Karman de Lange

lot of people wait to enter till last minute not to waste money. Lots wont enter if looks windy or rainy.

make sure goes above 55 for few hours each week and be ok. your biggest saving on any geyser is insulation. Ours dropped 10-15 degrees overnight, now with insulation on all pipes and extra on geyser its down to about 3-5. normal commercial geysers use 2-3kwh per 24 hrs to just keep at temperature of I think 55 degrees water temp at 25 ambiant, its on the spec sheet. so thats R 120 per month just to water keep warm, not even usage.

we run washing machine, dishwasher, aircons, geyser all off solar/battery and our system is only 3kw. Its all in the design and when you use them.

subscribe to the news letter, site is useless Entries for the 2020 Western Cape Road and Time Trial Championships will be closing on Monday 6 January 2020 at midnight. Don't delay getting your entry confirmed. The Time Trial will take place on Saturday 11 January 2020 and the Road Race on Sunday 12 January 2020. https://www.wpcycling.com/event/western-cape-road-championships-2020/ edit: See no lates allowed.... will try find the list of next events, saw it somewhere

those are notorious for bad seeding results... maybe thats a good thing..... lets see what 2020 brings,

Seeding gonna be interesting this year........

From PPA facebookpage o well, was fun while it lasted. Sad to see all event disappear...

Had a quick chat to orginizers They said people complaint last time the routes was to difficult so they now brought in the 30km to cater for more people. The 60km is still same elevation as previous routes , but they reduced the 40km to 30km with less elevation Events are now more and more family oriented to get the families out and get them all to join for lekker ride together.

https://www.rgtcycling.com/pricing/ still show free option, or am I missing something obvious?

its not part of ctct anymore, so will only be on ppa sites. No one have spare money at moment.... so lot of us are only doing bucket events or events close by and free/cheap so hope there enough entries and not get cancelled

Zwift is R2500 per year, maybe consider one of free apps and spend money on a better trainer

They should actually have communal braai till say 1-2am for those who need some warm food.... or someone should organize one

This is not a Personal attack, just general note... , Can we not drag another thread of topic , no one bothers to read threads if content is never same as topic.

Last time I managed to fill my bottle on each lap at the water station, it takes only few seconds ... its the food and coffee part.... nothing like a nice hot mocha to boost your mood... and you never know what you going to crave after few hours, so pre making food always risky.

im in again trying again to loose that last 2kg ... can it really be that hard....

If muni insist on having something, surely you can then install prepaid meter and not buy any units? Lot is going to change this year. Eskom simply cannot make enough power and laws will have to change very quickly to allow other means of generation. We might even be allowed to feed back more electricity than we use like all other countries (/me faint)

My opinion/setup: I run my geyser of PV solar. Its these days its cheaper than the typical evacuated tube systems (or flat panels) and you can use the excess electricity for other things if you design properly. I changed they geyser element to 1.5kw (buy it at any plumbing store) . Heats up in 2-3 hrs (200l), and with proper insulation it keeps warm for 3 days easy. Enough for 2-3 showers as well if you do CPT shower. You also get other elements that can run direct of the PV panels, but then you cannot use the excess electricity for something else. Gas is always good backup, I would go with those cheap instant inline gas geysers, R3k at builders, R1k installation about. I'm cannot help on usage. but sure uncle google can help on that one

Why need dispose existing equipment? Just run the solar to the battery bank via MPPT. 1.5kw system is about R15k . If you want grid tied, I will not do that yet, the laws might change completely in next year, so will change your choices alot.

Gell cells last about 300 cycles if you use 50% DOD. so thats about 1 year off grid. With load shedding, you don't really use 50%, guess more 30-40% if sized correct , so should last about 1000 load shedding cycles before noticing big capacity drop. Mine lasted 3 years before they had about 20% capacity left. Good Lead acid (those very big 2v cells) is about 5000 cycles if you don't skimp on maintenance(weekly refills, balance etc) and you are religious with charge/discharge strategy. lithium , if you don't keep them fully charged (lithium degrade alot above 80% charged) you get about 5000 cycles at 50% DOD before reaching 70% capacity (so only lost 30% of capacity) .. no maintenance etc . So in reality , they should last a very long time if you oversize your bank. Just on that note: Solar panels is rated for 20 years, that means after 20years you have 80% of rated output still available. its not that they stop working, they simply don't perform at 100% anymore. So they should last longer than we can use them. So , in summary : If you don't use battery alot (grid connected backup system) then lead acid (gell/agm etc) is a option, but If we go into daily load shedding or you want off grid, they not going to last very long and lithium is the go to option. (been there, done that)

Im in such 2 minds about doing this again. ... I don't mind the suffering myself, but my poor wife need to sit around 20 hrs looking after me. Not sure I can do that to her again ... anyone have tips on doing this unsupported ?

Hope the comic sans means your not serious....

wind dont work in urban, you need about 4m turbine with clean average 20km/h wind to cover base load. (400w) Thats a massive turbine.. It works where there is big open areas with constant wind speeds . Lot easier to buy more panels and battery.

Inverter, I will always go with Victron. Ja, they expensive, but service is excellent and been around for ages. Check the Victron Quattro 5000 (you can connect generator to it as well) . (https://thepowerstore.co.za/products/vic-quattro-48-5000-70-100-100?variant=7291443773502&currency=ZAR&utm_campaign=gs-2018-09-19&utm_source=google&utm_medium=smart_campaign&gclid=CjwKCAiA0svwBRBhEiwAHqKjFuzBABIZZRGHecDNE2e6gYgveX8lM-41ZdJGMfvf8djzRyGDeCGmuxoCD8IQAvD_BwE) Battery, sorry, cannot really help there, there is tons of available now, think there local company that does packs as well. I did our system about 4 years ago, things changes alot since then.... I see here a option, need two of these: https://thepowerstore.co.za/collections/storage-systems/products/pylon-us2000b-plus-2-4kwh-li-ion-battery-excl-brackets so for about R100k you should be able to run for about 2-3 hrs . probably get away with less if you do lot of research and shop around. you can always go with 2kw inverter, with half the battery bank and later upgrade (victron can run the same model inverters in parallel to give more power).

If you want to stay on the grid, just get ~3kwh usable battery bank (thats about 5kwh lithium) and at least 5kw peak inverter. (5kw Victron quattro is my suggestion, I won't go with cheap aspect/mecers etc) Our 3kw inverter is touch to small, but we getting better at remembering not to switch all on at same time. This should be enough for 2hrs of normal house usage (cooking etc). and about 1.5hrs recharge time. your biggest "hidden" cost is the Electrician if you cannot do it yourself. They milk the cow at the moment, I would guess you going to pay about R30k installation now.

If you go good quality lithium battery, its a new battery bank in theory every 20 years. the normal AGM/Gell/lead acid crap that everyone sells lasts about 1-3 years off grid , they cannot handle the cycles. Proper Lead acid packs will last about 10 years, but they are a maintenance nightmare. Most houses cannot go of the grid without a MAJOR mental shift. You need to use less than 500 kwh/month to make going off grid viable. No more running electric heaters, just putting the dishwasher on with the vacuum and the kettle etc. a R300k system will give you about ~300 kwh/month in reality, unless you run the generator often.