Rocket-Boy

I think you will find the main difference is that Patch is a resident troll and he has lots of wit and humor in his posts. You are lacking on that front, better step your game up a bit.

Watch out... that is how it starts. At least its how my wife and I stopped eating meat. The veg based meals she was making were so good that we didnt even realize we hadnt touched meat in a few weeks.

Yeah but everyone has different concerns and morality levels. Climate change might be more important than the moral dilemma to some. Either way not eating/eating less meat is beneficial for the climate.

Cant really tell if you are being serious or not. You get various forms with their own special names for diets. You can eat anything you want really, cutting down on meat consumption from farmed animals does help the environment though. So even if you keep doing mostly the same thing but eat less meat its a good thing.

That is sad, they had some pretty cool stuff.

I have been eyeing the Alpha Smile5 for a while, it would be my first choice if money wasnt an object. The whole modular system with products designed to work together is a winner. The downside is that a mid point system like a 10.2kw setup will cost around R100k and that is before installation or solar panels!

Pumps are pretty rough on systems because of inrush current. I have seen a lot of people describing their setups on youtube when they went fully off grid and built a house in the sticks. All of them had pumps to get rain water for flushing toilets etc and all of them said that if anything else is on at the time it would max out or overload their inverters. The ideal scenario from a cost perspective is to deal with the simpler loads like lights and plugs. The large energy hogs should probably stay grid tied.

Sounds like a hybrid setup which is great. You bring up a very valid point though which is really important. On on older account based meters vs pre-paid meters. With the older meters they will run backwards as you mentioned which really confuses the heck out of the municipality! They dont like it much and they wont "pay" you for backfed kwh. With pre-paid meters its even more messy, if you export to grid on those meters then the vast majority cant tell the direction of current flow, so what happens is you end up using units for each kwh you push back!!! A lot of inverters use a clamp type hall effect sensor to measure your main grid link to make sure it isn't exporting. That would definitely be desirable if you have a pre-paid meter.

Yes when its just used with battery backup then they operate in UPS mode, but when solar is introduced then all grid-tied inverters have to turn off when the grid is off. Its designed that way to protect technicians working on the lines. Even with the export functions disabled they still behave that way. Im sure the separate MPPT controller is related to brands like Victron keeping those functions separate and being the most popular(most expensive too!) Ideally if you have a blended solution then having the off-grid, grid-tied and MPPT functions separated makes it a lot easier to make changes in future. It also means less damage in the event of a lightning strike vs an all in one solution like a Goodwe.

Pretty much all of the inverters have an MPPT charge controller. Where it gets tricky is that most are grid-tied so when you introduce solar they will most likely turn off when the grid supply goes down. The other downside is that they normally can only switch loads and not blend power as required.

That is really awesome, I would love to go fully off grid but the battery cost is too high for me right now. The rest is fairly straight forward with a bunch of panels and a good inverter/MPPT mixed setup. How much did you have to adapt to being battery powered and having to think about what appliances would be on at the same time?

Ok cool so you are in a good space then. When they do the solar geyser then they put a smaller element in, Im pretty sure its a 1kw unit. AC is a bit more tricky, if its a traditional AC(non-inverter) then the inrush current on startup is really high and can exceed the inverter capacity. Once they are running though the load drops a whole lot. I have the exact same goal as you, I want to run the majority of my house off of solar during the day, then run the batteries to say 50% at night and if I need more power than that the grid will fill in. The easiest way to achieve that is with a proper hybrid inverter, it gets set to which power source is priority(solar) and which you want to avoid if possible(grid) You can start with the inverter and batteries to get through loadshedding and then add solar later if needed. The hybrid inverters are expensive though. Their main advantage is the ability to blend power sources - battery, solar and grid - and have priorities for each. Very cheap inverters can only switch i.e you have a 3kw load and your solar+batteries only produces 2kw so it switches the *entire* load to grid. A good inverter will first use the 2kw from solar+batteries and then pull the additional 1kw from the grid. It makes a substantial difference that way. The alternative is to use a grid tied inverter with battery backup that gets fed by an off grid inverter. Its really the same thing as a hybrid inverter but can be purchased in phases too.

I couldnt agree more, you hit the nail on the head. I have two major issues with government/Eskom. 1. You cant make money by feeding excess power generated into the grid, Eskom is short on capacity but they also dont want you to help fix that. 2. There are no rebates and in most cases the municipality or Eskom wants to penalize you for not putting up with their inability to do their job. I know there is a tax writeoff that can be done for a business installing solar but it doesnt help individuals. When Eskom is eventually split into its 3 separate companies then their plan is to increase the charge for grid availability and decrease the usage charges. The supposed idea is you would still be paying around the same total each month but they dont want people generating their own power. Honestly the mentality is just nuts, Eskom desperately needs people to pay for all of the power they can generate but they also cant generate enough to satisfy the needs of everyone. I dont want to have to worry about inverters and solar power, I would prefer to just have a normal reliable connection at home but it isnt the case and so I have to start exploring alternatives. Over the last two weeks I was doing work for an international company which required me to work from 2am - 8am in their datacentres. As would be expected loadshedding happened more than once during that time and my tired batteries on my old inverter cant handle 3+ hours. So that meant I had to try and head into the office at stupidly early hours of the morning just to work.

Is your geyser just a normal electric 2/3kw unit with no solar? Those are very difficult to work with because they are pretty much maxing out smaller inverters from the time they get started. Most often though you would separate out your "essential loads" from your "non-essential loads" I.e your plugs and lights would be essential and others like pool pumps, geysers etc would be non-essential. So when loadshedding is going the geyser and pool pump wouldnt work but the plugs and lights would. Its the difference between say a R30k system and a R100k+ system.

Its a great forums with super helpful people. It does get a bit confusing with all of the info available though. Not sure on the NMD limit locally but I dont think anywhere but the Republic of Western Cape actually supports SSEG. Most times either a hybrid or off-grid inverter would sit on the grid side and prevent exporting of excess power so Im not sure it would apply.

I was running something very similar for the last few years until the batteries gave out. Looking at the cost of replacement lead-acid/AGM I decided to rather investigate a bigger system. That advertised kit will do a great job, the only downside is you have to run an extension cable to whatever you want to power. Its not going to cover your lights(unless its a lamp with a power cable) and you will be limited by distance on what you can plug in. Having said that the Axpert listed can be mounted and connected to a sub-panel DB to cover your house, you just need to be aware of what is turned on during loadshedding.

The fridges and freezer are not a big deal really and should be easy enough. The Pool pump I would recommend putting on a smaller separate off-grid inverter with its own solar panels. My uncle did that recently and the pool pump can operate happily during hours of sunlight which is plenty. It saves a lot of money too.

Definitely agree on this. To size an inverter you need to understand what the peak load will be on it at any given time. Most inverters have a bypass function that will allow it to redirect to the grid if you are attempting to pull more power than it can deliver. Certain loads(aircons, induction motors etc) all pull a much higher current at startup than when running continuously. That needs to be taken into account. Another alternative for measuring power draw is a Sonoff POW R2, I have one on a short extension lead which I swap between various appliances to see what kind of power is being used. At around R300 for the test setup its cheap as chips. https://www.smartkit.co.za/product/sonoff-pow-r2/

This is a really great explanation on the different types of inverters and what they do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6DVS8lLgjw

Hey all, Im aware there are some topics already covering some of this but it is quite diluted and I was hoping to keep this geared towards solutions for home. Im currently looking at an inverter setup with the aim of adding solar at a later stage to drastically lower my reliance on Eskom. I have done a lot of research and Im getting closer to narrowing it down to something that would work for me. There must be others thinking about it so I figured this could be a place to share ideas. www.powerforum.co.za is also a great source for info and has some very knowledgeable members.

Been watching his channel for a while now. He has some really good ideas.

Metal lathes are awesome, I would love one of those. I did fitting and turning in school so I have spent a fair amount of time using them. You could also quite easily turn your own bushings but they are very cheap so its probably just easier to buy them. Mr woodturner has hurt my credit card on numerous occasions!!

Not sure in Durban, the only three suppliers I know are Toolcraft in CT, Strand hardware in PE and Mr Woodturner in JHB. Mr Woodturner has a website you can order through and I have bought tons of pen kits from them. Just make sure to order the correct size bushings with the kit you go for, you can do it without the bushings when you are more experienced but for your first few it would be a pain if you didnt have them.

wow, as always your quality of work is amazing! Must have been quite tricky getting the sides all equal. Did you size it down after the tubes were in and then turn the tapers? I hope you used a skew!!