Hi All,

Attached is my spend over the last 2 months and then a year view, i believe i am still paying too much for electricity, i either need to upgrade my system, or tweak it....I have my domestics here Mon, Wed, Friday....

Any advice

Thanks,

Can you reduce your consumption? That's cheaper than spending more money on hardware. And get your staff on side. My housekeeper knows our priorities, understands that we don't have too much turned on at any one time, knows that I like to be thrifty with water etc. We explain these things to her and actively encourage her to support us. If you have kids and/or tenants then you need to get them onside as well. But the more people you have, the more difficult it is to get everybody singing from the same hymn sheet. If you're not paying them it is harder, if they are paying you it is much harder.

NB! We are two adult people, no kids, no tenants, no live-in staff. One retired and one works from home. So we perhaps have more than usual opportunity to get our routines aligned with solar power and to find economical ways to live.

Doesn't look like your domestic is the sole culprit; there's high usage even on days when she is not there.

You've given the solar stats right at around 21 June, the Winter Solstice, basically the worst time of the year for solar generation because of the longest night of the year. Before jumping to a decision, can you pull a similar month of stats for September and December? Equinox and Summer Solstice?

Off the cuff I think you could do with up to 50% more solar panels, but not before checking how much you could discharge your batteries overnight, because you're not cycling them deeply every day, and not without seeing where you could maybe do better with other efficiency measures (eg. heat pump). Maybe also give a description of the equipment you are currently using, and what loads you are running from it.

What is your current setup? Helpful in determining whether you're maximizing the panels you have. If your battery is getting to full early every day then you can optimize by moving more loads to day time hours or by increasing your battery capacity. If you don't get to 100% then you could probably benefit from more panels. This calculation unfortunately changes based on season though, so you have to look at these values over the course of a year.

Attached is my records over the last two years and I'm pretty happy with my optimization. Reducing my monthly costs isn't worth the extra capital outlay with the current system.

1 hour ago, GreenFields said:

Doesn't look like your domestic is the sole culprit; there's high usage even on days when she is not there.

You've given the solar stats right at around 21 June, the Winter Solstice, basically the worst time of the year for solar generation because of the longest night of the year. Before jumping to a decision, can you pull a similar month of stats for September and December? Equinox and Summer Solstice?

Off the cuff I think you could do with up to 50% more solar panels, but not before checking how much you could discharge your batteries overnight, because you're not cycling them deeply every day, and not without seeing where you could maybe do better with other efficiency measures (eg. heat pump). Maybe also give a description of the equipment you are currently using, and what loads you are running from it.

This is a good assessment of the system. Without detail the days with only 0-3kwh battery discharged while over 8kwh was charged are sure days where the grid could be reduced. The high grid use on selected day happens to be the days with low battery discharge.

Deeper discharge is also the area I would look at. Grid can be set up to be used if battery drops too low in the last few hours before sunrise.

Whats your heavy items - electric geyser, electric stove/oven, pool pump? Run times for these?

As best as possible I try and get both households here to run things during the day.
Converted to gas geyser for house 1 so not having to run this geyser has helped alot its a 4kW element
House 2 still has an electric geyser, 3kW element runs off grid early morning for 90min these days.
Geyser runs for 90min in the morning from 09:00 and again from 13:00 for another 90min...covered by PV fully.
House 2 my in laws are not home during the day so washing, ironing etc they can only do in the evenings, but that is from battery at that point.
I run the batteries down to 50% and on some days that goes as far as 2-3am before we use grid again. Other days before midnight then we on grid again.

Our helper is also here Mon, Wed, Fri. Then Sat she is here at my in laws and we have our gardener on Saturday's, mower is petrol, blower is electric.

I could do a deeper battery discharge but that means more grid usage during the morning as the battery will get to 50% SOC, if I get more panels to a section of the roof that gets sun earlier than the current panels then I could look at a deeper discharge which will just partially cover that early morning geyser run for house 2.

Prior to gas geyser for us, we averaged about 20 units a day on a 15kWh battery bank also depleting to 50%.

Now we averaging about 10 units a day...more panels and another 10kWh battery and I am confident we will be off-grid during sunny days.

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by Carl Anthony

Thanks for sharing this. If anyone is also looking to manage electricity usage or monitor bills alongside solar setup, I’ve built a free tool here: https://fescoebillcheck.pk — it helps with quick bill checking and calculation.

Thank you for sharing this. If anyone else is looking to manage electricity usage or track bills alongside their solar setup, I’ve built a free tool here: https://fscobill.pk/ — it helps with quick bill checking.

Edited November 8, 2025Nov 8 by jackalexander8

Thanks for sharing this! If anyone is also looking to manage their electricity usage or monitor bills alongside their solar setup, I’ve put together a free tool that can help with quick bill checking and calculations. You can find it here:

Thanks for sharing this! If anyone is also looking to monitor their electricity usage or keep track of bills alongside their solar system, I’ve built a tool here: https://lscobill.pk/ — it helps with quick bill checking.

Edited 12 hours ago12 hr by jackalexander8