Rage quitting Eskom, my setup...

[Mzezman]

Sorry I read that wrong. If it's not reading feedback as consumption, then it might recognise the current direction and trigger the anti-tamper. But the CT should prevent that in any case.

What you do need to be careful of is that your UI (the keypad) is connected directly to grid (so it needs to sit after CT but before grid), and not to one of the plugs connected to the inverter. Otherwise this might cause the UI to go out of sync with the meter...

My keypad is wireless - initially i thought it needed to be plugged in but it doesnt seem so. There is another unit in the municipal meter box before the feed actually gets into the house

 

[Magnum]

Freedom Freedom FREEDOM! I' am Outside trying to remember how Trigonometry works. Have not touched my Inverter Welding machine in 15 to 20 Years.

Those panels will up and Stay up. Come hell or high water and Affirmative shoppers....

 

[itareanlnotani]

Freedom Freedom FREEDOM! I' am Outside trying to remember how Trigonometry works. Have not touched my Inverter Welding machine in 15 to 20 Years.

Those panels will up and Stay up. Come hell or high water and Affirmative shoppers....

Mine are 12m up on my roof. Good luck to the affirmative shoppers. They're going to need scaffold and half a day of setup to come get mine

 

[TedLasso]

Freedom Freedom FREEDOM! I' am Outside trying to remember how Trigonometry works. Have not touched my Inverter Welding machine in 15 to 20 Years.

Those panels will up and Stay up. Come hell or high water and Affirmative shoppers....

Coming soon to the world of Solar (only for SA and other similar shithole countries)-

1.Installing alarm IR beams on roof to guard solar panels.
2. Solar panels with built in 'electric fence ' functionality to roast the affirmative shoppers . #SunPower

I swear it's not going to be long before someone shares a photo of an 8 strand electric fence installed and running across their roof/along the gutter area to protect the roof.

 

[itareanlnotani]

Coming soon to the world of Solar (only for SA and other similar shithole countries)-

1.Installing alarm IR beams on roof to guard solar panels.
2. Solar panels with built in 'electric fence ' functionality to roast the affirmative shoppers . #SunPower

I swear it's not going to be long before someone shares a photo of an 8 strand electric fence installed and running across their roof/along the gutter area to protect the roof.

The smarter ones will come for your batteries.
Those are smaller, and worth more.

Who am I kidding though, basically anything not locked down is fair game, and that includes the electric fence wiring.

 

[Paul_S]

Coming soon to the world of Solar (only for SA and other similar shithole countries)-

1.Installing alarm IR beams on roof to guard solar panels.
2. Solar panels with built in 'electric fence ' functionality to roast the affirmative shoppers . #SunPower

I swear it's not going to be long before someone shares a photo of an 8 strand electric fence installed and running across their roof/along the gutter area to protect the roof.

You laugh but I'm already thinking of how to secure batteries and panels from theft and I haven't even installed a solar system yet. That's the reality of living in South Africa.

The panels are bulky to move so if you have an alarm system on them and armed response you should be able to stop them fast enough. I'll put Ajax DoorProtect Plus wireless contact/tilt sensors on mine. I just need to water proof them like I did with my others on my external gates (they fit perfectly inside 20mm PVC pipe).

With the batteries and inverter I think I'm just going to weld up heavy duty steel cages (38x38x2mm square hollow section) that bolts over the enclosures with M16 bolts right through the wall and then weld the recessed nuts on.
Basically make it secure against crowbars and money wrenches. They'd have to come armed with an angle grinder to cut them out.

The area will be secured with an alarm as well. That should slow them down long enough for armed response to arrive.

Plan B is to not bother and just ensure that insurance will cover them if they're stolen.

 

[TedLasso]

You laugh but I'm already thinking of how to secure batteries and panels from theft and I haven't even installed a solar system yet. That's the reality of living in South Africa.

The panels are bulky to move so if you have an alarm system on them and armed response you should be able to stop them fast enough. I'll put Ajax DoorProtect Plus wireless contact/tilt sensors on mine. I just need to water proof them like I did with my others on my external gates (they fit perfectly inside 20mm PVC pipe).

With the batteries and inverter I think I'm just going to weld up heavy duty steel cages (38x38x2mm square hollow section) that bolts over the enclosures with M16 bolts right through the wall and then weld the recessed nuts on.
Basically make it secure against crowbars and money wrenches. They'd have to come armed with an angle grinder to cut them out.

The area will be secured with an alarm as well. That should slow them down long enough for armed response to arrive.

Plan B is to not bother and just ensure that insurance will cover them if they're stolen.

I am also concerned , but for me , it will mainly be plan B, I **may** put a roboguard on the roof near the panels that will be on an always armed zone.

The house itself is fully covered. I (and response company) will know long before someone comes near property that they in the garden.

 

[W@P]

Coming soon to the world of Solar (only for SA and other similar shithole countries)-

1.Installing alarm IR beams on roof to guard solar panels.
2. Solar panels with built in 'electric fence ' functionality to roast the affirmative shoppers . #SunPower

I swear it's not going to be long before someone shares a photo of an 8 strand electric fence installed and running across their roof/along the gutter area to protect the roof.

This. My neighbor had all of her panels stolen off her business workshop roof. Think around 30 panels. Now they replaced them and connected an alarm sensor to each panel and electric fence on top of the roof. Crazy world.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

You laugh but I'm already thinking of how to secure batteries and panels from theft and I haven't even installed a solar system yet. That's the reality of living in South Africa.

The panels are bulky to move so if you have an alarm system on them and armed response you should be able to stop them fast enough. I'll put Ajax DoorProtect Plus wireless contact/tilt sensors on mine. I just need to water proof them like I did with my others on my external gates (they fit perfectly inside 20mm PVC pipe).

With the batteries and inverter I think I'm just going to weld up heavy duty steel cages (38x38x2mm square hollow section) that bolts over the enclosures with M16 bolts right through the wall and then weld the recessed nuts on.
Basically make it secure against crowbars and money wrenches. They'd have to come armed with an angle grinder to cut them out.

The area will be secured with an alarm as well. That should slow them down long enough for armed response to arrive.

Plan B is to not bother and just ensure that insurance will cover them if they're stolen.

Is your roof with the panels facing the road?

Mine faces the back yard, nobody knows I have it so haven't bothered with any additional security...

 

[Mzezman]

Is your roof with the panels facing the road?

Mine faces the back yard, nobody knows I have it so haven't bothered with any additional security...

Mine faces the road :-| have thought of this but yeah i dunno

Edit: alternatively I could have them moved to the garage ...

 

[Paul_S]

Is your roof with the panels facing the road?

Mine faces the back yard, nobody knows I have it so haven't bothered with any additional security...

I have a flat roof house and I can put the panels lying down on the second floor roof so they're not visible from the street. I would take a 15% hit on panel performance but maybe that's worth the lowered risk of people not wanting to break in and endanger the lives of my family. Just add a couple more panels to compensate as long as the VoC is kept low enough. I would need to clean them more often though as panels which are tilted get some automatic cleaning when it rains. With panels lying nearly flat the dirt tends to collect and not wash off.

The only problem is that when there is load shedding at night everyone knows who has solar or battery backup in the neighbourhood so it's not like one can keep it entirely secret unless all security lights are extinguished. Probably close to half the houses in my area have solar PV installations or at least battery backup. I found that out by driving around the neighbourhood when there was load shedding at night.

 

[shadow_man]

It's been a while since I updated some metrics - but I figured I'd update some stats since this went live. The import is due to the 2-3 days where the panels were mostly offline - as I had the installer change the roof mount orientation (+ the trickle charge up to 100w, when my meter was acting up in anti tamper mode).

 

[shadow_man]

Roughest day so far - winter in CPT - hit 15% battery overnight and had to go fiddle with the inverter to charge battery from grid - before I sit with a 4 hour loadshedding outage…

Crazy when I generated 43.5kWh one day earlier in the week. This Cape Town winter is bipolar… (managed 13kWh today as an example)

 

[RonSwanson]

Roughest day so far - winter in CPT - hit 15% battery overnight and had to go fiddle with the inverter to charge battery from grid - before I sit with a 4 hour loadshedding outage…

Crazy when I generated 43.5kWh one day earlier in the week. This Cape Town winter is bipolar… (managed 13kWh today as an example)

13kWh is 13kWh, many run a full home for a day on that. And congrats on the decision to re-orient the panels, it all adds up. As long as you have storage, the sun will shine again tomorrow.

 

[shadow_man]

I finally got the sparky in to add my CBI Astute controllers - which now allows me to set both geysers to run on a schedule and switch on / off as needed.

He also tested the geyser I've been having problems with (tripping and load spikes) and confirmed the element is toast - so he'll be replacing that next week!

 

[shadow_man]

Second geyser timer is up and running... and the element changed (from 2kW to 3kW) in the geyser.

No more tripping!

My only concern now is load - as i've got a 8kW Sunsynk with 6kW of geysers (2x 3kw) - so I've staggered them (via the CBI Astute Controllers) to run at different times.

 

[HowTo]

Nice setup may the sun bless you.

 

[shadow_man]

Awesome setup though I would have gone for 2x 10/8 over the 1x 20/16 just for redundancy in case of failure.

My main concern was cost. I got the 20/16 for 105k, the 2x 10/8 iirc worked out to quite a bit more.

I was really tempted to get the 30/24 as that was like another 40k or so at the time, but my budget just couldn't stretch that far.

 

[shadow_man]

My FreedomWon Lite 20/16 battery has started flashing that it has an error.

Logged a call with FreedomWon support (who at first didn't want to deal with me as an end user).

However quoting their own manual to them, has led to them to assist (it says to contact either them or the installer).

My installer will happily help, but since I'm technical - have the required kit (laptop and cables) it's quicker just to do it myself. I'm going to get them to do a firmware update at the same time as well.

 

[ADrunkTeddyBear]

My FreedomWon Lite 20/16 battery has started flashing that it has an error.

Logged a call with FreedomWon support (who at first didn't want to deal with me as an end user).

However quoting their own manual to them, has led to them to assist (it says to contact either them or the installer).

My installer will happily help, but since I'm technical - have the required kit (laptop and cables) it's quicker just to do it myself. I'm going to get them to do a firmware update at the same time as well.

Any success? Is the big boi fine now or is he still flashing?