB seems too small to house a 6 into 2 PV system. - Unless you have the real protection elsewhere.
Here is what a typical 2 into 1 PV system could look like.

Start with at least four solar panels. They actually save you money and make you independent. The inverter and batteries are just for comfort.

Using a whole inverter just for solar charging seems a waste. Why not just use a stand alone Solar Charge Controller?
To answer your question, it relies on the voltage of the battery. Since the battery is LFP, it won't know how full it is until it's nearly full; then the battery voltage will suddenly shoot up. So the external charger is useful for pouring energy into the battery while it's not full. I used to do this before I had two inverters in parallel. I set the bulk/absorb battery voltage setting of the external charger just a little under than of the main inverter. That way they don't get confused near the end of the charge. The battery can't charge at high current at the end anyway, so it doesn't matter than only the main inverter charges the battery the last few percent.
Being plus models, you might add paralleling boards so that the inverters talk to each other. Plus/King models can do that; straight OG models can't (they're Axpert VM models). But if you're not using the output, it might get confused, and I don't see the point of the added expense. There is CAN bus messaging going on between paralleled inverters; I think that one of the things that they communicate is their battery voltage. Possibly also State of Charge. But I don't know if they use this information to improve the charging process.

I think warning sign is no actual physical shop, address given under "contact us" seems dodgy at best and of course, no contact number cell or otherwise... avoid like the plague is my suggestion... why would some outfit in Kuruman be able to better pricing, but not have any way of contacting them other than via a web form or an email address tied to a domain just about one month old... registered in Australia, yup, that penal colony...
Domain Name: SOLARSHOPZA.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2955530140_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.webcentralgroup.com.au
Registrar URL: http://www.melbourneit.com.au
Updated Date: 2025-02-01T08:31:18Z
Creation Date: 2025-02-01T08:31:18Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2026-02-01T08:31:18Z
Registrar: Netregistry Wholesale Pty Ltd

What type of premises are we talking about here? The typical household has a 60A single-phase supply, ie. around 14kW power output before the mains switch trips. And uses around 1000kWh per month. Give or take.
From that perspective I reckon most homes should be able to go off-grid with 12-15kW inverter power, 15-20kW of panels, 20-30kWh of batteries, some efficient appliances and water heating equipment, and just a little bit of intelligent power management.

Wrong... here we have 5kW inverter, 38kWh battery and 4.7kWp solar...
If you do not want to "manage" your energy usage, in other words, run the dishwasher during sunshine/solar production hours, for instance and don't care about serializing energy use, in other words, run into the kitchen, turn on the oven, the kettle and the microwave all at once, then yes, and I dare say, the 30kW inverter may not be enough, but if you have a brain, engage it before just blindly flipping switches, then, like us, you will just about never reach the 5kW limit of the inverter, we regularly peak up to 4kW, never for very long and have yet to trip the inverter due to drawing too much energy, because we're running too many high consumers at the same time...
Been off-grid since 2020 with an extension lead from the neighbour initially... proper off grid since 2023 and feeding the extension lead to the neighbour, who is now also off-grid.

Hi to all in order to leave the grid you will need 30kw inverter , 60 kwh battery and 30 kw of solar.

Thank you Jay for the valuable input. I agree that the dual geyser heating system might be the way to go. My consumption is around 900kw per month (although it goes up quite a bit running the AC when the power is free). Having seen some people who have 'leagalised'their solar systems having to pay between 20 and 50k I would rather take that money and invest it in a generator. Then you have to pay the " energy availability fee" per month... then we never know what stupid law they will think up next. All in all, I just think it's better to get rid of eskom entirely. Our local municipality has overcharged me for electricity by about R4500 per month so far, so I think for my sanity I just want to get away from eskom. Is my thinking flawed? I am pretty pissed

Thanks, I am normally fully charged by 10am, think I may start with 1 extra battery and see how it goes...

Madness   ☝️  - comrades must eat they say!!   🤨
Time to get more panels & batteries

If the only inconvenience is to your eyeballs, I suggest you don't look.
 

Installing solar setup for me was not just about the savings on the electricity purchase every month, the benefit to always have power is a huge positive. If your system is roughly specced according to usage and you get the family to work with you on when to use what - you will save alot - every month!!
A solar system is a huge investment, if done correctly - money well spend and worth every cent!