4 hours ago, Sass said:

If I may give you some humble advice, I would recommend you seriously consider moving to gas or gas and solar water heating using the geyser as a collector only, with a recirculating pump to constantly cycle colder water from the geyser through the panels. You can google and find some interesting home designs for panels that in my experience really work. Check Youtube for some brilliant videos on the topic.

Also, get rid of that electric stove and go gas.

Hi Sass,

thank you for your advice. However I'm also a green idealist. I aim to reduce my fossil fuel consumption as much as possible. Yes, it is true that the electricity I use when PV is insufficient is mostly produced with fossil fuel in RSA. Therefore I'm rather aiming to increase PV power yield and battery capacity. But I'm limited with the space available on my roof. I'm learning too, I had no PV and Li battery or inverter experience before. But my electrical engineering knowledge helps.

The actual system is almost sufficient for our two person household. But now we temporarily are 5 persons. That also requires additional electric heating in the visitors rooms, whereas the main part of the house is heated with a wood burning stove (CO2 neutral). The PV system is now energy-wise totally overloaded. That proves that energy consumption is almost proportional to the number of persons in the household.

The geyser already has a circulating pump controlled by a GeyserWise. I installed it years ago. It is set to pump when the panel temperature is 9° above the geyser's. The 2m² panel is just enough for 2 persons. My conclusion is that one would need about 1m² of panel per person in the household.

Hi @Beat 

That I understand. to be honest I have been putting aside building solar water heating/collecting system myself. That's sheer laziness.

Now that I have seen the benefits and how it would reduce my gas consumption by doing this, it is on the list of things to do in the next few months.

Being retired I hate working in the cold and wet conditions we've had recently in the Cape. Then I slipped for the second time in 3 years and messed up ligaments in my right foot. The last time it was the left. I have a few weeks of recovery ahead of me but as soon as proper spring comes I will start working on the water system.

I have to say my system has been running near flawless, barring a few teething issues. To crown it all I had one of the PylonTech batteries giving the notorious permanent alarm issue due to a faulty BMS board. As I type this, I am waiting on a replacement.

Other than that I am on a quest to totally divorce myself from any municipal fees electricity, which I have literally achieved, and water charges. I have the equipment to do a wellpoint, all tanks and filtration installed already. That's also a task for this summer. Thankfully we are within 100m of our nearest river and our water table is very high all year around. That, once operational, will give me a huge satisfaction.

Best of luck!

Regards

Edited August 9, 20215 yr by Sass
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