Solar upgrade questions

[Pax]

Current setup is a 3KW (Kodak) inverter, 2.8kw (Pylon) battery with 6x 340w pv panels in place (1 year old) It runs all essentials save for the fridge. We want to upgrade this to also run the fridge LG double door (1 year old - latest tech- seems to require under 300w in stable state) and microwave (1000w unit). The inverter runs at best at 30% capacity currently with the coffee machine in the home office on, else, at under 15%. I have ordered another battery already. The first question is whether to expand the solar array or replace the panels with 540w ones. What would be more economical? Secondly to how much capacity should we expand the panels? I live on the West Coast. My roof/panels face north-east. House was built in 2016 with all available power saving devices available, (gas water heater for kitchen and gas stove, solar geyser for showers, led lights, etc) save for solar. Power consumption from the grid was always around R450 per month. It has now fallen with solar to around R200 per month. Just 2 people in the house.

Any advice shall be appreciated.

 

[1am7h30n3]

Do you need more panels? You might get away with the existing panels and your extra battery that you say you've already ordered. If your inverter has any sort of logging you'd be able to get a feel for how much of your panel capacity is currently being used.

To add a perspective, my solar system uses 2x2.4kWh pylontech batteries (so similar capacity to what you're proposing when you have your 2nd battery installed) and I have 4x490W solar panels (so my panel capacity is 1.9kW and yours is 2.04kW). On a good/normal solar power day I have plenty of excess solar power capacity that I don't use and goes to waste. More solar panels would be beneficial to me on cloudy/rainy days, but it wouldn't be a very efficient thing to do since I already can't use most of my solar power on normal days.

I run gas cooking, gas water heating, espresso machine (when the sun is shining), microwave, electric pressure cooker (when the sun is shining), PCs/TVs/hifi, routers, 2x fridges. Most of the time I can cover those loads fully off-grid.

 

[ghaye]

I think the Kodak is just a rebranded Voltronic? If so there are many different versions and the key here is to know which one as their solar capacities vary quite a bit.