I am seriously considering going the feed in route, but would like to hear pros and cons from anyone out there that is feeding in to the grid 

From your previous posts you seem pretty knowledgeable regarding feeding in and what it costs/requires , ie. its not feasible ?  maybe @Achmat can chime in, i saw that he is feeding in .

Edited December 22, 20213 yr by Nexuss

If you have the "right" old spinning disc meter, give it a go, but don't push back too much. 🤔

Unfortunately I don’t have a spinning meter 😢😢, but trying to do the sums to see if it is at all feasible, even with the cost of the R10,000 bi-directional meter, if I could accumulate enough credit during the summer months and use it during the cloudy/rainy winter months, a 5 kWh battery is around R25,000 nowadays and during winter, some days there might not be enough pv to charge a total of 10 kWh batteries to 100% soc.

1 hour ago, TimCam said:

If you have the "right" old spinning disc meter, give it a go, but don't push back too much. 🤔

i have a spinning meter but they dont turn back since like for the past 30years haha. Its gotta be a reaaaly old one lol

4 minutes ago, Tariq said:

Unfortunately I don’t have a spinning meter 😢😢, but trying to do the sums to see if it is at all feasible, even with the cost of the R10,000 bi-directional meter, if I could accumulate enough credit during the summer months and use it during the cloudy/rainy winter months, a 5 kWh battery is around R25,000 nowadays and during winter, some days there might not be enough pv to charge a total of 10 kWh batteries to 100% soc.

i highly doubt that it will be feasible with a pv array under 10kw.

It appears your power grid  in CT is way more stable than ours in KZN. Just today, we were without power for about 7 hours, so even if you pushed back into the grid, it'll mean nothing here, so that is why batteries are important to me. As Nexuss says you'll need major PV to make it worthwhile. R10 000.00 for a meter which is not even 1:1, is theft by the municipality.

@Nexuss, you appear to be right, I have a 6.4 kWp array, which according to my calculations "might" just be ok, but probably not worth it.

@TimCam, even one of the SSEG managers at CoCT, agrees that the price of the meter is exorbitant and they have been trying to get it lowered.

the math was run in another thread (do a search) , from memory around 24kw panels was the breakeven point, on something like 600 units usage.

also depends what your export tariff is, and varies wildly.

the ave appeared to be 0.80/unit, so you'd have to send back 3x units for every one you use, something along those lines. 

then theres monthly fees of around R1k I think, not sure if exported energy can be used to offset.

personally I'd look at ways to reduce appliance load, (geyser - solar, heatpump, gas hob) and see about getting water of the grid. 

Edited December 23, 20213 yr by Nitrious

Here's a question: Is anybody finding it worth their while to sell back to eskom/municipality? I've looked at COJ and COCT tariffs, and they don't seem attractive to me, what with the cost of a special meter and monthly admin charges.

Edited December 23, 20213 yr by Bobster

8 hours ago, Nitrious said:

so you'd have to send back 3x units for every one you use

I think that it is a national requirement that you must be a net consumer (in kWh, not in Rands) - it certainly is in Cape Town.  That means that you can at best get about a one third reduction in the energy cost by exporting to your limit.

There was a user on this forum who claimed to get back thousands of Rands every month from COCT, but he never provided proof and seems to have gone off air.  Not sure what that was all about....

1 hour ago, Bobster said:

Here's a question: Is anybody finding it worth their while to sell back to eskom/municipality? I've looked at COJ and COCT tariffs, and they don't seem attractive to me, what with the cost of a special meter and monthly admin charges.

 

41 minutes ago, Calvin said:

I think that it is a national requirement that you must be a net consumer (in kWh, not in Rands) - it certainly is in Cape Town.  That means that you can at best get about a one third reduction in the energy cost by exporting to your limit.

There was a user on this forum who claimed to get back thousands of Rands every month from COCT, but he never provided proof and seems to have gone off air.  Not sure what that was all about....

Yes, @Erastus made millions of rands by feeding back to the grid. Now he has been mysteriously renamed to @DDD username. And probably bought a private jet with the savings from feeding back to grid and gone on holiday with it...

Not worth the money or trouble for any domestic user to feed back into the grid in SA. CoCT is like a mafia and they punish you for helping them out with your excess generation.

Edited December 23, 20213 yr by giorgos

1 hour ago, giorgos said:

Not worth the money or trouble for any domestic user to feed back into the grid in SA. CoCT is like a mafia and they punish you for helping them out with your excess generation.

If you can't get a 1:1 payback, it is tantamount to theft, as they are providing your power to other consumers at a profit. A municipality is supposed to be a NOT FOR PROFIT entity.🤔 Like you say, the mafia comes to mind. Public servants, my foot.🙄

15 hours ago, TimCam said:

If you can't get a 1:1 payback, it is tantamount to theft, as they are providing your power to other consumers at a profit. A municipality is supposed to be a NOT FOR PROFIT entity.🤔 Like you say, the mafia comes to mind. Public servants, my foot.🙄

I don't think that means they aren't entitled to charge the end user more per kw/h than they pay Eskom. After all, they bear the cost of delivering those kw/h to your home and for managing the accounts.

 Also there are subsidies. COCT and COJ have special packages for people who qualify as indigent. They get a certain amount of free (or cheap) electricity and who is subsidising that? Right: You and me.  

They have to pay staff, they have to pay rent, rates etc. They have to keep stock of parts. OK... many of them are so dysfunctional that they are not actually doing all of those things, but I think that "not for profit" in this case means they can recover reasonable running costs and build up some sort of surplus for a rainy day.

So I'm comfortable with the idea that they don't do a 1:1 exchange for resold electricity, but the tariffs could be more attractive. They could be, say, 1.75:1 rather than 3:1 or 4:1.

COJ have been sniffing around my place. I can see their point. They still bear the cost of providing a reliable supply to my property, but they are getting a very small contribution from me.