Hi

It seems that this isn't as simple as it seems! There are such price differences between the various suppliers and products as well as their warranties.

Does anyone have any experience that they can share?

What's a good brand of solar geyser at a good price point? I need 3x 200L ones.

Thanks

Why not buy a cheap, normal geyser and fit PV panels for electric heating?

Having had a Kwikot 600 dual150l since 2013, without major issues, I should probably say it's an exception, but it served me well till now.
Looking at Geyser prices, the 150l is the most value for the money as it is not much more expensive than the 100l, but nearly half the price of the 200l. You could get two 150l in series for a bit more than one 200l.
there are some cheaper geysers but their guarantee is limited to 2 years. But even considering a 5 year guarantee which does not cover the element nor the anode, 5 years is about the max life to be expected.
I would much rather prefer low pressure options as they outlast the high pressure ones by decades and they are so much cheaper.
We really don't have any high pressure Geysers in SA that are made to last longer than 5 years (their guarantee). Ariston or Kwikot. And then there are the cheapies with 2 year guarantees.

On 2025/05/15 at 12:00 PM, AlexanderR said:

What's a good brand of solar geyser at a good price point?

It looks like not too much of the high pressure variety out there, if you look at this page, you'll see some options from Kwikot amongst others, I guess. We have a low pressure system of 100l and 12 evacuated glass tubes, no other heating, it works really well for us, this is in effect a no-name brand system. It works really well and doing what is being recommended, the PV + Electric HWC thing, is far from efficient and potentially a lot more expensive too...

12 hours ago, frivan said:

Why not buy a cheap, normal geyser and fit PV panels for electric heating?

Controllers designed for geysers and PV is probably more economical than my solution. However, I view an inverter, battery and some panels as sunk cost. I have added more panels and an automatic changeover for my geyser. Eskom is now the backup supply for my geyser. This is one way to maximise solar generation with an off grid inverter.