Thought some more on this, adding onto Paul's suggestion above.

When we are told by insurers / brokers, it is covered under the building, then we should instruct them, as per Paul's "record of advice", and say to them to add a note on the policy stating that a solar system is installed, as a fixture, with a replacement value of RX 000.00.

And check if you have sufficient lightning cover depending on your area.

Then request a new policy document that reflects the requested endorsement.

Now, that goes back to what a reasonable man would do. Like a CoC being reasonable and a reasonable person will not feed power illegally back to the grid, or without the porper paperwork in place. It is best to ensure that the insurer is aware of everything for in the event of a claim, they start ensuring that the insured event is exactly as they anticipated a reasonable person would have done. 

My point. IF an insurer repudiates a claim on one of the above, it is your, the insured's, responsibility to make sure all is reasonable and legal.

Hello guys,

My nightmare ended. The insurance paid but partially. I advise all of you with solar power systems to contact your insurance asap.

In my case it turned out I was underinsured. I always had the impression that the buildings should be covered for the market value like a car but I was wrong. A house has to be insured for the replacement value. Also be sure you have contents cover which is not for theft as I thought but for replacement of contents if they get damaged by lightning for example. It is good to ask your insurance to send someone to check if you are properly covered.

Cheers

Virgil 

8 minutes ago, virge said:

In my case it turned out I was underinsured. I always had the impression that the buildings should be covered for the market value like a car but I was wrong. A house has to be insured for the replacement value. Also be sure you have contents cover which is not for theft as I thought but for replacement of contents if they get damaged by lightning for example. It is good to ask your insurance to send someone to check if you are properly covered.

Good news.

And salient advice.

With building, they also take into account if it must be demolished, for those costs and to cart the rubble away, is substantial over and above the per sqm building costs.

 

I am pretty sure the majority of people in SA are or is borderline under insured.

Unless you sit each year at policy renewal and make sure the Sum Insureds are adequate, the difference will creep up on you and catch you under insured over a period of time.

As as per Paul above, make sure the solar system is noted, ask for proof of that per email or ensure it is reflecting on your policy schedule - replacement + professional installation costs.

Ps. Maybe I must follow the same advice above or it will be a case of "Do what I say, don't do what I do." 

The guidelines say you should earth your array directly to the same earth spike the house uses and not the earth in your DB.

4mm2 bare copper cable is your friend!

To eco @virge here is a good rule of thumb to check whether you are under insured.

Primary House:

• Sub Economical - R 3900 - R 4500 per square 
• Economical - R4500 - R4800 per square 
• Standard - R5600 to R 6500
• Middle Class - R 6500 - R 7500
• High end - You would have a professional valuator involved 

Basically you calculate the surface area of the main house times it with your Price per square and that should give you a fairly good idea. Also if you have that info and you speak to your insurer also give that info to them. Even better give them the layout plan of your property with the sizes  and what your estimation of the value of the property and ask them if they are in agreement. As jou can see you are building a case for if you ever need to claim and they say you are under insured. As seen in virge's situation they are able to give a value so place them in the situation where they must take the responsibility.  BUT make sure that you have all the info when you give it to them. 

I do have a calculator that one could use but unfortunately I may not post it on a public forum. Please PM me and I will assist. 

 

5 minutes ago, HeinTheTerrible said:

The guidelines say you should earth your array directly to the same earth spike the house uses and not the earth in your DB.

Is the earth in the DB not the exact same as the earth spike?

EDIT: I meant, there is a wire that goes from the earth spike to the DB, so it should be identical?

1 minute ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Is the earth in the DB not the exact same as the earth spike?

The path is not the same.

Edit: You don't want high voltage jumping around in your DB. From panels direct to ground gives least resistance.

16 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

EDIT: I meant, there is a wire that goes from the earth spike to the DB, so it should be identical?

 

I'm not 100% sure the reason behind it because logic (as silly as mine is) says that its all one circuit but the big brains say best practice is "earth panels to dwelling earth spike and not in the DB"

Soos my pa altyd sê "die ou wat daai ding geontwerp het is n geleerde mens, moenie met hom stry daaroor nie"

I agree with you Virgil. In all my years in the computer trade, I have learned that there is absolutely nothing that can prevent damage with a direct lightning strike like yours.

Good earthing to a single pole is the best you can do for surges. My opinion?

I like pics, tells me stories worth a 1000 words.

Will go and ask again why I cannot use the ground rod for there is an issue on it, coming from the Eskom side in the road.

But if anyone has an idea how Eskom street box can affect the DB ground + ground rod, in plain English, pray tell for I lost the electrician 5 minutes into the explanation.

1 hour ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

I like pics, tells me stories worth a 1000 words.

Will go and ask again why I cannot use the ground rod for there is an issue on it, coming from the Eskom side in the road.

But if anyone has an idea how Eskom street box can affect the DB ground + ground rod, in plain English, pray tell for I lost the electrician 5 minutes into the explanation.

 

Maybe it's due to a lack of maintenance or a kak repair job at the distro box/sub station?

53 minutes ago, HeinTheTerrible said:

Maybe it's due to a lack of maintenance or a kak repair job at the distro box/sub station?

That was implied yes. Was told to contact electricity department if I want to take it further. 

Thing is, lately I am questioning the meter's readings.

Little story. We asked for our water meter to be moved outside the wall. Easier to read for the meter man reported no-one home month after month yet we work from home. 

Moving a meter means a new one.

Since that was done our water usage dropped overnight to half of what it was before. From +-1000l per day to +-500l per day. Prior I was going ballistic with a 1000l per day average. Not only for the high usage, but the costs on level 2 restrictions of a couple of hundred pm plus sewage on top of that!

With level 3 restrictions it would have become ridiculously expensive.

So I am contemplating asking for a meter check / replacement and then at the same time ask for a test of the whatsimacallit of the earth.

Concern is that IF I do it, they replace the old meter with a pay-as-you-go one but that has risks ito if you have a increased month of usage, that the next purchase is on the higher rate.

Then on the other hand maybe I must ask for a upgrade to a grid tie meter. But that is R2500.

Pub ... it becomes clearer there.

I was reading this morning on the topic of TN-S grounding, compared to TN-C-S or TT, and the whole topic of earth-neutral bonding and whether to ground everything to the bar in the DB, suddenly a lot less obvious :-)

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

48 minutes ago, plonkster said:

... earth-neutral bonding and whether to ground everything to the bar in the DB, suddenly a lot less obvious :-)

That rings a bell in my case ... care to share more?

2 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

That rings a bell in my case ... care to share more?

Yes please.

 

While we are on the topic of earthing, I find it quite interesting that the infini inverter manual say you should not ground the array and only surge protection is required.

6 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

That rings a bell in my case ... care to share more?

Okay, so there's several ways to get an earth on your premises, and though I knew some of this I learned the names this morning. Most new houses are wired TN-S. The TN bit means that one of the wires coming out of the tranformer (on the supply side) is connected to earth, usually that would be the center tap in a star-configured 3-phase network. The -S bit says that the earth connector is Separate, so you have a separate earth wire (16mm square) running all the way from the street into your house. It is only bonded to neutral on the transformer side. There is no earth spike on the premises.

There is also TN-C-S. Here the C is for Combined, which means there is a Separate earth connection but it is ALSO bonded a second (or more) time(s).

Finally there is TT where you have no earth connection from the supply. You have your own earth spike.

You can read the wikipedia article for this. Long story short: TN-S is the safest setup.

Now the reason I found this interesting has mostly to do with the Neutral/Earth bonding on the output of inverters, not so much with panels, though that is also involved to a lesser extent. You see, as I understand it you should NOT bond Neutral and earth a second time on the premises if your supply is TN-S. Normally there is no reason to do this, but with inverters the need arises for a second neutral/earth bond. For inverter/charger units with a transfer switch, while the inverter is running disconnected from the grid, the Earth Leakage breaker (you should have one installed!) won't work properly unless this bond is there. So many installers will feed the inverter input from an unprotected feed (ie before the Earth Leakage breaker, no ELB on the inverter input) and then bond the earth and neutral on the inverter output before it goes through a dedicated ELB for the inverter.

This means that while the inverter is in bypass mode, you have a second earth/neutral bond on the premises.

On my own system I use the bonding relay in the Multiplus, so neutral is only bonded to earth while we're in inverter mode. When in bypass I the bond is removed and we're running a standard TN-S setup with only one bonding point in the street.

But... I have my inverter earthed to the earth bar in the DB, which goes via that 16mm cable out into the street, so while in invert mode I'm using the supplier's ground. There is an argument to be made that while in invert mode, I should really be using my own ground peg. I'm not quite sure about this bit yet.

Also, earthing of panels. So when you have a TN-S setup, if you earth panels to the earth bar in the DB, what you're doing is telling lightening surges that you would like it to please take a path past your DB down to the street into the transformer over there... there is an argument to be made that you should definitely use your own earth spike. But then some of us also asked whether you need to wire that spike to the earth bar in your DB. Well, if you do... then you once again convert your TN-S to a TN-C-S.

So basically, what I am saying, is unless you know these things properly (I don't) you really don't know how to earth sh*t.

:-)

19 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Also, earthing of panels. So when you have a TN-S setup, if you earth panels to the earth bar in the DB, what you're doing is telling lightening surges that you would like it to please take a path past your DB down to the street into the transformer over there... there is an argument to be made that you should definitely use your own earth spike. But then some of us also asked whether you need to wire that spike to the earth bar in your DB. Well, if you do... then you once again convert your TN-S to a TN-C-S.

 

So if you wire in a surge protection device (Citel) and use the ground bar in the DB then you are also doing the TN-S to TN-C-S conversion.

23 minutes ago, plonkster said:

I am saying, is unless you know these things properly (I don't) you really don't know how to earth sh*t.

:-)

 

Hahaha!

Thanks Plonkster, you managed to get me totally confused! This should give you the title of " Proffessor " ! (ha-ha)

Jokes aside, I am busy with quite a lot of research on earthing strategies, but the more I do, the more confused I get. I think this is somethimg that will differ from inverter to inverter and maybe we should ask the suppliers what they recommend.

 

I am going to make a brave statement and there is a good chance , no make it a BIG , chance I have it wrong. 

Neutral and earth are the same thing when it comes from the grid side and the moment it goes through a earth league it changes in fact that's the earth leagues job , to check if there is an imbalance between the earth and neutral. I live in a house once where the lights were split from the plugs on the neutral , so the lights had its own neutral bar and the plugs on the other. The live that went through the earth league supplied the plugs. When I fiddled with the DB one day, I by accident swapped the one light line live and connected to one of the plugs. 

The moment power came on the earth league tripped took me the rest of the day and a chat to a Electrician to figure that one. So in my case the feed from the inverter goes through a Earth League and then to the house where there is another earth league for the house. So if the prepaid is installed at my place some time in the future I will install that also through the inverter as to insure that it is "before" the earth league.

11 hours ago, HeinTheTerrible said:

While we are on the topic of earthing, I find it quite interesting that the infini inverter manual say you should not ground the array and only surge protection is required.

I find it strange because the panels will be connected to the roof , in my case tin ,  so would not all panels be grounded or at least their frames?

On 30/11/2016 at 9:12 PM, HeinTheTerrible said:

I like this drawing but in both the shock hazard and the ground fault the safe pathway is back to source not to ground. Mike Holt's You tube series on grounding and bonding is invaluable. This man contributes to America's Electrical Safety Codes. That in it self is may be not an endorsement but 10 minutes into one of his exhaustive videos one can see that he talks sense. Some one is going to disagree, have a look at this video before you start an argument. 

 

The way I understood it was that the depth of the rod does not make any difference it is the conductivity that matters , so if you knock a 50 m rod into the desert you will still get bad earthing as it is dry unless you hit water .

I saw one site where they installed a "earth mat" of about 20 squares to get the correct values...

12 hours ago, plonkster said:

(I don't) you really don't know how to earth sh*t.

Plus one on that.

And plus one on what Paul said re. the conductivity. It should be tested by a professional for a lot of factors impact on how good the rod, or mat will work.

 

Have read all I can with my limited understanding of it all, local and internationally, the people in the know differ, sometimes very heatedly when the implementation of the regulations are debated.

Had a wire connected to the DB earth, wanted to move it to the rod, till I had it tested. Rod or DB, same problem on both, something is coming from the Eskom feed. Electrician was not comfortable to have the solar panels and solar metal parts connected to rod or DB. Electrician is also a solar installer, but he did not hit me with load of confidence, but he was unsure.

Previous electricians, knowing naught of solar, was as unsure.

Today, as I type this, I am 100% with Plonk when he says "you really don't know how to earth sh*t". 

Ito of lightning, in my mind, the only way to deal with that is getting in a company that does that for a living.