Solar Power

Households will get a tax rebate of 25% of the cost of new solar PV panels for the next year. The rebate can offset your income tax liability up to a maximum of R15 000. For example, if you buy 10 solar panels at a cost of R40 000, this means your personal income tax liability for the 2023/24 tax year will be reduced by R10 000.

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They haven’t phoned back today and the issue still persists so I guess it’s the usual South African past time of chasing up on people now :confused:

The app is called SOLARMAN Smart - it works with the Deye inverters. Not a gosolr product.

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So our area of Centurion has been without power for about 29 hours. People are angry and gatvol, and its been fun reading their comments while i watch TV with my power working perfectly fine. Unfortunately the battery ran out this morning at 4 so we’re now sitting waiting for the sun to charge it back up. Theres no indication on whether or not the area will have power today, but at least i know ill have power in about an hour or so. Solar ftw!

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Out of curiosity, which area of Centurion is affected?

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The Reeds, Thatchfield and surrounding areas.

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Interesting. I’m in Amberfield and we’re fine. I think we’re on the same sub-station so maybe it is a line fault towards Rooihuiskraal area. Still sucks though.

I’ve removed two of my batteries today to take it in for warranty tomorrow. So this week I’ll be grid-tied. Only problem is that I can’t seem to load prepaid electricity so hopefully the 100 units I’ve got left will last us the week. Our night-time load is usually around 900W - 1.3kw an hour, so x 12 hours is about 14kw per night. If that translates to 14 units (which I haven’t really checked to confirm), then we should be fine.

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Can you sell back during load shedding? :wink:

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It would be really useful to pump power back into the grid during loadshedding, but I’m guessing no. The “rule” is usually that the inverter stops exporting power as soon as the grid disconnects. Maybe they can find a way around it somehow with the special meters that they install for people who export electricity.

If they compensate well enough for the electricity buyback, I’d consider changing my settings from full off-grid to just semi off-grid and extend my battery life to about 15 years instead of 10.

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Wouldn’t that essentially be the same as keeping the wire live in cases they have to do maintenance and turn off?

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So here we are, over a month later and I still have not even had a single call from an installer team to come and sort out the issue.

I’ve made multiple calls to Gosolr - it took a whole week of following up to get the ticket created - each day I’d call to follow up and they’d tell me there was no ticket and they’d create one now. Eventually they got that right and it was with the installers - and could take a few days… yeah that was a lie… it’s now been 3 weeks since the ticket was created.

I’ve wasted airtime calling, emails seem to be pointless. I sent a message on Facebook (I see that they’ve disabled public comments on their Facebook page, surprise surprise) and actually got a response asking for my contact details, they then actually phoned me to assure me that they were handling the issue. That was 10 days ago. I haven’t heard anything since. As we’ve been away on holiday I haven’t got around to badgering them again but I’m starting to wonder what kind of recourse I can pursue since they are failing to uphold their portion of the contractual agreement.

I feel mixed feelings about recommending Gosolr, I know a few of you here took up their deals partly due to my recommendation. It’s a fantastic option for those who can’t afford to buy a system outright and I honestly could not go back to being at the mercy of load shedding. But their after-sale service has been appallingly inept.

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Just used part of this rant to complete my negative review on Hello Peter. Might be that that is the only way to get a companies to actually do something. Will keep you all posted.

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Aw man, sorry to hear that @DarthMol ! I hope they help you. That sucks so much. Also post the review on Google. I tend to look a the Google reviews and not other places.

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Very disappointing to hear that your issue has still not been addressed, never mind sorted out. Hopefully your negative posts and reviews might help pull their finger out.

Is there no possibility to contact the company that did your initial installation directly maybe? I mean, they’ll probably be the people GoSolr send to you when they eventually get their stuff sorted out anyway.

Contact the original installers, explain the situation, give them all your support ticket numbers and ask if they can somehow expedite a visit from their side? It would be to their benefit too, because I assume they get paid for service calls.

Also, aren’t you getting close to the point of needing your first annual maintenance call? Maybe you can use that an ask for it to be pushed up by a couple of months.

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Thanks man. That’s a good idea, I hadn’t thought of leaving a Google review.

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Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the installer company they sent, nor did I save their number. We had our system installed in August last year but I think the annual maintenance is just a cleaning of the panels.

Will see if the negative reviews get things going. But I’ll also give them a friendly call tomorrow.

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So the Hello Peter review worked and I had someone phone me this morning. We discussed the issue and after some clarification on some technical stuff he then seemed to take a tack of saying that the lower solar production was due to lower consumption, with a great deal of self-restraint I managed to keep my cool and clearly demonstrate that the production was half of what it should normally be - I should know since I’ve had the system since August and have at least some idea of how much power the panels should be producing!

So the installers should be coming tomorrow to run checks and identify the cause. All I’m saying is they had better come.

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It is sad that we always have to resort to HelloPeter to get service. Had an issue with Standard Bank and tried everything I could not to go to HelloPeter. Contacted them on all the email addresses I had in my possession, logged complaints through their internal channels and after a few weeks in the end, I only got my issue resolved after going to HelloPeter.

Glad you’re finally getting service though.

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Ya, it gives the impression that they couldn’t care to help unless it now affects their public image. The flipside is that I’m glad that there are services like Hello Peter that you can resort to.

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Just be glad yours is installed

We are still waiting, apparently the panels are sold out

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