The Solar / Inverter / Power thread

[Tag11]

I've been doing 1MWh per month on average since installing solar and being able to monitor things.
By using basic, almost default settings, I've been self-generating 80%, leaving me approx 200kWh per month to purchase (fairly consistent January to April), so my Eskom costs have dropped from around R4.5k/mth down to about R600/mth

But this month I decided to be more aggressive and have tweaked my settings, set timers on my geysers and I've trained most of the household in terms of power optimisation, timing and just general awareness. The tweaks are not for everyone, I'm allowing my batteries to discharge to as low as 26% before the sunrises. Still well within the batteries optimal ranges.

I'm only 9 days in, and so far I've gone from 20% purchasing from Eskom down to just 3% - so that is around 280kWh of consumption of which only 9kWh has been bought... it has also confirmed that with some effort we could be offgrid (let's see how winter is though). The goal is to have a R100/mth Eskom bill.

But I still have 1x electric geyser and electric oven/stove... so as soon as we switch to cooking with gas we should be way better off.

Disclaimer - I haven't seen a cloud in the sky this whole month so far!!! So probably been a bit lucky.

 

[bokka1]

I've been doing 1MWh per month on average since installing solar and being able to monitor things.
By using basic, almost default settings, I've been self-generating 80%, leaving me approx 200kWh per month to purchase (fairly consistent January to April), so my Eskom costs have dropped from around R4.5k/mth down to about R600/mth

But this month I decided to be more aggressive and have tweaked my settings, set timers on my geysers and I've trained most of the household in terms of power optimisation, timing and just general awareness. The tweaks are not for everyone, I'm allowing my batteries to discharge to as low as 26% before the sunrises. Still well within the batteries optimal ranges.

I'm only 9 days in, and so far I've gone from 20% purchasing from Eskom down to just 3% - so that is around 280kWh of consumption of which only 9kWh has been bought... it has also confirmed that with some effort we could be offgrid (let's see how winter is though). The goal is to have a R100/mth Eskom bill.

But I still have 1x electric geyser and electric oven/stove... so as soon as we switch to cooking with gas we should be way better off.

Disclaimer - I haven't seen a cloud in the sky this whole month so far!!! So probably been a bit lucky.

I have been buying extra electricity at the lower tariff because I can see that winter is going to be a problem.

I am waiting for my installer to amend the permissions on my app to let me change the values too. I want to go down to 30%.

 

[AfricanTech]

Mine is at 40% and thus far I have been safe, even when we had loadshedding.

I can see that my winter Eskom usage will increase but for March and April I am very happy.

R340 Eskom usage for March, R500 for April.

My electricity was between R5000 to R6000 per month before the install.

I must just get someone to check my geyser's blanket to see if it is still correctly covered, I am using my most electricity in the early morning heating up that mofo.

Wowser! That's brilliant - I haven't been able to drop my bill by such a large factor (my bill is 'only' about 50 percent lower) because I, unfortunately, have quite a high base load (I 'only' have 3 batteries so they don't carry me through the night), and the Geyser/s have to be heated in time for morning showers.

 

[bokka1]

Wowser! That's brilliant - I haven't been able to drop my bill by such a large factor (my bill is 'only' about 50 percent lower) because I, unfortunately, have quite a high base load (I 'only' have 3 batteries so they don't carry me through the night), and the Geyser/s have to be heated in time for morning showers.

Ja, batteries with high capacity is your key.

I think that everyone are too worried about sun energy but the thing is to get the right balance between sun / battery.

 

[GB9]

I've been doing 1MWh per month on average since installing solar and being able to monitor things.
By using basic, almost default settings, I've been self-generating 80%, leaving me approx 200kWh per month to purchase (fairly consistent January to April), so my Eskom costs have dropped from around R4.5k/mth down to about R600/mth

But this month I decided to be more aggressive and have tweaked my settings, set timers on my geysers and I've trained most of the household in terms of power optimisation, timing and just general awareness. The tweaks are not for everyone, I'm allowing my batteries to discharge to as low as 26% before the sunrises. Still well within the batteries optimal ranges.

I'm only 9 days in, and so far I've gone from 20% purchasing from Eskom down to just 3% - so that is around 280kWh of consumption of which only 9kWh has been bought... it has also confirmed that with some effort we could be offgrid (let's see how winter is though). The goal is to have a R100/mth Eskom bill.

But I still have 1x electric geyser and electric oven/stove... so as soon as we switch to cooking with gas we should be way better off.

Disclaimer - I haven't seen a cloud in the sky this whole month so far!!! So probably been a bit lucky.

Tag, is that ~4.5k / month figure just for your electricity usage alone? I use about 800-1200kWh, which is similar to you and I never saw an actual electricity usage cost that high

 

[Tag11]

Tag, is that ~4.5k / month figure just for your electricity usage alone? I use about 800-1200kWh, which is similar to you and I never saw an actual electricity usage cost that high

Averaged out over the year, also includes times where we've used under floor heating or aircons etc. Not sure if my estate's electricity is more than where you live... I do feel shafted in terms of rates/taxes/water/power/levies here :-(

Today is the outlier... very overcast and even drizzled this morning... so today I'll probably only cover about 30% of my needs from solar.

 

[Tech Guy SA]

There is a thread for this

Sold a ton of these last year

I got a simple setup mainly cause we in a flat and landord wants nothing over belconies

So
Ecoflow Delta 2 + Extra battery Powers up my entire office and TV (2pc's etc)
River 2 (was a return decided to keep it for the kids room for the lamp's) and take it with when im out for the day for the laptop

 

[TheHaunted]

Since about the middle of April i adjusted the time of use settings and so far it has been great. For the month of May I bought R600 worth of electricity and we have only used 240kWh from Eskom. We have had quite a few poor sun days but usually by midday the batteries are fully charged. I am happy so far but the summer is going to be a different story. It gets so hot here that I think the batteries will struggle to make it through the night. But so far so good.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

 

[GB9]

How's the first month of winter treating the rest of you solar subscribers? Especially those in the Highveld... Here's my stats from Solarman:

April:
Consumption = 930ish kWh (listed as 0.93 MWh in Solarman)
Production = 635.80 kWh
Purchased = 313.60 kWh

May:
Consumption = 1.06 MWh
Production = 646.30 kWh
Purchased = 439.60 kWh

June so far (essentially the end of production today [18th June]):
Consumption = 0.91 MWh
Production = 359.90 kWh
Purchased = 572.40 kWh

All of my time of use settings are currently set to 50% for the SOC value. With no news on the return of load-shedding, I'm considering dropping the evening SOC values a further 10%, but I doubt that it's worth it? My purchased value is going to be much higher this month, as we are generally putting my main bedroom's inverter aircon on from 17:00 in the afternoon until ~7:00 the next day. We also have a smallish electric blanket on, but I've been recently turning it off just before actually going to sleep. My live in nanny has an Alva Air Convection heater running from the late afternoon until the next morning.

I've rescheduled my geyser to run earlier in the day, as production drops off drastically from around 15:30. I have it running from 14:30 until 15:45 now. I need to get a geyser blanket installed this coming month... I also have to readdress the time of use for electrical appliances to my nanny/wife, as they've been running the washing machine, iron and dishwasher at times when there's no solar production.

Future improvements - hopefully before next year's winter season:
* Heat pump or solar geyser, depending on the advice on which is "better".
* Another battery (probably only in 1 to 2 years time).
* Extra panels to try and ramp up winter production a bit more (will seek advice on this first).
* Geyser blanket as mentioned
* Inverter aircon for my nanny's room. My 18000 BTU (I thought it was a 24000 BTU for some reason) seems more economical than the Alva Air Convection heater she has, so a 9000 BTU inverter aircon should be even better.