Hey guys,

So we have 10 units, our town's power is iffy, and on top of that, Eskom and their loadshedding..

So I'm just wondering, would one be able to actually deploy a MOERSE solar system which is housed in one unit and feed every other unit from it?  Maybe just lights and plugs for each unit, not geysers and stoves.

 

Anyways, would love the input, bad idea, good idea, maybe build solar kits for each unit individually, etc, thanks!

Edited September 25, 20223 yr by bloupotlood

A number of issues to consider:

- Sectional title or freehold?

- I very much doubt that any single unit will have sufficient area to house panels for the whole complex

- Electrical safety in the common reticulation system

- Panels on individual roofs but that means inverters for each unit. Dc cabling needs to be kept short

- one needs to keep geysers, stoves, aircons on a separate non-essential circuit anyway

- how are you going to fund at a cost of in excess of R1M?

- Suggest you write some rules and allow individual owners to do own installations (PM me and I will send you what we have for our complex of 11 units)

Edited September 25, 20223 yr by Peter V

A great idea to tap on the experience of Peter V in this regard. All the points raised are spot on and perhaps the way to go moving forward.

Will go one step forward and also exclude kitchen 3 pin sockets from the essential circuits for each unit.

3 hours ago, bloupotlood said:

Anyways, would love the input, bad idea, good idea, maybe build solar kits for each unit individually, etc, thanks!

Most likely the best route to do each unit individually. If one single system you would need to think about metering and issuing monthly individual billing which is a lot of extra work. Might be the best route to work out a group deal discount from a trustworthy installer and have the same equipment installed in every unit maybe with the possibility of individual panel and battery needs. It would be a lot easier if everyone at least runs the same equipment (battery/inverter combo) imo and you'll have one place to go to for warranty claims etc.

This is clearly well-intentioned, but a minefield for the body corporate. EG you have one large battery bank, but some folks will draw more from that than others. Now how do you explain to Mr A that although he personally was frugal (so he says)*, the batteries were still exhausted and so his lights went out.

Better to amend the rules to allow each unit holder to make their own arrangements, with some restrictions as to where the equipment can be situated, physical protection to be installed, limited responsibility of the body corporate, maybe a stipulation that once installed the system cannot be removed, etc. IE take a good look at what @Peter V has. That also means you don't have to have a per unit surcharge to fund the system.

* Many, many years ago I lived in an apartment block where the landlady's method was simply to divide the electricity cost for the building by the number of units. This was problematic for many reasons. So most of the residents grouped together, confronted the landlady and said that since there were meters for each property, the fair thing to do was to read the meters and bill accordingly. Muggins here stuck his hand up when she asked if anybody knew how to read meters. I was soon unpopular with certain residents (those who had joined with us, and which we suspected to be high users, who the current arrangement suited). One guy demanded that he be allowed to read his meter first and then check with my figures. Unsurprisingly the readings tallied, though he insisted that I round down on the fractional part of the reading, even though I said that was costing him mere cents. This went on for a few months, with him convinced that somehow I was misrepresenting, even though his own readings tallied with mine. I said that I couldn't cook the books, other than by falsifying readings, which he knew I wasn't doing, because I didn't know what the total was (that came from a separate, external municipal meter for the whole property). Eventually he allowed that his wife did lots of baking for the tuisnywerheid, but she'd assured him that this used "hardly any" electricity. So he stopped fighting it, but stayed angry because, in his mind, he was getting shafted.

Edited September 27, 20223 yr by Bobster.
grammar

Many ways to get this rolled out. You can have a Single big installation room to house the Equipment. Then control the distribution via appropriately sized AC switchgear. So 3 breakers via a transfer switch 1 for plugs, 2 for lights. 10a or 5a breakers will sort out any person trying to draw more than their fair share of power. 

Many complexes will want to do this & I have had requests to solve this exact problem. How do you limit each place to their fair share 🤣😂

43 minutes ago, Steve87 said:

So 3 breakers via a transfer switch 1 for plugs, 2 for lights. 10a or 5a breakers will sort out any person trying to draw more than their fair share of power.

Imagine the nightmare for someone having to constantly go and switch on each unit's plug circuit if they switch on a higher than 10A load. Having to get a standby person when this person goes to the shop/church etc

On 2022/09/26 at 7:07 AM, Steve87 said:

Many ways to get this rolled out. You can have a Single big installation room to house the Equipment. Then control the distribution via appropriately sized AC switchgear. So 3 breakers via a transfer switch 1 for plugs, 2 for lights. 10a or 5a breakers will sort out any person trying to draw more than their fair share of power. 

Many complexes will want to do this & I have had requests to solve this exact problem. How do you limit each place to their fair share 🤣😂

haha, yes exactly, will have to be a way to isolate each user in case someone decides today is a great day to do some welding!  lol, you know how it goes, people will forget they're on loadshedding and carry on as normal.  So I imagine you can have "AC Switchgear" for each individual unit that, say, trips when it exceeds 1.2kw for example?  Sorry I'm very stupid with electricity.

They'll quickly learn to not exceed demand during loadshedding when someone's not here to flip the trips back up 😂

I've PM'ed Peter for info on his setup.

This will have to be a very limited setup, just to keep the lights on and give some power to odds and ends, nothing wild.  This is just a BARE essentials solution, I know once you start heating and refrigerating things, costs rise exponentially, sadly.

Another fine line to consider I imagine is that the second you start charging individual users for electricity, you enter some serious legal toxic gas!  So this will have to be some sort of value-add.

  

Edited September 27, 20223 yr by bloupotlood

On 2022/09/25 at 8:40 AM, Peter V said:

A number of issues to consider:

- Sectional title or freehold?

- I very much doubt that any single unit will have sufficient area to house panels for the whole complex

- Electrical safety in the common reticulation system

- Panels on individual roofs but that means inverters for each unit. Dc cabling needs to be kept short

- one needs to keep geysers, stoves, aircons on a separate non-essential circuit anyway

- how are you going to fund at a cost of in excess of R1M?

- Suggest you write some rules and allow individual owners to do own installations (PM me and I will send you what we have for our complex of 11 units)

PM Sent and thank you for the feedback!

I've been thinking about the one "big" central system (Nothing crazy, looking at delivering around 1.2kw per unit with around 2kwh capacity), with panels covering maybe two units next to each other to keep solar panel cabling as short as possible, and using one unit's spare room as housing for everything, vs individually distributed installations.

I think it might end up more expensive to do individual units (labor costs quoted per unit x 10 vs 1 unit), and will open up the hardware to tampering and accidents so that introduces some risk.

There will also be lots of electrical work as the system would have to be wired to each units db board lights and plugs (Maybe a single coloured "loadshedding" plug).

And as mentioned in the thread, there will have to be a hard cutoff (trip) when using more than x kw when in loadshedding, maybe also if possible have a little light that lights up when you are in loadshedding so users are mindful about consumption at the given time.

Edited September 27, 20223 yr by bloupotlood

23 hours ago, Scorp007 said:

Imagine the nightmare for someone having to constantly go and switch on each unit's plug circuit if they switch on a higher than 10A load. Having to get a standby person when this person goes to the shop/church etc

This 10/5A breaker lives inside each unit. There is no need to reset these. The individual person will be inconvenienced if they exceed the required Amperage. No need to police anyone. 

1 hour ago, bloupotlood said:

PM Sent and thank you for the feedback!

I've been thinking about the one "big" central system (Nothing crazy, looking at delivering around 1.2kw per unit with around 2kwh capacity), with panels covering maybe two units next to each other to keep solar panel cabling as short as possible, and using one unit's spare room as housing for everything, vs individually distributed installations.

I think it might end up more expensive to do individual units (labor costs quoted per unit x 10 vs 1 unit), and will open up the hardware to tampering and accidents so that introduces some risk.

There will also be lots of electrical work as the system would have to be wired to each units db board lights and plugs (Maybe a single coloured "loadshedding" plug).

And as mentioned in the thread, there will have to be a hard cutoff (trip) when using more than x kw when in loadshedding, maybe also if possible have a little light that lights up when you are in loadshedding so users are mindful about consumption at the given time.

Quite frankly, this kind of system is little better than a cheap trolley system. If you are going to invest in solar, it must make economic sense or you are prepared to blow R100k plus for convenience. All the sums I have done indicate paybacks of in excess of ten years even with Eskom escalating power cost at 15% pa in the early years.

What I have learnt in complex living, is let people live their own lives, keep involvement in common issues to a minimum. Trying to pull their lives together with a system like you propose will only cause disharmony in the long term, e.g. "My plugs keep tripping YOUR inverter is causing the problem." and so it will go on.

Edited September 27, 20223 yr by Peter V

A different way of looking at this... ideally 1st one should should measure, measure and measure some more, build up a usage profile for each of the units to see what the consumption is like...

Then if you want to mostly replace Eishkom you at least have some data to base the idea of solar + inverters + battery storage on. Presumably you'd have 3 phase coming into the community, but only single phase per dwelling... what is the breaker size per phase on the Municipal/Eishkom end? you could for solar use some micro inverters with a few panels on each dwelling to distribute the power generation throughout the various units, but ultimately you would still need some substantial power concentration in the form of some LARGE battery capacity and some LARGE inverters, which makes the distributed micro inverters + solar panels a more expensive add on, but at least would allow the solar production potential to be fairly substantial. When running off solar, with the sun shining, you probably would not need to limit anyones consumption, assuming enough solar potential is there, the problem comes in more so, when its cloudy or night time and batteries have to provide the electron movement.

I could imaging the you may need 120kWh's worth of storage/batteries and probably at least 50kW's worth of inverter capacity, at a thumb suck, just this, is likely to be 250k's worth + sundries and installation fees, then you'd still need to solar side etc... if you can finance this, it may be a worthwhile option to propose, if the power supply is worse than just rolling blackouts, let's call it what it really is.

As for some using more energy than most, with the steel mills there was usually some max demand number that could be consumed within an hour or so, one could implement something like that, you'd have to, yes again, measure and if a certain number of kWh's are exceeded for a time period, then the unit in question will get disconnected, until the period for the given consumption is over... usually this was done in 60minute periods, I think... but this should/would only be necessary if the power comes from the batteries, I'd think, since the solar side should probably be majorly overdimensioned so as to allow battery charging even when everyone's ovens are running for Sunday lunch, with the dishwasher cleaning the dishes at the same time etc...

 

59 minutes ago, Kalahari Meerkat said:

A different way of looking at this... ideally 1st one should should measure, measure and measure some more, build up a usage profile for each of the units to see what the consumption is like...

Absolutely agree. One also needs to understand usage profiles because this will lead to behavioural changes later on, e.g. pool pump only runs when there is excess power from PV.

 

1 hour ago, Kalahari Meerkat said:

As for some using more energy than most, with the steel mills there was usually some max demand number that could be consumed within an hour or so, one could implement something like that, you'd have to, yes again, measure and if a certain number of kWh's are exceeded for a time period, then the unit in question will get disconnected, until the period for the given consumption is over...

This will be the case and will be the cause of unhappiness hence me advocating individuals care for themselves. People will tailor systems to their own needs and budgets.

One factor and I can attest to this. Units in a complex occupied by tennants are always a problem caused by both absetee owners and the tennants themselves.

I think the best you could do is get a survey of everyone's needs and appetite for investing in solar, set one standard for all installations that are on common property (I assume the exterior and roofs are common property), and then maybe try to negotiate a bulk purchase and one-time installation fee that hopefully gets favourable costs to all, but as separate installations. Although even then landlords may want to have their own bill if it can possibly be seen as a tax-deductible expense.

Any type of solution where you need to start metering individual households and rationing their power during loadshedding is bound to get contentious.

Each unit should have the freedom to install their own Solar system.
See what the uptake is and once owners are prepared to fund the system that they desire/need, then get one installer to do all the individual installations, perhaps get some discount for the multiple installations in the same location.
Centralising it is bound to cause unnecessary friction in the future.