Loadshedding solutions

[117]

 

2 minutes ago, ouzo said:

what are they going to do if you dont pay ? cut you off ? hahahaha  

I think this proposed tarrif is just a red herring, you know, a classic Kansas city shuffle that the general joe schmo public person is falling for. I suspect its got a lot to do with trying to get the masses to start paying or stay on the grid. That way users are in fear of getting a huge penalty and pay to consume power which inadvertently plays into the utilities hands anyway.

It reminds me of the Bell Pottinger campaigns - has similar style ring tone to it dont you think? And why are the main stream media outlets not making a huge song and dance about this anyway? 

I wouldnt get into too much of a flat spin about it especially off the mybroadband site, not that it detracts me from moving off grid in the future anyway. 

 

 

 

[Robbie Stewart]

@MongooseMan

Nice setup you got there. I'm curious about the wind rating on those panels on the roof. Will they withstand a howling South Easter? And did you need to get approval from the neighbours first? I had to get all my neighbours to approve me putting up electric fencing on my property before I was able to get the installation done.

 

[Robbie Stewart]

Well back in 2017 City of Cape Town turned the taps ever tighter in the hope that people would reduce water usage as the city approached "day zero" . . . then they realised that now people are in fact buying less water, and hence their water income took a rather large dive. The solution was a R150.00 flat rate before you even used one drop of water. Since the lifting of water restrictions, the flat rate has remained. 

Don't think Eskom won't do the same. 

 

[Schnavel]

8 minutes ago, Robbie Stewart said:

@MongooseMan

Nice setup you got there. I'm curious about the wind rating on those panels on the roof. Will they withstand a howling South Easter? And did you need to get approval from the neighbours first? I had to get all my neighbours to approve me putting up electric fencing on my property before I was able to get the installation done.

 

Wow, where do you live, Australia?

[Showtime]

The numbers of the tariff change might not be fair, I haven't studied them, but the concept makes sense.

If you want to connect to the Eskom grid (powerlines etc) for when you need it, you need to contribute to the cost of it. I can't expect Eskom to maintain the lines and substations and keep them operational for me while I use very little actual units from them. It's a separate cost from the actual power you use.

[MongooseMan]

23 minutes ago, Robbie Stewart said:

@MongooseMan

Nice setup you got there. I'm curious about the wind rating on those panels on the roof. Will they withstand a howling South Easter? And did you need to get approval from the neighbours first? I had to get all my neighbours to approve me putting up electric fencing on my property before I was able to get the installation done.

 

Have had no wind issues (and it's been properly tested over the last 2 years).

Also no need to get neighbour approval, though you do need to jump through a decent amount of CoCT hoops to get it approved.

[LazyTrailRider]

5 minutes ago, Showtime said:

The numbers of the tariff change might not be fair, I haven't studied them, but the concept makes sense.

If you want to connect to the Eskom grid (powerlines etc) for when you need it, you need to contribute to the cost of it. I can't expect Eskom to maintain the lines and substations and keep them operational for me while I use very little actual units from them. It's a separate cost from the actual power you use.

Spot on.

There are very, very few scenarios where actually disconnecting from the grid (or never connecting in the first place) are feasible. For the other 99% of scenarios, you need availability, whether it's a little or a lot is secondary.

The only people I know with conventional city-dweller lifestyles who are what people so easily call "off-grid" are those that have spent anything from R500k to R1.5m on their systems. The systems seen on this thread (mine is one of those with a R200k outlay) get you to 70-80%, but the remainder is 3-4x this cost and quite simply doesn't make sense financially. It can make sense in other ways, but not financially. To be able to tell Eskom to take a hike, you need to - in my experience - oversize your system 5-6x the level that it needs to be at in summer when there is plenty of sun....

[PhilipV]

On 7/15/2022 at 10:08 PM, Mountain Bru said:

Glad to hear some positive news about them before I commit. It seems like a super useful option for some use cases, with the main advantage being that it's compact and 100% portable. 

For the guys saying a battery box would be cheaper, could you show me how a home-made battery box would work out much cheaper? I did some calcs a while ago when I was looking into dual battery systems purely for running a camping fridge in the car, and this is what I came up with once you replicate those EcoFlow units and all their features. Granted this calc has a 105Ah battery in it vs the 720Wh in the Ecoflow, but once you include all the faf of buying the components and wiring everything together, it really doesn't seem like a better solution. Only place I see to save it by getting a cheaper DC-DC Charger, but that seems like the worst place to try and save. 

Well I would ditch the Ctek charger for a Victron unit, and save 1500. But I'm not a fan of ctek, and the Victron can charge lithium batteries.

But I'll rather get a WRND DC2DC charger for 2.5k and get a better AC2DC charger. As you'll probably use the battery in your home a lot more than in your car. 

I'll ditch the National Luna box and faceplate for a cheaper battery box or even better, a toolbox and then mount the chargers where I want it. The NL box and plate looks nice though, but that's another 1000zars that can be substituted for a cheaper off-the-shelf battery box. 

I'll pull a seperate 6mm cable from the front battery to the back of my bakkie, and plug the battery pack and fridge off that. You don't Have enough decent cables in your list, so I'm insure wether you want to mount the dc2dc charger in the engine bay, or hope to plug your unit into the car's existing 12v socket. 

Bear in mind the pretty integrated off the shelf units will charge off the cigarette plug in your car, and those are limited to 10amps, and your fridge will take 2-5 amps, leaving you 5-7 amps to refill a battery that only had 750wh to work with. 

[ChrisF]

19 hours ago, Robbie Stewart said:

@MongooseMan

Nice setup you got there. I'm curious about the wind rating on those panels on the roof. Will they withstand a howling South Easter? And did you need to get approval from the neighbours first? I had to get all my neighbours to approve me putting up electric fencing on my property before I was able to get the installation done.

 

 

I friend had a 4kW PV install done in Melkbos.  Also on frames to angle the panels.

 

NO signage needed from the neighbours.  And this with the official COCT application process done.

 

Standing up well to the wind.

 

 

For interest sake:

- 4kW PV

- 7kW inverter

- 15kW.h batteries

 

Bigger house, four people, pool, AC, home office ....

 

EDIT - This took care of the bulk of their eskom account.  Minimal eskom use during winter, should be mostly off grid during summer

Edited July 19, 2022 by ChrisF

[LazyTrailRider]

2 hours ago, ChrisF said:

 

I friend had a 4kW PV install done in Melkbos.  Also on frames to angle the panels.

 

NO signage needed from the neighbours.  And this with the official COCT application process done.

 

Standing up well to the wind.

 

 

For interest sake:

- 4kW PV

- 7kW inverter

- 15kW.h batteries

 

Bigger house, four people, pool, AC, home office ....

 

They hardly use any eskom.

In summer yes, ask him what his figures look like for the last month...

I have 4.8kW of panels facing NNE on a sloped roof (basically perfect positioning), 6/8kW inverter and a 10kWh battery. 

Our house - in Claremont, Southern Suburbs - is a small 170sqm, we're two adults, we don't have a pool or underfloor heating or anything that consumes heavily except for the fact that our oven/hob is not gas. Our base load (basically fridges, router and mesh wifi, garden lights) is only 400W. In addition to that, the geyser is customised to 2kW and runs off a timer so that it only draws during peak generation hours and for 50min at night before our showers, and 50min in the morning before showers. 

In addition to this, we run on grid power from 18h30 to 21h00 so that the evening's cooking activities don't nail the battery too badly.

2 weeks ago it was overcast and we had a 24-hour transformer outage in the neighbourhood. The battery got us 15 hours with us basically going full eco mode with the geyser completely off.

Below is what my Eskom usage since July 2019 (when the setup was installed) looks like. The picture would be very different for a more "traditional" family home with kids, pool, and all the stuff us hippies in the South don't want 😉 

 

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by LazyTrailRider

[Dexter-morgan]

7 hours ago, Mongoose! said:

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/452716-solar-power-users-must-pay-r938-per-month-even-if-they-dont-use-our-electricity-eskom.html

Same thing happening in the US, se youtube.

 

[Schnavel]

27 minutes ago, LazyTrailRider said:

In summer yes, ask him what his figures look like for the last month...

I have 4.8kW of panels facing NEE on a sloped roof (basically perfect positioning), 6/8kW inverter and a 10kWh battery. 

Our house - in Claremont, Southern Suburbs - is a small 170sqm, we're two adults, we don't have a pool or underfloor heating or anything that consumes heavily except for the fact that our oven/hob is not gas. Our base load (basically fridges, router and mesh wifi, garden lights) is only 400W. In addition to that, the geyser is customised to 2kW and runs off a timer so that it only draws during peak generation hours and for 50min at night before our showers, and 50min in the morning before showers. 

In addition to this, we run on grid power from 18h30 to 21h00 so that the evening's cooking activities don't nail the battery too badly.

2 weeks ago it was overcast and we had a 24-hour transformer outage in the neighbourhood. The battery got us 15 hours with us basically going full eco mode with the geyser completely off.

Below is what my Eskom usage since July 2019 (when the setup was installed) looks like. The picture would be very different for a more "traditional" family home with kids, pool, and all the stuff us hippies in the South don't want 😉 

 

 

Our setups are very similar (6kW panels, 7,2kW inverter and 10,5kWh batteries), as well as our base loads (roughly 350W to 400W) and yet on average, I'm using less than R100 per month from Eskom. 

I run 2x geysers and a pool pump during the day and then run all night on batteries. This includes the usage of my oven for up to 1 hour at night and I still make it through the night.

It may be worth your while to add some additional panels, as I see that is the biggest difference between our setups

[ChrisF]

1 hour ago, LazyTrailRider said:

In summer yes, ask him what his figures look like for the last month...

I have 4.8kW of panels facing NEE on a sloped roof (basically perfect positioning), 6/8kW inverter and a 10kWh battery. 

Our house - in Claremont, Southern Suburbs - is a small 170sqm, we're two adults, we don't have a pool or underfloor heating or anything that consumes heavily except for the fact that our oven/hob is not gas. Our base load (basically fridges, router and mesh wifi, garden lights) is only 400W. In addition to that, the geyser is customised to 2kW and runs off a timer so that it only draws during peak generation hours and for 50min at night before our showers, and 50min in the morning before showers. 

In addition to this, we run on grid power from 18h30 to 21h00 so that the evening's cooking activities don't nail the battery too badly.

2 weeks ago it was overcast and we had a 24-hour transformer outage in the neighbourhood. The battery got us 15 hours with us basically going full eco mode with the geyser completely off.

Below is what my Eskom usage since July 2019 (when the setup was installed) looks like. The picture would be very different for a more "traditional" family home with kids, pool, and all the stuff us hippies in the South don't want 😉 

 

 

 

I have a much smaller system, with no batteries.  Summer it takes care of almost 70% of my electrical use.  Some (many) of these winter days it has gone down as low as 10%   Cape Town winters are not PV friendly ...

 

Have to wait until November to see what my annual saving looks like ....

 

 

Waiting to hear from my friend how much electricity he had to buy the last few months ....

 

EDIT - He confirmed that they are using 15 to 18 kW.h on the bad winter days.  Certainly should be over producing during summer.  Obviously the question is how deep you want to go down this rabbit hole ....  for now he is happy that summer is taken care of and winter is below the 600kW.h mark, after which COCT has a hefty increase in the unit rates.

 

Going to be very interesting to see his annual figures .... his install was done at the start of this winter.

Edited July 18, 2022 by ChrisF

[Schnavel]

My setup out of interest:

7,2kW inverter, controlled by ICC

6kW panels

10,5kWh batteries

I installed the system myself when I moved into my house a year ago, and together with changing from 3-phase postpaid, to single phase pre-paid, I have saved just over R24k in the last year. One of the best investments I have ever made - the only reason I know when there is load shedding is the neighbour's generator.

[Frosty]

I know this is load shedding related, but I'll add in service delivery related.
Eskom is a 2nd tier supplier of electricity in Ekurhuleni, hence the tag service delivery related (or is that non-service

I started (on Saturday) digging holes and laying foundations for rain water collection tanks, aka JoJo tanks. We have burst water pipes on a regular basis, resulting in low water pressure, as well as no water, on occasions.

Then add the amount of rain we received in April, and I have a backyard that is being destroyed because of too much water. So I'm putting in 1000L slimline tanks (2 this year) and then 1-2 every year until all my gutters are collecting water. In the event of a municipal outage, I can still make a plan.

[LazyTrailRider]

50 minutes ago, Schnavel said:

that is the biggest difference between our setups

I think we're underestimating the biggest factor here: We live in different parts of the country (if, as your profile shows, you are indeed in JHB) 🙂

The Southern Suburbs are basically Mordor in winter. Cape Town as a whole has almost an hour less sunlight currently than JHB, and on top of that our house is 3km from where the mountain slopes begin properly, so we lose direct sunlight very early in the afternoon.

Around these parts, people are spending R500k+ on modest size properties to get to 95% independence levels. Rough, but it is what it is.

Ironically, in CPT it's a fact that the more expensive your property is, the more likely it is to be against a slope of some kind, which kills your generation on whatever side it happens to be.