Robbo

My mate didnt top up for July and August and bought R500 today. He was charged R250 fees plus VAT so R287.50 of charges. So he got 78.2kwh for the remaining R212.50. I havent bought yet but it seems like there is some sort of accumulation of fees unfortunately.

Heres how I read it: You pay R300 They take off the service fee which is R150 + R22.50 (VAT at 15%) = R172.50 Now you have R300 - R172.50 = R127.50 left to purchase electricity. Rate per kwh is (as you have above) R2.3634 + VAT. So R2.7179/kwh incl VAT Now R127.50 divided by the R2.7179 = 46.91kwh which agrees to what you got.

Yes please!

That is true, and I get your point now. Maybe I'll give it another month and put in R100 in September and see what happens. In theory then you should buy more in 1 month to avoid the fixed fees for the months to come, up until the units get more expensive. Will report back

I agree with you, but the sabc had reported it wouldnt accumulate on a page that has now been taken down, so hoping for a miracle On statements, are you thinking it will be on your municipal bill even though its prepaid?

Hi guys Has anyone not topped up their prepaid in July and now topped up in August? Conflicting reports about whether the R230 accumulates or not, so would be great to get practical confirmation. I normally only buy 500kwh a year so did that in June, but want to plan if this fee is building up in the background.

NIce! where did you buy it?

I currently use this: https://youtu.be/AK5E2T5tWyM But if I could get a free website I would transition to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXAwT9N-7Hw Or if you dont mind paying something use NabuCasa which is the official one.

Yeah, I used 9.7kwh from the grid in all of September and have now used more than that in the last 2 days. It always gets me thinking if COJ starts charging a connection fee for prepaid, how big a gennie I will need to add for these cloudy periods...

Thanks! Just strange that the Watts work. All other sensors in the MQQT are unavailable. Looking at the config YAML there is this: SCHEDULES: - KEY: w READ_EVERY: 5 REPORT_EVERY: 60 CHANGE_ANY: false CHANGE_BY: 80 CHANGE_PERCENT: 0 Is that correct or should it be done for each key? Otherwise will raise in github as you suggest EDIT: would you mind sharing a template YAML? I cant find it on your page.

Hi @kellerza, in the latest update, is there any reason I would lose some of the sensors? All the kWh, Amp and volt ones are gone, grid hz and battery SOC also gone. But all the Watt ones are still working. I thought it was because I had :now next to some sensors in the YAML but I removed all those and still not working. Saw a few errors in the logs and cleared all of those as well where _power changed to _energy. Any pointers?

I bought a Intel NUC off facebook marketplace, nothing special, a celeron with 4gig ram for R1000. Then bought a new 128gig SSD for it. Runs HAOS perfectly and far more powerful than a rpi.

Awesome card @slipx! Would you mind posting your YAML for this card to set inverter values?

Its a different lab from the one I used so not sure what the conclusion on it is. And can't seem to find the HCO3- (bicarbonate) value to plug into the link I posted. Hopefully the installer or someone here can help more

Not sure on your pump, but I do it on mine

🤷‍♂️ My installer didnt say anything to me... Actually I got 5 or 6 quotes and it wasn't mentioned once.

@BugsRSA sure, you will need Solcast or some kind of solar forecasting tool integrated into HA, and I also use the telegram bot to send myself status updates. e.g. if it turns off all geysers at 10am and doesnt get to a stage of turning them back on again then I will be in trouble, so I want to get whats happening pushed to me so I can turn things back on. I personally dont want everything turning back on when power is restored but the option is there. PS I'm no expert on node red so there is probably a far better way of doing it, but I can understand this and it works flows.json

Wait for the analysis report, there is no way the installer can guess at this stage what the level of corrosiveness will be. There should be a line with "LSI" on it and you can take it from there: https://www.lenntech.com/calculators/langelier/index/langelier.htm LSI (Carrier) Indication: -2,0<-0,5 Serious corrosion -0,5<0 Slightly corrosion but non-scale forming LSI = 0,0 Balanced but pitting corrosion possible 0,0<0,5 Sligthly scale forming and corrosive 0,5<2 Scale forming but non corrosive Still waiting to see about mine as well, I'm using little bits still to keep the estimates lower in the future should there be a problem.

I honestly dont know enough to comment on that! In addition to the normal UV light and 3 big blue filters (5micron, charcoal and 0.5micron) we also have a ph canister and a calcite canister. Seems to do the trick. Officially all we would need is the UV light based on the water testing results to make it potable, but the wife was not keen on that so here we are.

I'm in central Sandton but after many water pipe breaks in the area we got fed up and decided to look after ourselves. We are still connected to municipal water but have installed a manifold where we can switch between that and borehole. The installer suggested still switching over to the municipal feed for short periods over the next few month so that we slowly use less and less, that way the estimates they charge on water usage will also get smaller. I essentially want the best of all worlds and be connected to the municipal water for an extra back up. The chance of both systems going down at the same time must be small (touch wood). So will see what CoJ does. One other point to remember when running the borehole water into your house long term, the water quality is normally quite easily and cheaply made drinkable, however there might be more required to protect your pipes from corrosion of that water.

I went off grid for water about a month ago. My borehole is only 37m so you might need a bit more power in the borehole pump than me. The main thing from my perspective was to get a VSD pump for both the borehole and the booster pumps. These types of pumps have a softer start and therefore dont put a huge strain on the inverter at startup. i.e on startup they will slowly increase their power consumption as opposed to the cheaper pumps that can pull 3x or more their rated power on startup. This is quite a big deal in an off grid water scenario as every time you open a tap that booster pump runs, so if it spikes and then settles at 0.75kw every time you wash your hands it does put strain on the system. My DAB Esybox booster pump will pull 200W to 600W the majority of the time but can ramp up to 1.1kW if I have irrigation and shower and a tap going. My borehole pump is a Grundfos 0.55kw VSD, again gentle startup but I also have a smart switch connected to it so that it only runs on sunny days. My tank is 5000l so I can wait a day or 2 easily if its raining.

For your use case as just a water backup system, a standard DOL pump may work. You will have to carefully manage your loads during loadshedding to be sure not to trip the inverter though. I went with the bigger Esybox VSD and I'm very glad I did for my offgrid water solution. You would not believe how many times the pump turns on per day, it must be hundreds. So its useful that its just 150W-500W at a time in most cases. Only if a few taps go on at a time will it get closer to full power. So you would need to consider that there will be a full spike in power every single time someone fills a glass of water or washes their hands when getting the DOL pump.

If you dont mind zigbee, these dont need neutrals: https://eiferer.co.za/products/sonoff-zbmini-l?_pos=2&_sid=652bee581&_ss=r There is a v2 out overseas but not here yet: https://sonoff.tech/product/diy-smart-switches/zbmini-l2/ I have been waiting for ages for Shelly to launch the 1L but it has been "coming soon" on their website for months, so I think the ZBMINI-L is the next best thing. Just annoying as I dont have the zigbee bridge yet so adds to the overall cost.

Firstly Im assuming you mean Home Assistant... This is what I did and would do the same again. To answer your questions: 1. I went with a second hand Intel NUC. It has a Celeron processor and 4 GB ram, paid R1000. I then replaced the HDD with a new SSD which was around R500. 2. Get the NUC on facebook marketplace 3. The start of the setup is as per https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/generic-x86-64 Read it carefully as you may need an external drive enclosure to flash the image if you dont have one lying around to fit the SSD. Then I really like this channel https://www.youtube.com/@EverythingSmartHome but there are thousands 4. It really depends on what you want to achieve, what inverter you want to connect etc etc. You are only limited by your budget!

Ah thanks, only one polling at a time is quite a sticking point.