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Cost of solar generation


Gerrie

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I have 2 x 3.5kW batteries to make use of the pv generated during the day. Night time use is about half of what day time use is and that is with geyser power during the day.  Excluding battery cost then I will have to work at about half of the pv savings.

My inverter is a hybrid which is about R30k. Makes it able to send some of the power upstream to the geyser. Setting geyser times during the day I can keep the pv running most of the day.

Just the protection between the panels and the inverter was R7k. Rewiring the DB was about R10k.  All reasons why the system cost are high I think.

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Here are two graphs.  When the blue line makes a nice curve like that then the pv panels captured all the possible energy they could.  At the moment I have 2 geysers connected (purple line) which must still change to use less Eskom (orange line) and get the batteries fully charged by the end of the day.

Generation estimate for this month is about R1100 but on average it would be around R1k per month.

Solar graph.JPG

Solar generation.JPG

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On 2020/09/21 at 9:04 PM, jykenmynie said:

The battery would still register those little discharges and charges as cycles whenever it needs to smooth the availability of the PV. But I did note that batteries are useful up until it makes your solar viable, or you are off-grid (or your backup needs are immense).

Out of interest my eye caught this graph on battery view just after I were using a baby grinder earlier today, this was also while my normal loads of about 600W was on at the time. Here can be seen how the PV is charging my battery and the inverter is using PV only to supply the loads, not discharging the battery at all. This is a clone Axpert with min 36VDC - max 105VDC PV  Voltage.

9382C7A1-120C-46B1-989C-E405C05EFD90.jpeg

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