Elro

Journey of a newbie, live on a smallholding northeast of Pretoria. Electricity supply is spotty at best, my son and wife work from home most of the time, so decided to buy a small system to keep them up, especially my son as he only works at night. We can have 2 to 3 outages per week of at least 24hrs. Bought a 3.5kw 24v inverter with a 100ah battery and 6 x 360w solar. Should have known better. Installed myself and had the CoC done. My son bought a power pc that guzzles and slurps electricity like a V8 on steroids. The battery does not last over night. Mistake no.1 Additional battery cannot be found in SA. No stock available???? Found a 200ah battery at reasonable price. Installed and working. Sold the old (6months old) 100ah. In the meantime had a look at our stats and realised we were saving money. Our average consumption before solar was 35 units/day, suddenly it was down to 25 units/day on average. The bug starts biting. Decided to add another 3x 200ah batteries for a total of around 20kwh. Then had a purely solar geyser heater system installed. Things are looking up. Also 5 x 560w panels as replacement. Our usage dropped further to an average now of 8 units per day, a major saving. Mistake no 2. Why does 24v even exist, cannot get a 5kw inverter in 24v, get conflicting explanations, and to add to my woes cannot parallel my inverter, so i am stuck. Installer of my geyser solar system had a look at my system and threw his hands up, telling me that the system should explode any day in a mushroom cloud reminiscent of chernobyl. I have too many panels up and the inverter is the worst, let him grumble ad nauseam and pulled out the specs whereupon he walked away shaking his head. havent seen or heard from him again. Getting long winded and have questions for a later date. Keep solaring