Placed the order this morning for my business grid tie setup.

 

Kaco powador 60.0 XL TL3 Grid tie inverter

114 x 305w Trinasolar panels

Fuses, cables, wiring, mounting brackets etc.

 

Got some great service from David @ Exsolar. Those guys are very helpful and they have great pricing too. Will likely get the rails next week and start the installation from there. Will post some pictures as we go along.

Hi G

 

That's producing 35kW!

 

Impressive.

 

You planning to bake the ceramics onto the tiles in-house?

 

Show pictures as you progress.

Hi Jakes. Its about half of the energy the business requires. I am struggling with council to get Nett metering. Once I manage to get that, I will increase the amount of panels on the roof. Will post pictures as we go along.

What area you located in?

Some local council's is more open than others.

If you fed by City Of Cape Town, you going to be screwed if you do not use an inverter on the approved list.

Its actually in Ekurhuleni. Still checking to see...

We have started the installation. Kaco looks great. It has separate incoming lines for each PV string with 3 separate MPPT controllers. 

 

 

 

 

Panels should come next week. We are busy getting all the structures up.

Inverter is in place, busy putting in the 16mm cable to the DB board, with a breaker. They are also putting up the mounting rails today. Panels should be delivered tomorrow. Kaco needs to activate the inverter, they send a technician to check everything and turn it on and do all the programming. 

 

 

Panels arrived. 5 really large boxes. Had a bit of a panic attack and wondered how we are going to get them up there

 

 

 

 

Panic was unfounded. 90 panels mounted so far. Today we are doing the balance and start connecting them up.

Your panel orientation looks interesting... can you publish some orientation angles.

 

Great setup... I could run my whole local farming community

 

M

I currently have 90 panels facing true east and 38 are facing west. I am going to add more west facing panels next.

128...

Sure, eishkom has some big batteries somewhere

Commissioning happened yesterday. We generated 119kwh yesterday between 11am and sunset, with a peak of 36kwh AC after conversion losses. The total array size is 39040w DC before losses. Overall I am quite happy with the result. I expect to generate around 150 - 180kwh per day.

What do you think your payback period is going to be...?

 

Wonderful result on your part - 150kwh wow!!

I have done a return on investment analysis over a period of 10 years @ a cost of capital of 9%. Basically it is going to generate roughly about R2 100 000 net cashflow over 10 years given an electricity price increase of 10% per year. Repayment period just over 5 years. Total investment of R630 000.

 

Current investment generates my electricity used between 8am and 5pm. About than 90% of it is used as it is generated with roughly 10% push back into the grid. This can be limited with the computer supplied by Exsolar. (Currently have 6 municipal connections on the property. If they decide to change the meter to prepaid, they will have to remove extra connections and supply me a single connection. This will assist that I have very limited feed back into the grid.)

 

Once NERSA eventually finalise their legislation, I will add an additional 25kw of panels to the existing system, almost zeroing my electricity bill. I have to obtain the correct meter before investing in this, as Ekurhuleni do not currently support the correct meters that will allow push back. 

 

Over all, this is a worthwhile investment for me, as it will pay for itself in 5 years and then generate "free" electricity for another 15 odd years.

Very Very Nice!!

We have generated 224kwh over the last 24 hours. This far it has exceeded my expectations. Considering opening a thread to see monthly and daily kw generated per kw of panels grid tied so that we can get an indication of what a grid tied system is capable of. That should assist people in sizing their systems better for their needs.

It has been 28 days since we turned on the inverter. We have generated a total of 6293kwh or an average of 224.75kwh per day from 39040W worth of panels.This generated about R11 000 worth of electricity so far. For sure a worthwhile investment, although I expect to generate at least 30% less middle of next year.

this is a stunning return on investment.Do you intend having an equal amount of pv East to West?

The bulk of the PV panels are east facing. I have about 30% of them facing west at the moment. The system is running 60% capacity. Once Nersa shakes the bull droppings from their socks, I hope to get a proper reversible meter and exp[and it to full capacity and add some more west facing panels. A system of this size is a no brainer. It will repay itself in just over 5 years at current electricity prices.