October 28, 20241 yr Hi All, I am a newbie . I am looking to get a solar system to cater for 15 units a day . The geyser is left on 1-2 hours a day . 1 x fridge , 1x freezer , 1 x router , 1 Micorwave used about 4-6 times a day and 2 x Tvs and 4 room Led lighting at night. I was looking at getting 1X Deye 5kva inverter 1 XDeye 5KVA battery 6 X 555W Canaian solar mono panels.
October 29, 20241 yr Hey ZUbair1710, Welcome to the forum! Is 15units per day your actual usage or are you estimating what you would need? You will only produce during sun hours and your electricity usage is 24hrs, so what do you want to get out of this > backup power, lower your grid usage or do you want to be independent of municipal power? Geyser you say runs for 1-2hrs a day - do you know what the element is rated at? 2kW, 3kW, 4kW? Reason I ask is because you opting for a 5kVa inverter, that means when you geyser is on lets say running a 3kW element doesn't leave alot of wiggle room. You boil a kettle or use the microwave and you exceed the inverter rating and your system trips. So perhaps think about an 8kVa. Rest of the electronics you mention is minimal.
October 29, 20241 yr Support your thoughts @Carl Anthony I am in the typical 15kWh usage per day bracket as well. I do have a gas stove. But as you see in my signature I have a similar setup, albeit a bit less battery capacity. But I operate off grid, i.e. I use my prepaid if an when in dire need via change over switch, i.e. I use either my solar system 99% of the time or Grid. There is no grid connection to my solar. I budget R50 a month for grid as I have to recharge once in 3 months, else they will disconnect it permanently. So every 2 months or so I add some credits and always maintain around 200kWh credit on the prepaid for those real bad solar periods, which don't happen often on the Highveld. Started off with one 5kW Inverter and soon realised I am killing it, Geyser plus kettle and it was running at 100%. With 2 in parallel those worries are gone. Here is my typical usage over the past 12 months. And I have not used any Grid this month so far. Edited October 29, 20241 yr by zsde
October 29, 20241 yr On 2024/10/28 at 7:47 AM, ZUbair1710 said: Hi All, I am a newbie . I am looking to get a solar system to cater for 15 units a day . The geyser is left on 1-2 hours a day . 1 x fridge , 1x freezer , 1 x router , 1 Micorwave used about 4-6 times a day and 2 x Tvs and 4 room Led lighting at night. I was looking at getting 1X Deye 5kva inverter 1 XDeye 5KVA battery 6 X 555W Canaian solar mono panels. I have a similarly sized system and have produced an average of 15.5 kWh each day for the past 3 years. Obviously you have to consider where you will mount the panels as this affects production.
October 29, 20241 yr If you are planning to remain connected to the grid, this system will get you far. Put the geyser on non-essential loads, and you don't have to worry about anything tripping. If you're going to go more off-grid, though, I'd go bigger for the 8kW, and add maybe double the battery capacity and panels for less sunny days, and to last you through the night in Winter.
October 30, 20241 yr On 2024/10/28 at 7:47 AM, ZUbair1710 said: Hi All, I am a newbie . I am looking to get a solar system to cater for 15 units a day . The geyser is left on 1-2 hours a day . 1 x fridge , 1x freezer , 1 x router , 1 Micorwave used about 4-6 times a day and 2 x Tvs and 4 room Led lighting at night. I was looking at getting 1X Deye 5kva inverter 1 XDeye 5KVA battery 6 X 555W Canaian solar mono panels. It depends where you live, If you are in the western cape you will struggle in the winter months, in the rest of the country you should be able to cover your demand on most days. An extra battery will also help a lot. If you live in the western cape I would recommend 12 to 15 panels and 3 batteries. Rest of the country 6 to 8 panels and 2 batteries.
October 30, 20241 yr 6 minutes ago, HendrikBigChief said: It depends where you live, If you are in the western cape you will struggle in the winter months, in the rest of the country you should be able to cover your demand on most days. An extra battery will also help a lot. If you live in the western cape I would recommend 12 to 15 panels and 3 batteries. Rest of the country 6 to 8 panels and 2 batteries. I have to agree here for western cape, my system is 10x 540watt (4xE 6XW) + 2x 100AH + 5kw Summer mostly off-grid, winter have to top-up from eskom most days.
October 30, 20241 yr On 2024/10/28 at 7:47 AM, ZUbair1710 said: Hi All, I am a newbie . I am looking to get a solar system to cater for 15 units a day . The geyser is left on 1-2 hours a day . 1 x fridge , 1x freezer , 1 x router , 1 Micorwave used about 4-6 times a day and 2 x Tvs and 4 room Led lighting at night. I was looking at getting 1X Deye 5kva inverter 1 XDeye 5KVA battery 6 X 555W Canaian solar mono panels. I think that's going to be marginal in terms of getting through the night*. Not a problem right now - other than not saving as much as you might - but have you heard Eskom say that load shedding is over? You haven't, and that's because they haven't said it is. But these systems are a resource that you have to manage. So you shift as much electrical work as you can to the sun lit hours. And maybe don't back the geyser up. It will still get help from the inverter whilst the grid is up and there's sunshine, but (I think I'm correct in saying this) would not contribute to the possible overload scenario described above. * Remember that you won't have 5 kWh to get through the night. The battery will stop discharging at 90% used (to protect itself), so now you're down to 4.5kWh. Usually the system is set to not run the battery all the way down so that we have something on hand for outages. My system is set at 40%. If the grid is up, and my battery is down to 40% then the system starts drawing from whatever else is available. At night that means grid. So let's say 30% and now you're down to 3.5 kWh. Will you make it through the night? There's an element of personal discipline in that, but you will save money, especially if you maximise the use of the sun during the day. You don't mention appliances like washing machines. Run those when the sun is up. Do as much during the day as you can and as your routines will allow.
October 30, 20241 yr 5 hours ago, WannabeSolarSparky said: I have to agree here for western cape, my system is 10x 540watt (4xE 6XW) + 2x 100AH + 5kw Summer mostly off-grid, winter have to top-up from eskom most days. Panels putting out almost full power in the Cape Town sun Just don't have enough loads to pull that power 🙃
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