DeepBass9

It doesn't suit everyone's installation, but a low pressure solar geyser works much better than a high pressure system for the simple reason that as soon as you open a tap on a high pressure system, the cold water starts mixing with the hot water, and cools the water down quite quickly. Also the high pressure geysers don't heat the water directly, but use a heat exchanger, which is less effective than low pressure geysers where the water is inside the heating tube. With a low pressure geyser, if you set the water inlet to fill quite slowly, then you can use just about the entire volume of hot water before the cold water has any effect. We have a 300litre high pressure and a number of 150litre low pressure geysers, and the low pressure work much better.

We have a gas stove/oven and an induction plate. That induction plate is really nice for when the sun is shining as you can adjust the power from 200w up to 1800w on our model. So I have a stainless steel whistling kettle for boiling water, but you can also do stuff like put a flat bottomed cast iron pot on it and let it simmer all day at low power for making stews and soups etc. Also we have a wood burning stove (falkirk jewel) which is very popular in winter, and a wood fired pizza oven which is great for roasting things, baking bread and making pizzas of course!

9000 cycles? That will be someone else's problem... Also, 8kWh is a bit light for our usage.

I'm using a JSM 6kVA Inverter and microcare chargers. Quite old school so no comms to the batteries. 8kWh is still half of 15kWh, for same cost.

And over estimate how much actual useful wind you get.

So a final update on this. Eventually the wind turbine burnt out the controller when trying to brake the turbine against a really strong wind. So this experiment is no more, although the turbine still stands on its tower as a conversation piece and a warning against trying wind generation on the highveld. The main problem is that the wind doesn't blow very often, and when it does, the sun is usually shining in any case, so there is very little for the turbine to do. There were only a few instances where there was very strong wind overnight where there was a measurable input from the turbine. So lesson learnt.

The reason I am looking at these is I am running 8 x Trojan 6V 375Ah batteries which are now in year 6 of their life. Obviously they will not last for ever, I'm hoping to get 8 years out of them, but eventually they will need to be replaced. I could change over to lithium chemistry, but my inverter and chargers don't support that so it will essentially be a complete new system. The easiest would be simply to swap out the Trojans, with new one's but there don't seem to be any suppliers in SA anymore and they are pricey from overseas. The tubular batteries seem very affordable and will be compatible with the rest of my kit. Atlas battery is offering tubular batteries 12V 300Ah R5200 VAT INC. So 8 of those will put me back R41k, I get the VAT back, plus the scrap value of the old batteries, so I should be at around R35k, for a 600Ah battery back, with claimed 3000 cycles at 50% DOD. That will be about 15kWh of storage at 50%. Is there something I am missing here?

Does anyone have any experience with these batteries? Seems like a very good price if the 3000 cycles number is realistic. https://solarwarehousesa.com/products/conderenergy-tubular-200ah-battery-3000-cycles Conderenergy High Performance Solar Tubular 200AH Battery (Please note this battery can leak if it gets tilted ,we do not courier this item. Please collect or arrange your own courier at your own risk if this battery leaks please just refill it with distilled water) What is Tubular Battery? Tubular batteries are lead-acid batteries that are much larger than flat plate batteries. Tubular batteries are commonly seen in UPS and inverter systems. The tubular batteries have a positive plate nestled within a tube wrapped in cloth that holds its electrodes' power.

I replaced all 3 diodes, but still no joy. What I can see now though is that one of the 3 cell arrays is completely dead, and producing zero volts even in bright sunlight. I believe the problem is therefore a defect on the panel, either in manufacturing, or a microcrack from a hailstone or something like that. So it looks like I will have to replace the panel. I will keep the old panel though, and just rewire it to be a 200W 24V panel, which I'm sure I'll find a use for somewhere else. I have a cottage that runs on an ancient 50W panel to drive some 12V LED lights which I'm sure could make better use of a 200W panel.

Is this the right thing? : https://www.communica.co.za/pages/search-results-page?q=10sq050

Thanks! I'll see if I can find some on the West Rand or Rustenburg.

So I broke open the back of the panel junction boxes and tested the diodes. I had to saw open the box with a hacksaw, and it was full of some spongy gloop which had to be scraped away. I tested the diodes with the multimeter diode setting and got 1 , 1 and blank in the one direction, and then 134, 128 and -599 in the other direction. I'm not sure what these numbers mean, but I guess it means the 3rd diode's smoke has escaped. I don't see any identifying numbers or marks on the diodes, maybe it is on the back of the diode. Now to buy a soldering iron and get the diodes off and try and find replacements.

I'll give that a try. The box on the back of the panel is glued on so I am going to have to break that off before I can see inside. Here's a video on how to test : I think probably the easiest is to just replace the panel. Its only one panel and they are not too expensive.

PS, the other two panels in the string produce 40V at the same time of day.

Has anyone ever had a solar panel expire? I have an array of Enersol 300W panels and one string was giving intermittent issues (not charging), so I isolated it to one panel that seems to be producing half voltage. The open circuit voltage is <30V. I measured just now (although the sun was low) and it was 23V. Is there anything that I can test and fix, or is this just a dud and needs replacing? Specs: Electric performance at STC * Maximum Power 300 Wp Power Tolerance 0/+5 Wp Module efficiency 15.4% Maximum Power Voltage 36.6V Maximum Power Current 8.20A Open Circuit Voltage 44.8V Short Circuit Current 8.69