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Total beginner question on Solar


Justin_A

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27 minutes ago, plonkster said:

... suddenly spending another few thousand to turn it into a self-consumption setup didn't seem so bad.

That is where I got stuck ... could not ignore the historical costs after having had a few false starts over the years and having bought myself into a few corners I quickly realised that the cost will run away from me, never to be recouped.

Much cheaper to reduce the Eskom load, for evening loads are the costly ones.

If it was a hobby however, not a necessity, a hobby that I wanted to learn from and have fun / make some money, then no cost would have been attached to that. Would have been "Be quiet woman, I am doing this" attitude. :P

But it was not to be. It is / was a necessity.

FWIW, yes, I tried all sides to convince myself to upgrade to a Multiplus, the numbers just did not add up ito more panels + installation + + + and cost of a new 2nd hand inverter - unless I hit that jackpot again on a good priced Multiplus like when I came so close to a 1 year old 24v 3000va Multiplus with the latest firmware for R5k .... then all bets are off.

 

9 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

:lol: My wife never sees it that way......

Nor does mine ... allegedly a new living room suite is required. Improvements in the kids rooms.

Gmpf, why, my chair is comfy and kids can pay if they spend their hard earned monies going more than what I can afford to take the wife out.

 

Ps. Talking about taking out. Jhb/Pta is much cheaper on taking the wife out on a night in town than in Cape Town! My word, I am so upset. No, I am NOT moving.

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2 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

Off topic, but TTT, how do you do this? Do you have a description of your setup somewhere?:  Mecer Xpress Executive A890A-WIFI 8.9″ Windows 10 Tablet with 7 port USB HUB reading ALL my devices

Mecer tablet and SolWEB reads all 6 my devices.

2nd system (2x200w panels) are just running just lights and a few IT pieces of equipment off-grid, using free 2nd hand batteries to make it viable.

Main system and how I did it is here. Not the most finessed system, but it has been working since 2011 of 

 

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12 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

a hobby that I wanted to learn from and have fun

It's a bit of both for me. So one might say some of the cost is subsidised by not having to pay for golf clubs. There's also the other side of finance, namely cash flow: Sometimes the ability to do something in smaller blocks outweighs the total cost so that even if you end up paying double it's not that bad.

For example, have you looked at the interest on your home loan recently. Okay, home loan is a bad example, houses appreciate in value. Car payment, that is a better example... check out the total cost over the usual 5 year period... and why do you do it? Because you don't have 250k rattling around in a cookie tin somewhere... :-)

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On the topic to Fridge / Freezers , we changed all the cooling stuff at our home to Bosh and it made a massive difference during night time when all is in bed you could clearly see the  change when everything was installed. Now my base could be as low as 99w ( If I disconnect the tv from staby, chargers and bits even lower) for the house with a peak of 240w and that is with two Upright freezers and one full fridge. Definitely the way to go if you are going full offgrid. Come to think of it I should go and get the model number for the fridge as we only paid something like R 5k for it..

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5 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Because when I started panels where just coming down from +-R32.00 a watt.
Solar geysers had nice rebates.
Everyone back then knew rule one for solar is to first reduce the load, which costs a pretty penny by itself, and it takes time.
MPPT controllers where pretty new and if you found one in SA, very expensive.
Only "cheap": part was the Victron Phoenix inverter and Trojan batteries where very "expensive" compared to UPS batteries at +-R600 for a 105AH.
Electricity was cheap.
Axperts did not exist.
Grid tie was something you did not eat.
And switching on SOC - was probably one of the first in the world to use a BMV to change from batteries to Eskom as it was never done before I did it. Believe me, I Google and emailed every single mainstream manufacturer in SA and international at the time asking for it. 

So after having done all the way I did it for dealing with Ekom failures since 2008, solar UPS with Eskom as backup, why change it if I know that I do not want the kitchen hairdryer vacuum cleaner on solar for I know the load that is costing me money?

And you know that in Cpt it is illegal to grid tie unless you spend some more and then it is still geared against you when you do the sums, as we have touched on before.

End result: At times in the day the house uses 40-60w for hours on end, tenants pushes it up to +-250w, which is not my cost.

And as we all know powering stuff at night, Eskom wins if you are wise.

One day when it is just the wife and I, my little system will run us comfortably nearly off-grid with Eskom powering only the larger loads.

The good 'ol days ;) Eskom was cheap and reliable. My dad paid R7K for a 250W solar panel back then. When I started it was R4.5K for a 250W panel. But I went big as soon as I could afford it since my wife's home-office suffered a lot during the 2008 load sheddings. Somehow it made sense to spend more than what I would get back from eskom savings. Now the savings are astronomical. 

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Here by me going solar was one of the easier decisions that I needed to make. 

Deposit was R 35 000 to connect the power , line rental R 2500.00 per month if I downgraded the line it would cost me R 1500 per month for the rental but I had to use the line for at least 3 months so that I could "prove" that I didn't need the access transformer size then they would investigate and change. This could take up to 6 months to complete . 

Usage would be about R 600 so rounded 

R 35 000 for deposit and 10 mouths at R 3000 = R 30 000 that would put met at R 65 k after just 10 months and nothing to show for it. 

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2 minutes ago, SilverNodashi said:

Now the savings are astronomical. 

Makes a HUGE difference if you are in the trade. More costly if you are not. :D

Paul did that Excel sheet to try and calculate the ROI on solar. It is a very tough question to answer. 

Reducing your Eskom bill and then investing the savings versus a solar system ... I think the investments will supersede solar if you are as low as you can get on Eskom.

BUT, lets not go there. There are many ways to go with solar. Everyone to their own with as many advices and experiences from all of us to mitigate excessive spending.

 

1 minute ago, PaulF007 said:

R 35 000 for deposit and 10 mouths at R 3000 = R 30 000 that would put met at R 65 k after just 10 months and nothing to show for it. 

For you it is a no brainer Paul. Same as for all the farmers. City users, eish, I am struggling to make the numbers make sense after all these years after having had to replace parts and battery banks already.

 

10 minutes ago, plonkster said:

... cost is subsidised by not having to pay for golf clubs.

That is a very good justification.

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1 hour ago, plonkster said:

That makes a rather big difference. When I started I installed the system so my office would run during load-shedding.

Then load shedding stopped and suddenly spending another few thousand to turn it into a self-consumption setup didn't seem so bad. One of the rules of investment: you ignore the historical cost and only look at the present potential (you already paid for the historical cost anyway).

If I had to install it from scratch today, I wonder if I'd do the same. I'd look at the overall investment from a completely different angle, right?

Necessity is the mother of invention as they say.

If I had todo it all over again today...? I would use Thinfilm solar panels and a Grid tie inverter with battery backup (thet didn't exist when I started) 

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1 minute ago, SilverNodashi said:

If I had todo it all over again today

Plus one at that! 

But the cost of grid tie, it just irks the living shiite our of me to pay that connection fee if they could just as well have said: Generate X% more per annum, give it to use for free for the poor, and you can use the grid as battery.

I would jump at that today.

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13 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

But the cost of grid tie, it just irks the living shiite our of me to pay that connection fee if they could just as well have said: Generate X% more per annum, give it to use for free for the poor, and you can use the grid as battery.

I would jump at that today.

The bean counters of the city are between a rock and a hard place: The funders are cutting costs, the recipients are not cutting cost and are in fact increasing with each housing development (which has to come with FBE). The connection fee isn't meant to keep you away from solar power. It is to ensure that the infrastructure is paid for by someone, because it is no longer possible to subsidize that from sales when the consumer uses the grid as a "battery", ie aims to reduce his costs to zero.

I'm no longer that bothered about the connection fee. R400/month for battery storage is cheap. Or spend money on a grid limiter and remain on your current tariff, which btw will also soon be split so that the connection fee is separate, around R200.

Yup, what I am saying is that even the ordinary guy without solar panels will soon pay a connection fee. This is not extra-on-top, what they will do is make the first 600kwh slightly cheaper so it evens out about the same cost, but the infrastructure is paid for separately.

So to conclude, the connection fee doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the difficulty in signing such a system off, the very expensive PrEng you need to essentially look at the paperwork and then certify that the equipment complies with NRS-097-2-1 (or so the paperwork says). This will apparently change once Nersa figures out their stuff...

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19 minutes ago, plonkster said:

So to conclude, the connection fee doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the difficulty in signing such a system off, the very expensive PrEng you need to essentially look at the paperwork and then certify that the equipment complies with NRS-097-2-1 (or so the paperwork says). This will apparently change once Nersa figures out their stuff...

This is the other cost I refused to pay.

Ok. I do concede I need to get my irking under control with the connection fee. It is cheaper than batteries.

Will wait till Nersa gets their act together i.e. read the fees to connect is reduced ... and Victron has an approved inverter on the list off-course.

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On that topic though... anyone know a PrEng one can bribe (in other words, pay at rates that approach that of a normal person rather than that of a psychologist/lawyer/brain surgeon) to sign off the 6-piece comissioning document? Seriously, it's like an hour's work...

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4 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Makes a HUGE difference if you are in the trade. More costly if you are not. :D

Paul did that Excel sheet to try and calculate the ROI on solar. It is a very tough question to answer. 

Reducing your Eskom bill and then investing the savings versus a solar system ... I think the investments will supersede solar if you are as low as you can get on Eskom.

BUT, lets not go there. There are many ways to go with solar. Everyone to their own with as many advices and experiences from all of us to mitigate excessive spending.

 

Back then I wasn't in the trade, at all. I did tinker with electronics and had some panels laying around for my own hobbies. Only got into the "trade" a couple years later. But my IT company and my wife's home office suffered enough that any cost spent was an immediate savings. 

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4 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Plus one at that! 

But the cost of grid tie, it just irks the living shiite our of me to pay that connection fee if they could just as well have said: Generate X% more per annum, give it to use for free for the poor, and you can use the grid as battery.

I would jump at that today.

Ok, ok, let me re-phrase, I would use a grid tie inverter due to how it combines solar + eskom, but not grid tie completely. So, I would use an Infinisolar or similar affordable device. But with Thinfilm solar panels. 

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8 hours ago, plonkster said:

They make more power when it is cloudy. For one...

Yes and they tend to work a bit longer - i.e. they would produce some energy earlier in the mornings and later in the evenings. I know some people who claim they even work, albeit very little on a full moon night. And they generally produce about 11% more energy than polycrystaline panels. Cost about 10% more. 

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So does a 200W thin film produce 222W or does it also produce 200W and just cost 10% more?


It produces 200w and costs 10% more. After all, the rating is done by shining 1000w per square meter onto the panel using sophisticated lights that mimic sunlight and seeing how much it makes :-) So under the same peak conditions it's the same BUT the 10% extra you gain at lower light levels, earlier in the mornings and later in the evenings and on cloudy days.

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

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1 minute ago, DeepBass9 said:

So does a 200W thin film produce 222W or does it also produce 200W and just cost 10% more?

Does 200W Polycrystaline produce 200W energy?

 

Thinfilm is more efficient. And it works better when there's shading / partial shading / low light. So, overall during the day it would produce more power

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Just now, DeepBass9 said:

That article is 3+ years old.

Solar research has advanced dramatically in 2015. Solar Frontier, one of the local TF panels have a 10 year structure warranty and 25 year production warranty. Same as most mono and poly panels. http://www.solar-frontier.eu/fileadmin/content/downloads/powermodule/guarantee/Product-and-Power-Output_Guarantee_PowerModules_EN.pdf

Now I need to ask the question: Who has ever bothered to take stats of their solar panels, from the day of installation, and have compared it with the manufacturer's data sheet to see if performance is on par? AND, if you have, is your roof in perfect alignment with the sun? IF not, you won't get the same performance as their data sheet suggest, but you should still see a linear degradation to about 80% after 25 years. Solar Frontier guarantee 25 years, that's the same as most other manufacturers offer and it's good enough for me. 

Here's the problem with TF panels, they require more roof space to get the same wattage/sqm. Which in my case would be a problem as mt garage roof only allows for 12x 265W panels. And the house is too far - i.e. I would have to relocate the inverter + battery bank. 

 

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