Cius's I've got the Power! happy dance thread

[Cius]

Solar install is now 90% done. Outstanding steps will be done next week and include wiring in my outside rooms to the inverter and installing a geyserwise.

The system:
8x 385W Mono MBB Percium Ja Solar panels
1x Kodak FL5.2 battery (5KWH)
1 Goodwe Hybrid inverter 4.6KW

Current production from my 3050 W of panels is 2.5KW at peak time on a fine winters day. I suspect I will still expand it somewhat over the next 3 years if I can scrape the cash together as I would love another battery, and a few more panels for the garage roof. Still, for now my technology and fridges are essentially off grid. I will share my production figures in the thread once I have a better feel for them as we switched over to solar this morning.

For the Fundi's out there what do you recon the next expansion should be, more battery, or more panel? Average daily use before going solar was 20 to 22 KWH per day.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

If you can, probably double the panels and add another battery. You'll save on install costs by doing it together.

But if it has to be one, maybe panels first. You'll want to at least be able to cover your base load during the day and also charge the battery, which I don't think you have sufficient capacity for at the moment...

 

[Mzezman]

Congrats... pics please... you know we are all voyeurs for this type of thing

Spend the next 2 weeks tweaking and understanding your usage patterns and how to optimise the system. Panels are always the cheapest upgrade but as Mike said above if you can do both then do so

 

[Steijn1]

Solar install is now 90% done. Outstanding steps will be done next week and include wiring in my outside rooms to the inverter and installing a geyserwise.

The system:
8x 385W Mono MBB Percium Ja Solar panels
1x Kodak FL5.2 battery (5KWH)
1 Goodwe Hybrid inverter 4.6KW

Current production from my 3050 W of panels is 2.5KW at peak time on a fine winters day. I suspect I will still expand it somewhat over the next 3 years if I can scrape the cash together as I would love another battery, and a few more panels for the garage roof. Still, for now my technology and fridges are essentially off grid. I will share my production figures in the thread once I have a better feel for them as we switched over to solar this morning.

For the Fundi's out there what do you recon the next expansion should be, more battery, or more panel? Average daily use before going solar was 20 to 22 KWH per day.

Congratulations

 

[Cius]

So as I am in a complex I have no CoJ meter. I have a complex mechanical meter that can in fact run backwards. My father has the same meter in a nearby retirement home and he has gotten permission to export to the grid within the complex as it would never actually cause the bulk meter to run backwards causing the charges CoJ charges for exporting to the grid. However what that means is he gets 100% utilization for every Watt he generates, and he only discharges his battery during actual load shedding, greatly extending the life of the battery.

I am applying to get the same here in my complex so holding thumbs they will allow it. It would increase the payback period by a massive margin, and make it much less important to me when I run appliances etc as in that way the rest of the complex becomes my battery. I can use power whenever I want (outside load shedding obviously) as during the day the meter will run backwards regardless if I am using power or not within my own home. My father only uses 350 odd units a month but he has not paid for electricity for 11 months. He is negative every month from his system despite regularly drawing CoJ power during the night etc.

 

[P924]

and he only discharges his battery during actual load shedding, greatly extending the life of the battery.

Some battery warranties stipulate that they have to be cycled daily. LiFePO does not like being kept at full charge for extended periods...

 

[Cius]

Final stage of the system hookup and geyserwise install happening this morning. Yesterday was interesting as it was both cloudy and we had load shedding twice. Once at midday, and once at 8PM. System handled it with zero issues. I left it in normal mode to see how it handled it so during the evening the battery ran down to 50% and then it switched over to mains. At 20:00 the cutover was seamless, and after an hour of working on two laptops and watching TV the battery was down to 46%. First time really seeing the benefit at a time that would otherwise have been annoying and what a feeling. Loving my new system.

In sad news it does not seem like the complex will allow backfeeding into the complex grid. They asked an electrician his opinion and he said its complicated and requires all kinds of rules and checks for safety. Anyways. Still a great system.

 

[Cius]

Well, they wired up my outside DB board, installed the geyserwise. Independent electrician came and gave me my CoC. Final step was registering my inverter with the manufacturer who then flashed it remotely with the latest firmware and now the inverter cannot talk to the battery so we are completely down. No Eskom power, no backup power. Sigh.

 

[Cius]

So just an update. We did get the system working before we left on holiday late last month. Been in Durban now for almost 3.5 weeks and the system worked great. However yesterday power in our area went down at 2PM stayed off. My system worked fine overnight but went down at around 5AM. Neighbour was watching a light I left on and noticed it was off so he let me know. Seems in backup mode the battery for some reason was only set to discharge down to 40% and it hit that limit so it turned off. However it got stuck and did not come back up even when the sun was out. Fortunately my dad lives close and with some fiddling and setting the battery down to 20% he got it up and running. I lost the ability to track it though after 10AM when I think fibre went down in the area too and I could not get an internet connection to my inverter. According to the local whatsapp group power returned for 20 min recently and suddenly I got data again for that 20 min window so that seems to be the reason anyways.

Will be back on the weekend hopefully right when loadshedding ends. Durban is still exempt (returns to load shedding 1st Aug). So we did not have any power issues during this extended outage. We did have several days of water shedding due to the flood damage to water infrastructure in Northern parts of Durban. I think some backup water tanks will be my next investment.

 

[Cius]

Post the Nersa increase of 18.6% I had another close look at my solar setup and have made the call to get the second battery and 1 additional panel. My panels are idling half the sunlight hours as my 1 battery is full. If I get 10kwh of storage and let them discharge a bit more overnight I can get a significant bump in overall system performance and reduce my payback period by a fair bit. The extra panel is more for cloudy days to have that little bit extra to run the fridges and tech without having to worry too much, and because the roof looks unbalanced with just the 8. The 9th will make it symmetrical.

 

[jacksdad]

Isn't the rule that no pics, it didn't happen??

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

Post the Nersa increase of 18.6% I had another close look at my solar setup and have made the call to get the second battery and 1 additional panel. My panels are idling half the sunlight hours as my 1 battery is full. If I get 10kwh of storage and let them discharge a bit more overnight I can get a significant bump in overall system performance and reduce my payback period by a fair bit. The extra panel is more for cloudy days to have that little bit extra to run the fridges and tech without having to worry too much, and because the roof looks unbalanced with just the 8. The 9th will make it symmetrical.

Get the extra battery to help with your night time load.

It's not going to make much difference to panel utility, at best you're going to get an extra 2 hours during the day to charge the extra battery.

Panel utility is an issue we all sit with. I've moved as much as I can to run during the day to make the most of the panels. Pool pump, geyser, dishwasher, washing machine, aircons etc. And I still struggle to use more pv...

 

[Cius]

Get the extra battery to help with your night time load.

It's not going to make much difference to panel utility, at best you're going to get an extra 2 hours during the day to charge the extra battery.

Panel utility is an issue we all sit with. I've moved as much as I can to run during the day to make the most of the panels. Pool pump, geyser, dishwasher, washing machine, aircons etc. And I still struggle to use more pv...

Holy crap! This extra battery is amazing. Prior to getting it on average I would use say 20KWH a day and half would come from Eskom. Now I am 90 to 95% self sufficient. I did set the depth of discharge across the 2 batteries to 70% from the previous 50% when I just had the one so that I have some backup in the event of surprise load shedding but overall I could not be happier!

Will upload some pictures later. Can't from my work laptop. One minor issue is that the panel I got delivered was the wrong colour. My 8 on the roof where silver trim, the new one is black. So going to have to swap it out to not have it stick out like a sore thumb. Still, I need it more for winter so I can wait a bit on it.