Savings

[moolmanj]

Good day

I would like some advice from people who managed to install a system greater than what you are using with sufficient battery storage as well. Basically if you switch of eskom for a day you are still running.

Have you saved or reduced your Account and by how much taking into consideration clouds,rains etc.

 

thanks

[Jacques Ester]

Hi Moolmanj.

Here is my system.

Sunsynk 8kw inverter

12 x 335 w JA solar panels on MPPT1

8 x 560W JA solar panels on MPPT2

20kwh batteries.

Everything is on the inverter.

Here you can see the amount of KWh I have used from Eskom for the last 4 months

Still fine tuning the system

 

[moolmanj]

If i read this correctly you are barely using any Grid. WOW.. if i may ask what was your KW usage before going solar ? does you Batteries Last during the night ? and are you setup for Solar / Utility / Battery or Solar /Battery / Utility


I am doing 12 x 650w Bi Facial

4 x 550 Canadian

4 x 5.7 KW batteries

 

[Bobster.]

30 minutes ago, Jacques Ester said:

 

Still fine tuning the system

 

That's very good performance.

[Bobster.]

21 minutes ago, moolmanj said:

does you Batteries Last during the night ?

Batteries are like so many things - they're a resource that you have to manage. One management task is to maximise the electrical work done during the sunny hours, leaving less for the battery to do after hours.

I have half the battery that Jacques does. I get through the night. My rule of thumb is that if the battery is fully charged at 16:00 then I will be OK (above 40% SOC) until 8:00 the next day, as long as nobody goes bonkers with appliances in the morning. By 8:00 the sun will be up, or I will have given dire warnings to all and sundry (IE wife, housekeeper, dog) about the need to be careful. Though I am less bellicose about this now because we are 200-and-something days without load shedding.

But I still want to get through the night on batteries. That keeps the bill down. 

At night we have 3 fridges/freezers running (all fairly new, with inverter drives), external lights on (LED, they draw next to nothing), wifi, alarm, electric fence, TV, some interior lights, occasional use of kettle and air fryer. So we have adjusted our routines to, as I said, make as much use as we can of free power from the sun and don't do a lot at night. It helps that we have a full gas stove, but if we had electric we'd be observing the same routines anyway. Water heating is done with a heat pump (much more efficient than a regular geyser) and twice a day (early morning, which is included in my "until 8:00" calculations) and then again at midday. The geyser has a blanket on it to reduce heat losses.

I think most homes would struggle to get through the night consistently on 5kWh (effectively 4.5, since the battery usually shuts down at 10% remaining SOC), though I sometimes come in at that mark, but with 10 and some discipline it's definitely doable. 

My system is set to resort to grid if SOC gets to 40%, so I will always have at least 3kWh of backup  in the event of an outage. If we had a power cut starting early morning and overcast weather, then I might get through to 11:30 with some restraint. Getting all the way off the grid is hard, but you can certainly make a big difference to your bill. 

Though I'm not making the difference that Jacques is.

[Kory]

My system based in CT. 

2 Deye 5kW inverter 

2 Deye 6.14 kWh battery storage making 12.28kWh

18 545w  panels in NW and East direction. 
 In winter cuts my bill by  50%, In spring summer etc could be off grid but for a 1 hour geyser run in the morning that uses roughly 3kw. 
also we are currently 2 households living on my property. Looking forward to next year when it’s just us we will surely be off grid then. Would love one more battery especially with prices this low but I can’t justify until family move out the the flat and I know my real numbers might be an overkill for summer but will definitely help for Cape Town winters. 

[moolmanj]

Thanks Bobster

Very Insightful. I aswell not worried of getting of the grid more to get the Bills down as it is getting crazy expensive

[moolmanj]

Hi Kory

Hope you get them out soon  Glad to hear that it reduced your bill. Gives me Hope

[Kory]

9 minutes ago, moolmanj said:

Hi Kory

Hope you get them out soon  Glad to hear that it reduced your bill. Gives me Hope

Yeap you know how it goes, love them but need them out to calibrate my renewable energy system. Perhaps get a plug in hybrid with all that extra summer energy generated as I have no plans of selling to CoCT. 

[zsde]

Specs of my system in the signature.
It's an off grid installation. I am on prepaid and I have a change over switch.
Being compelled to charge the prepaid at least every 3 months, else one is completely disconnected, I work on R50 recharge per month and use some if an when really needed. Always keep a ~200kWh credit on the prepaid.
Alas, I could get away off grid completely. In dire straits I still have my generator.
Before my solar installation my average usage was ~200-300kWh per month. Now with Solar I use a bit more, because I can 
I do have a gas stove and need a 9kg bottle every 2 months or so. Those I still get at R230 from a local supplier

Below is my spreadsheet I started when I started with solar.
The first couple of months were incomplete info as my Solar Assistant was added end of October 2021.



 

[JayBee]

Sunsynk 8kW
6420W solar
10kW battery

Everything is electric in our house so when a few things are on the stove I sometimes get spikes above 8kW and use a bit of grid, the rest of the grid usage is from cloudy days when I can't cut down usage any more.

[mzezman]

2x5kw Sunsynk

3x4.8 Dyness

18 330w panels in PTA

3 years installed in Dec of this year - i have saved approximately R72k in Eskom costs since install, at an avg of 20k per year. Its an approximate figure because i havent done the work to accurately map the Tshwane tierd rates and just used an average - maybe one day when i have the time / inclination. We still use quite a bit of Eskom monthly - im nowhere near these guys' efficiency and utilisation. Another battery and a couple more panels would help but have turned my focus to water shedding for now. Ideally would like to have 20-25kwh batteries and 12kwp panels at the end of it all but for now it works.

[Jacques Ester]

On 2024/10/18 at 2:25 PM, moolmanj said:

If i read this correctly you are barely using any Grid. WOW.. if i may ask what was your KW usage before going solar ? does you Batteries Last during the night ? and are you setup for Solar / Utility / Battery or Solar /Battery / Utility


I am doing 12 x 650w Bi Facial

4 x 550 Canadian

4 x 5.7 KW batteries

 

Most of time I make it through the night but sometimes I use a small amount of grid in the morning. This is because of the geyser that is heating from 4-6 AM.

If the wife use the stove during the night it will result in the battery being drained a bit to much.

[GJ Cronje]

On 2024/10/18 at 1:27 PM, moolmanj said:

Good day

I would like some advice from people who managed to install a system greater than what you are using with sufficient battery storage as well. Basically if you switch of eskom for a day you are still running.

Have you saved or reduced your Account and by how much taking into consideration clouds,rains etc.

 

thanks

@moolmanj I am totally off grid, like no connection to my house. I am on a farm, with the following setup:

15kw inverter

30kw battery capacity

30 x 450w panels

3 geysers on timers

3 fridges

2 deep freezers

2 borehole pumps x 750w

 

This works for me, but I still have to manage this. My batteries are full at about 1 PM, but when it is raining or cloudy this sometimes does not even reach full capacity. 

I would say Eskom is still the cheapest, but I never know of any outages or cable failures.

Right now I am on 84%, and tomorrow morning it will be at 60%, but sometimes on rainy days I have to start the generator to charge up to 60% before going to bed. 

Solar is not cheap, but it makes life easier, and then again, you will have to maintain and maybe replace in a few years. Sorry, back to your question, I definitely save because I had to pay connection rent of R3500 per month just for the connection. But in town Eskom stays the cheapest way, for now.

It all depends if you need hot water at night and in the morning, because these are the big energy eaters, geysers!

[GMAC]

I'm off grid with only .

5kw inverter 

10kw lithium 

And 8 550w solar panels .

3 in the house 

How this possible I keep my loads down .

1 fridge . Gas stove and water warmer (geyser) in summer we use up a 9kg every 2 month and in winter  6 weeks on 9kg gas  . Swimming pool and water pressure pump .

By the morning the lithium in winter  percentage is between 55% and 63% depending on if the microwave is used to cook with or not and in  Summer between 62%and 70% . 

For me going solar is much cheaper on the long run and worth the cost .

 

 

[zsde]

On 2024/10/21 at 10:06 PM, GJ Cronje said:

Solar is not cheap, but it makes life easier,

and that was and remains my primary objective. The independence.
Not having to rely on someone to supply if and when they can, and then at ever increasing costs without providing anything more or better.

[wolfandy]

I surely can't be the only one here that has broken the 1 Megawatt-Hour for the month 

[WannabeSolarSparky]

On 2024/10/18 at 1:27 PM, moolmanj said:

Good day

I would like some advice from people who managed to install a system greater than what you are using with sufficient battery storage as well. Basically if you switch of eskom for a day you are still running.

Have you saved or reduced your Account and by how much taking into consideration clouds,rains etc.

 

thanks

11 units in the last 30 days, summer treats us well in Cape Town.
In summer most days battery bank only goes down to about 40% overnight.
We buy R250 every month now during summer which builds up a nice buffer for when winter come.
Thank goodness eskom prepaid does not yet take fixed fees, so the units build up nicely for winter.

 

[MdF]

10 hours ago, WannabeSolarSparky said:

Thank goodness eskom prepaid does not yet take fixed fees, so the units build up nicely for winter.

This is the issue though. Fixed "line" charges are coming for everyone soon in some way or another. Once those get set, there will be no end to increases on paying just to have a connection to the grid

[WannabeSolarSparky]

55 minutes ago, MdF said:

This is the issue though. Fixed "line" charges are coming for everyone soon in some way or another. Once those get set, there will be no end to increases on paying just to have a connection to the grid

Yip, it is coming to EVERYONE regardless of your supplier.
And until "they" offer better feed-in options, the best way to go IMHO is to simply add more battery capacity and go fully off-grid.
While regulations and laws allow it.

Seeing the trends all over the world, I doubt there will ever be a time when feed-in will make sense, almost as if "they" are for now "forcing" everyone to go off-grid.
And at the same time they will  slowly start changing the by-laws and regulations to make it more difficult to actually go off-grid.
Weird thinking by governments, but I am sure they have a "plan" which no doubt will always be disguised as "for the consumer's good or safety" but ultimately to benefit big corporations.

Lucky our government is so incompetent it is going to take a while to get there

Bottom line in my opinion, GET SOLAR and Batteries NOW while prices are low and laws/regulations still easy to follow.

Edited October 24 by WannabeSolarSparky

[Derek3]

1 hour ago, WannabeSolarSparky said:

Lucky our government is so incompetent it is going to take a while to get there

To appear incompetent and to actually be incompetent are two very different situations. The perceived "incompetence" is often a carefully planned strategy to keep the coffers full, allowing for even more people to dip into the funds.

A good example is the pension fund 2 pot system who is gaining the most not the poor working class trying to survive no the tax man is helping to keep the coffers filled up. A crying shame.

[Bobster.]

18 hours ago, wolfandy said:

I surely can't be the only one here that has broken the 1 Megawatt-Hour for the month 

Is this a household or a business or both? 

[Bobster.]

2 hours ago, MdF said:

This is the issue though. Fixed "line" charges are coming for everyone soon in some way or another. Once those get set, there will be no end to increases on paying just to have a connection to the grid

Yep. It's an argument that Eskom and municipalities are making to NERSA, that there should be a two part charge. One part to cover the cost of providing a connection, the second part being for the actual use of electricity.

In fact this happens a lot already. Anybody on the default tariff in Johannesburg is already on a multi-part tariff. Farms and small holdings serviced by Eskom have to pay a fee per month for a pole with a transformer on it.

What's happened in COJ is partly a response to clever dicks like me who read the tariff table, realised that there were good savings to be made by switching to pre paid and made that move. Then told all their friends. 

Now that was all legal, and you paid more per unit on pre-paid, but if I'm saving (and I was) then the City is getting less income from me. OK... I can argue (and I did argue to the executive committee) that pre-paid users pay in advance, before using, and thus do good things for the City's cashflow. 

Anyway, in Jhb the idea to have a two-part fee for pre-paid meters (actually three parts, because there are two fixed costs), goes back to 2019 or 2020, Herman Mashaba's first budget. The public were horrified, and the official response was that the fee had been added to the budget after council had agreed on it (but not before the Mayor signed off). Does that sound plausible to you? Anyway... the idea never went away. The fixed fees for pre-paid meters were actually approved during the first budget that was proposed during the lockdown. Then it was immediately removed (or relieved) as part of the City's relief package to help struggling households.

A year or two later it raised it's head again as part of what I thought was a progressive budget which included significant concessions for indigent residents. This was then not passed, and the eventual budget just applied the NERSA increase to all residents.

So although I naturally was not going to put my hand up and volunteer for this fixed fee, I knew that it was coming sooner or later.

In the meantime there are still good savings to be had, in Johnannesburg, for going pre-paid. Yes, you pay fixed fees each month, but that's a fraction of what is paid on the default tariff.

How long that remains the case is uncertain. As part of their 2024/5 budget presentation the City stated that in the long run they aimed for a situation where pre-paid and post-paid users would conbtribute equally. 

Edited October 24 by Bobster.
Typo fixed

[Bobster.]

24 minutes ago, Derek3 said:

A good example is the pension fund 2 pot system who is gaining the most not the poor working class trying to survive no the tax man is helping to keep the coffers filled up. A crying shame.

I'm not sure that was the motive, though there is no doubt that they got some extra income.

Into the late 80s (possibly for some years after) the situation was that the money you paid into your pension fund was yours and you could withdraw at any time, all of it or some of it. Employers would council you that you would be worse off at retirement time, but they couldn't forbid it.

The the laws changed at some point, and your retirement savings were locked in until you took retirement and were 55 or over.

Now this change. A sort of compromise between the two extremes.

SARS have arguably benefitted in an unforeseen way. You have to get clearance from SARS before making your withdrawl. The data that must be provided as part of this process by employers and fund managers has enabled SARS to identify about 200 000 people who were underdeclaring their income and who will shortly be hearing from SARS.

[Derek3]

Another planned strategy of the government to collect billions.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/796979/push-for-massive-fuel-tax-hike-in-south-africa/

Edited October 24 by Derek3