After 2 months I started with my installation and will post progress here as I proceed. After reading a few books and websites I actually decided to do everything myself although I will need some-one to assist in lifting the solar panels onto the roof. This a quick post (while I wait for meeting to start) highlighting a few lessons learned to date:

1. Get more than 3 quotes and buy the components where you can find the cheapest, even if you can buy from 5 different people. I selected to buy the bulk from one supplier thinking that the supplier will assist with a nice design and advice. Wrong. I will not go into that. There are numerous websites and forums that will assist in advice, and with the money you save you can hire a professional for an hour or 5 to assist in sorting out issues you may have. Note: This is just my opinion, as with a difficult installation I have heard that installers came back a few times to fix some issues. I am speaking from the DIY perspective.
2. If you select to redo your own DB, mark all cables clearly, including the neutral cables. When splitting the DB, make sure that the correct neutral wires are also removed from the "non critical part". 
3. Get a larger DB than what you think you may need. 
4. Working on an old, 20+ year old tile roof is a %^&*(%$, especially if the roof was painted a few times in the past. Lifting tiles is not as easy as it appears on the youtube videos where the guys work with new tiles.
5. A wooden mallet and a large piece of rubber will do wonders to loossen a tile but be careful. I only had to loosen 2 tiles and managed to do without the mallet once I managed to lift the first two tiles.
6. Tiles will be broken. I only did a small section (one string) to lay the conduit for the wires, yet found 2 broken tiles when I lift other tiles. I glued them together using epoxy glue and marked them to ensure that I will never again walk on top of them. They were repositioned to be directly underneath the solar panels. The brandering below these two tiles were from two small pieces of wood.
7. Use garden gloves when working with tiles. I had to change my bank card the next day and they could not verify my fingerprint ...
8. This seems logical, but I initially wanted to lay the conduit diagonally along the roof from the area where the panels will be installed to the location where it leads to the MPPTs. A firewall and rafters however blocked me at a few locations. After lifting 30 tiles I realized that there was no way that I will be able to fit trunking diagonally and had to refit all the tiles and went horizontally to the edge of the roof all along the brandering. Yes, my back was killing me sunday evening.
9. Do not expect great work by the previous builder/roofer. I found a section where they used pieces of offcut brandering to install the roof tiles, which broke either while they installed it (and just decided to fit the roof tiles anyway), or it moved sometime when someone added a new light fitting to the room. Two sections were completely broken and were not even supporting the tiles properly. I was just lucky that it carried my weight and that I did not crash through the roof.
10. Unless you are an electrician, or have an electrician friend, install the conduit in sections, add the wire through that section; mark, bend and fit the new section of conduit and extend the wire through the new section before doing the following section. It is difficult to pull 2 strands of 6mm wire through conduit with 2 bends, and impossible if there are more than 3 bends. I had to cut the conduit and had to start from scratch.

 

Progress to date in storage room

Man, THIS is invaluable information!!! 

Adding to your list of what to expect, the gloves being one that made me laugh, have the DB tested ito earthing etc.

If found lacking, that can hit you on the back of the head when all was supposed to be said and done!

1 hour ago, MorneDJ said:

install the conduit in sections

Or invest in some kind of fisher tape. In my experience one of the best fishertape replacements is thin steel wire, the kind they use for electric fencing. Also, use a bending spring (even though I've heard of people filling the tube with sand in a pinch). I concur on the "more than two bends" thing, in fact pretty much more than one bend becomes problematic when it's thicker wiring and you have more of them, so I tend to alternate with inspection elbows. Also, I usually try to think about things such as what happens to water that gets into the pipe (eg condensation), so if you can provide a point somewhere where the water can drip out instead of going into the house, that is usually a good idea, even if it is just a junction box that's not air tight 🙂

So that would be my 2 cents.

Just so people know, if you happen to break tiles, and epoxy doesn't float your boat. At the various building salvage places that take stuff from demolished houses, there are mountains of roof tiles and I'm 99% sure you will find matching ones. In the west of Jhb Protector Build has piles of all sorts of junk. 

57 minutes ago, DeepBass9 said:

salvage places that take stuff from demolished houses

Doempie in Strand. Last time I was there they had mountains of old air conditioners. A few years ago they had heaps of electrical panels. It just depends on what they did that week...

Another thing if you're connecting with the VRM portal try and put your Internet router on a converter supplied from the solar batteries. I was messing around today and I was out and the Mrs was home so I thought I'd do a quick demo for her on what load shedding looks and feels like so I remotely turned the inverter off. Only glitch was my router is powered off the inverter so I couldn't turn it back on........ I had to come home to a not so happy lady.