Thought I might as well show off my system, can't be an installer without something good to showcase
Kit:
1 x 8kw Sunsynk Inverter
18 x JA Mono 545 Watt Panels (9 West Facing, 9 East Facing this allows me to get early morning PV power, late afternoon PV power and Peak Power from around 11am to 1pm) Can produce up to 7000 watts on a good day
2 X BSL 7kw Batteries
The system currently powers most of the house, we have split the geysers, and heat pump, stove, on the non essential side of the inverter. 95% of the house runs on the essential side. It's a converted 3 phase setup, we are not really heavy users.
History: In 2016 to 2018 during winter I was clueless, we had so called solar geysers which were not working, we use to use about 100 to 120 kwh per day. Major culprits were the geysers, then both burst and i just replaced them with normal kwikot geysers (250l and 150l) serving different sides of the house. In 2019 I installed a kind of average setup, 5kw growatt, 12 JA 315 Watt mono panels and a Sirius 6.7kwh Supercap back then we had no fancy sunsynk units. I also installed and automated my geysers using raspberry pi with a relay to drive a contactor, after a while I ditched the pi and used sonoff basics to drive the contactors (note: back then we had no fancy wifi circuit breakers), we also stopped using the ACs to heat the rooms in winter, I just got the family nice thick heavy blankets
These few things helped us reduce the usage from 120 units to around 50 to 60 units a day, the old solar sytem setup would yield about 12kw during the day including charging in winter and up to 25kw a day in summer, noting that I had all 12 panels on the west side of the house.
Fast forward 2022, still running with my 50 to 60kw unit per day setup I saw a bill for R3880 for electricity alone!!!This is after they increased the rates in June/July, not to mention increased network and service charges!!! Service and network charges alone were around R1100 inc vat. Thinking to myself it will only keep increasing probably twice a year, which means that this years R3880 will be R4300 the next year and maybe R4700 the following year I got really gatvol, maybe if we had no load shedding one wouldn't mind paying such prices ?
In any case a trip to COJ was needed, with one thing in mind (GET OFF POST PAID ELECTRICITY NONSENSE). Filled in a form, came back 5 working days later paid R2100 to have my 3 phase post paid converted to prepaid. In conjunction with applying for prepaid I started my new system build. Ripped out everything, and started from scratch, made the team even re-wire the DB board so it was up to scratch!
Upon completion of the installation I could see a dramatic improvement in usage, firstly on a good sunny day the 18 X JA Mono Panels are powering the house and charging the batteries as early as 7am with no reliance on eskom, secondly with the awesome Sunsynk inverter and its brilliant work mode feature, I can use my batteries at different times. In a nutshell my 2 x BSL 7kw batteries run my house from 19:45 all the way to around 7am. This includes powering my 5.5kw heat pump which actually uses around 1800 watts to heat the 250L geyser(the element would use 4400 watts and by 3am batteries are at 20% SOC and the rest would be fed from grid). So now element is just a backup to the heat pump, should the heat pump fail! In a nutshell I am off grid daily from 19:45 to 7am, with 20% SOC on the BSLs.
As it stands with the installation of the new system, including heat pump I am down to a mere 2.5kw per day! Thankfully they also installed the prepaid system two weeks ago! Sure there will be rainy/cloudly days where the PV won't do much but during these times I will just keep the batteries topped up and use Eskom.
Then I have added some automation as well to check battery SOC, with home assistant and node red, this then turns on various things through out the day such as:
1. Geyser 1 250L Heat Pump (When needed based on certain conditions only, example load shedding cloudy days)
2. Geyser 2 150L, comes on after heat pump on main geyser is done(This guy is not so import it just feeds the kitchen)
3. Pool Pump.
During the day other things will be running as well, air fryer, iron, TVs, Inverter Air Cons, Microwave etc, I have a combo of control of most devices which either include wifi circuit, breakers, smart aircons, sonoff basics, etc.
Planning to get 1 x more BSL batt and then bye bye Eskom! (On Sunny days of course), not much we can do on those rainy days I guess we still have some reliance on EKSDOM.
And with that I send out a send out a BIG FU to ESKOM!!!!!!! Its been a journey but now I can gladly say I have done my utmost best to reduce my carbon footprint.
Here are some pics
Kit:
1 x 8kw Sunsynk Inverter
18 x JA Mono 545 Watt Panels (9 West Facing, 9 East Facing this allows me to get early morning PV power, late afternoon PV power and Peak Power from around 11am to 1pm) Can produce up to 7000 watts on a good day
2 X BSL 7kw Batteries
The system currently powers most of the house, we have split the geysers, and heat pump, stove, on the non essential side of the inverter. 95% of the house runs on the essential side. It's a converted 3 phase setup, we are not really heavy users.
History: In 2016 to 2018 during winter I was clueless, we had so called solar geysers which were not working, we use to use about 100 to 120 kwh per day. Major culprits were the geysers, then both burst and i just replaced them with normal kwikot geysers (250l and 150l) serving different sides of the house. In 2019 I installed a kind of average setup, 5kw growatt, 12 JA 315 Watt mono panels and a Sirius 6.7kwh Supercap back then we had no fancy sunsynk units. I also installed and automated my geysers using raspberry pi with a relay to drive a contactor, after a while I ditched the pi and used sonoff basics to drive the contactors (note: back then we had no fancy wifi circuit breakers), we also stopped using the ACs to heat the rooms in winter, I just got the family nice thick heavy blankets
These few things helped us reduce the usage from 120 units to around 50 to 60 units a day, the old solar sytem setup would yield about 12kw during the day including charging in winter and up to 25kw a day in summer, noting that I had all 12 panels on the west side of the house.Fast forward 2022, still running with my 50 to 60kw unit per day setup I saw a bill for R3880 for electricity alone!!!This is after they increased the rates in June/July, not to mention increased network and service charges!!! Service and network charges alone were around R1100 inc vat. Thinking to myself it will only keep increasing probably twice a year, which means that this years R3880 will be R4300 the next year and maybe R4700 the following year I got really gatvol, maybe if we had no load shedding one wouldn't mind paying such prices ?
In any case a trip to COJ was needed, with one thing in mind (GET OFF POST PAID ELECTRICITY NONSENSE). Filled in a form, came back 5 working days later paid R2100 to have my 3 phase post paid converted to prepaid. In conjunction with applying for prepaid I started my new system build. Ripped out everything, and started from scratch, made the team even re-wire the DB board so it was up to scratch!
Upon completion of the installation I could see a dramatic improvement in usage, firstly on a good sunny day the 18 X JA Mono Panels are powering the house and charging the batteries as early as 7am with no reliance on eskom, secondly with the awesome Sunsynk inverter and its brilliant work mode feature, I can use my batteries at different times. In a nutshell my 2 x BSL 7kw batteries run my house from 19:45 all the way to around 7am. This includes powering my 5.5kw heat pump which actually uses around 1800 watts to heat the 250L geyser(the element would use 4400 watts and by 3am batteries are at 20% SOC and the rest would be fed from grid). So now element is just a backup to the heat pump, should the heat pump fail! In a nutshell I am off grid daily from 19:45 to 7am, with 20% SOC on the BSLs.
As it stands with the installation of the new system, including heat pump I am down to a mere 2.5kw per day! Thankfully they also installed the prepaid system two weeks ago! Sure there will be rainy/cloudly days where the PV won't do much but during these times I will just keep the batteries topped up and use Eskom.
Then I have added some automation as well to check battery SOC, with home assistant and node red, this then turns on various things through out the day such as:
1. Geyser 1 250L Heat Pump (When needed based on certain conditions only, example load shedding cloudy days)
2. Geyser 2 150L, comes on after heat pump on main geyser is done(This guy is not so import it just feeds the kitchen)
3. Pool Pump.
During the day other things will be running as well, air fryer, iron, TVs, Inverter Air Cons, Microwave etc, I have a combo of control of most devices which either include wifi circuit, breakers, smart aircons, sonoff basics, etc.
Planning to get 1 x more BSL batt and then bye bye Eskom! (On Sunny days of course), not much we can do on those rainy days I guess we still have some reliance on EKSDOM.
And with that I send out a send out a BIG FU to ESKOM!!!!!!! Its been a journey but now I can gladly say I have done my utmost best to reduce my carbon footprint.
Here are some pics
