Neuk_'s Home ESS - Round Two

Neuk_ said:
I forgot to add that I have replaced every single light bulb in the house I could find that wasn't LED or CFL.
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Nice, my place only has one standard halogen glass bulb, in the braai. All the rest are LED. Around 150 downlights.
Way overkill and not all of them get used.
 
W@P said:
Nice, my place only has one standard halogen glass bulb, in the braai. All the rest are LED. Around 150 downlights.
Way overkill and not all of them get used.
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Oh, I forgot about the braai place, the only 'standard' globe in the house. We definitely don't have 150 downlights but each of the four bedrooms, three bathrooms, our dressing room, sons play room, the office, two passages, kitchen and scullery all have down lights. Then there are uplights in the TV room, dining room, lounge and outside patio, lamps in just about every room except kitchen, scullery and bathrooms, outside lights on all four sides of the house, two sides of the garage, in the garage, down our shared driveway and outside the property at the main gate. It is a bit of a mess with a lot of E27 bulbs, GU10 bulbs, MR16 bulbs and a mix of specialist bulbs.
 
Neuk_ said:
Oh, I forgot about the braai place, the only 'standard' globe in the house. We definitely don't have 150 downlights but each of the four bedrooms, three bathrooms, our dressing room, sons play room, the office, two passages, kitchen and scullery all have down lights. Then there are uplights in the TV room, dining room, lounge and outside patio, lamps in just about every room except kitchen, scullery and bathrooms, outside lights on all four sides of the house, two sides of the garage, in the garage, down our shared driveway and outside the property at the main gate. It is a bit of a mess with a lot of E27 bulbs, GU10 bulbs, MR16 bulbs and a mix of specialist bulbs.
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It's easy to forget how many lights you have till you start counting or replacing them. :ROFL:
 
Hosed down our PV panels this morning while our gardener is here to make up a day he owes us :cool: Bloody hell though, steep angle tin roofs are horrendous to get around on, I'll be looking at better ways to 'clean' them in the future.

Edit: Forgot to add @Priapus who would be impressed that I merely hosed the panels down instead of giving them a rinse, pre-wash, foam soak, rinse, scrub, rinse, micro fibre dry, hand swirl removal, polish and finally a nanotech coating.
 
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We are seeing great PV production with Spring here which combined with the warmer temperatures sees zero use of electricity for heating which means we are running on battery overnight and using significantly less CityPower supply. Something I want to do is to put at least one, if not both geysers on the critical supply side of the inverter as I manage when they are on and off but the higher stages of load shedding affect heavily when I can run them. I also plan to move the geysers off the HellerMan Tyton smart switches/relays and on to the Geyserwise type where I can see temperature as well and then use the Hellerman Tyton ones for the underfloor heating which I have managed manually in the past.
 
Was doing really well, down to 6 units a day, but now at 7 units a day, just a few days of cloud and stage 6. Sure that is better then the 8 from last month.
 
An almost perfect PV day yesterday with a little drop off in the late afternoon as we didn't have the loads to sustain the PV generation. Managed to generate 40kWh and we are only starting to make 6kWp from the PV panels which can theoretically make 8.7kWp under ideal conditions and load.

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Today marks a year since we first installed our system, overall a good experience with some speed bumps along the way, managed to generate 9458.9 kWh over the year with 1773.4 kWh from grid and 3348 kWh from battery with a calculated 291 cycles at 80% maximum DOD.
 
Neuk_ said:
Today marks a year since we first installed our system, overall a good experience with some speed bumps along the way, managed to generate 9458.9 kWh over the year with 1773.4 kWh from grid and 3348 kWh from battery with a calculated 291 cycles at 80% maximum DOD.
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Very impressive figures there
 
Neuk_ said:
Thanks ;) I know we can improve, especially winter PV production and the first few months of use didn't include back feeding to the electric geysers as the CT clamp wasn't in the right place.
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What will you do when you have 12 hours of loadshitting or 7 days of no eskom because substation exploded?
 
wingnut771 said:
What will you do when you have 12 hours of loadshitting or 7 days of no eskom because substation exploded?
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The geysers will be put on the essential side of the inverter in teh New Year when my FIL has time but we have a 15kVa diesel generator as a backup for longer LS, overcast/cloudy weather and general substation blowing up shenanigans.
 
Neuk_ said:
The geysers will be put on the essential side of the inverter in teh New Year when my FIL has time but we have a 15kVa diesel generator as a backup for longer LS, overcast/cloudy weather and general substation blowing up shenanigans.
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Yeah generator is a good thing :) have used mine about 6 hours this week.
 
Neuk_ said:
Yep, I try not use ours, R50/hour running cost starts to add up quickly.
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Yea living in the Western cape we are spoilt
Touch wood these horror stories of days without power isn't something we experience

In the last decade we probably only had. Like a handful of times we were without power from 9Am to 2-3pm for network maintenance (tree cutting or changing of network) with notice even if short notice

Any outages we are normally back within hour or two
 
leon.davibe said:
Yea living in the Western cape we are spoilt
Touch wood these horror stories of days without power isn't something we experience

In the last decade we probably only had. Like a handful of times we were without power from 9Am to 2-3pm for network maintenance (tree cutting or changing of network) with notice even if short notice

Any outages we are normally back within hour or two
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Yup with working street lights, traffic lights, non potholes roads, maintained kerbs
 
leon.davibe said:
Yea living in the Western cape we are spoilt
Touch wood these horror stories of days without power isn't something we experience

In the last decade we probably only had. Like a handful of times we were without power from 9Am to 2-3pm for network maintenance (tree cutting or changing of network) with notice even if short notice

Any outages we are normally back within hour or two
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@Lupus is on day 7 with no mains electricity supply from CityPower :rolleyes: Reminds me of the ROI conversations I have had with people in the past and their surprise when I say that ROI on alternative/backup electricity supply is getting more and more irrelevant.
 
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