What to do with your solar system before leaving for the holidays

South African households with well-functioning integrated home solar systems should leave them running as normal while on holiday.

That is the advice from AWPower, a major solar and backup power system installer based out of Cape Town.

Given several reports about increases in fires related to rooftop solar power installations over the past few months, many households may be concerned about leaving their systems running while away from home for prolonged periods.

However, worried solar users should remember that this increase went hand-in-hand with a record surge in rooftop solar adoption.

The reality is a system that is properly installed with certified equipment meeting the necessary industry standards should be issued with a certificate of compliance (CoC).

The CoC is completed by a registered electrician and provides peace of mind that your installation is safe. It should not cause electrical shorts or fires unless it is deliberately abused or operated outside of its performance parameters.

If you used an experienced company and got a sign-off from a qualified electrician, your system should not present a risk — whether you are at home or away.

AWPower managing director Christiaan Hattingh told MyBroadband that leaving rooftop solar systems running would also make it easier to spot any changes or unusual activity in the system.

However, he advised users to regularly monitor their apps to check the system’s performance.

Hattingh also recommended adding a mini-UPS or battery backup to your home Internet router to make monitoring as reliable and useful as possible in the event that the system suffers a fault or other issue.

“Should there be a system failure, you would at least be able to see a fault code or data to pinpoint the problem from the monitoring data,” he said.

Customers with prepaid meters might also want to load sufficient credits for running off the grid as a backup, just in case any mishaps occur or there are prolonged periods without solar production.

Hattingh added that households should approach their solar systems in the same way they would their cars before leaving on holiday.

“Have your installer do an inspection of your system to make sure the system settings are correct, all connections are tight, and the general health and layout of the system is up to standard,” Hattingh said.

Bypassing the inverter

Those users concerned about an inverter failing or tripping and not recovering, could consider bypassing the inverter to power essential appliances with just the solar and battery alone.

With this approach, households will still benefit from savings on their electricity bills.

“Just be aware that if there is any power failure there will be no power in the house this way,” Hattingh cautioned.

“Homeowners can also invest a little extra in an automatic changeover switch that will do the changeover from the inverter supplied to Eskom automatically.”

Those more concerned about consistent power supply than the inverter tripping can increase their battery’s configured minimum state-of-charge while grid power is available.

That will ensure their system has more spare capacity available for emergencies in the event of local power failures or if load-shedding should return.

Users who want to increase the longevity of their batteries can simply apply basic energy-saving principles — such as switching off demanding appliances that will not be used while away.

A good example of this is an electric geyser that will heat up water unnecessarily and consume lots of electricity in the process.

Switching off these appliances will not only reduce the amount of battery you might consume while away but could also avoid potential inadvertent grid “tap-ins” in cases where solar production was low.

It is still recommended to discharge at least a part of the battery regularly, as this is actually good for calibrating battery percentage levels.

If you want just a little bit of depletion, you can always programme the inverter to only drop the battery down to a certain threshold — like 90% or 80% — before switching over to grid power.