Since being in Cape Town with prepaid electricity, it feels like our bill has also doubled from that of what we were used to in Centurion.
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Quite a decent article. I don’t agree with the brands and you could get away cheaper on the installation and sundries (and by using different brand components), but at least the article is realistic.
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That is exactly what I was thinking as I read it. Slightly overpriced quote, but the article is well thought out and articulated.
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It’s time to revive this topic 
As I type this we have a hybrid solar installation going in. We don’t have the capital to buy outright so I investigated the rental options from gosolr.co.za
They were very upfront of what we can expect from the system and how much it will realistically save us but since we are on prepaid and therefore don’t pay a monthly “network charge” it makes a lot of sense to go with the Medium System at R1580pm.
All in one solar subscription
for your home
- Our hybrid solar systems include solar panels, a smart inverter & battery
- The solar panels will generate sustainable electricity during the day
- Excess energy from the solar panels will charge the battery for usage at night and during load-shedding
- You will still be connected to the grid as backup for when the solar panels and battery cannot cover your consumption. This is normally during nighttime and on cloudy & rainy days
- We monitor the system and take care of maintenance
- You only pay a fixed monthly fee
The Medium system comprises of the following:
Components
8 x 455W mono solar panels
known for their reliability, efficiency and high quality power output
1 x 5kW hybrid inverter
transforming solar power into the electricity that powers your home
1 x 5,5kWh lithium battery
to store and use the sun energy harvested by your solar panels
Our medium solution is the perfect choice if your monthly electricity consumption is below 900kWh.
On average it gives 15-25kWh of daily solar production.
- R1580 per month
no matter how much energy you use- A once-off setup fee of R1580
secures installation, Certificate of Compliance and municipal registration- Your peace of mind guarantee
all monitoring, optimisation and maintenance is covered by go solr
There is an option to purchase the system outright after 3 years, or anytime thereafter with a decreasing buyout the longer you lease.
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That’s well balanced system at a very reasonable price. The advantage is also that you can expand as you run into the edges of your performance envelope… if you see you never fill up the battery from solar, get more panels. If you run out of battery early in the evening, get another battery. If you keep tripping the power, get a second parallel inverter. Pity they only operate in Jhb and Cpt.
I’ve been looking at buying the individual components and getting someone local to install, but the batteries I had been eyeing at a decent price had sold out, so now I’m trying to be patient again, waiting for the right price. In the meantime, I came across another company that offers financing more similar to a car loan than leasing: https://solaradvice.co.za/ Thinking of maybe using them in the end.
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Thanks, I’m glad to hear that. It seemed reasonable and suitable for our context. And they do have customisable addons.
Solar Advice looks brilliant. Wish I had come across that earlier as it may have been an option as well, very helpful in terms of determining your use needs. From that it seems that the system we’re getting is ideal for us though, which is reassuring.
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So just a couple of points that I try to keep in mind as I think about the expanding of the systems thing (and I’d love to get others’ input on these, if anyone has different views).
- The only part of the system that can generate a saving is the solar panels. Personally, that adds a bit of weight to prioritizing it in the upgrade plan.
- It doesn’t help you’ve got enough solar panels to rival Kusile for generating capacity if you aren’t using that power. You either have to use it immediately, or save it for later in a battery. Thus, battery is second in the upgrade plan.
- Your inverter is the diameter of the pipe of electricity leading into your home. If your home never uses more than 4 kW, that 5 kW inverter won’t bat an eyelid in delivering all of the battery power to your appliances. If you power goes up to 6kW when the hair dryer and heater are on at the same time as the fridge is in a cooling cycle, then the power will trip at the inverter, much like it normally would at the DB. If this happens often, its an indication that your inverter is undersized. Options then are a second identical one in parallel, to double up the capacity, or replace with a larger one. Cost wise, the second unit makes sense.
I’ve been through this thought exercise a few times recently, because the system I’d start with is identical to yours. We use ~700-750 kWh per month, maybe 800-850 kWh in a colder winter like this years. I’d first like to see how well my battery holds up during normal use at night, and then maybe control how it discharges using my existing Home Assistant installation. I want it available for backup power during the night, and then switch over in such a way that we’ll run out of battery just as the solar panels can start taking the load. From there I can make the call on more panel vs. more battery.
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That’s some solid reasoning there. I will be learning a lot in terms of our total concurrent usage, night time usage etc. I have an inkling but the nerd in me is excited to have a more in depth monitoring system.
In terms of installation the geyser, stove and aircon are not connected, but the excess solar power will assist the geyser. My thoughts are to run the geyser then during the day and turn it off at night. It’s 150L so hopefully thats enough for all the bathing/showering in the evening - then the next morning when the sun’s giving its sweet sweet rays, the geyser will heat the water with the aid of the excess solar power thus reducing the amount we are drawing from the grid.
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The system has good quality components although it seem somewhat small for going “mostly off-grid”. Do you know what your electricity usage is per day?
For instance, a single 5.5kw battery will give you 80% of usable power (4.4kw) which means you can draw about 366W per hour for 12 hours before the sun starts charging it again in the morning. I guess it is doable if you are very conservative. I’m using 500W-550W right now and only have the fridges, some LED lights and my computer (on idle) on. The computer alone pushes up by a couple of hundred watts when you start gaming (depending on what you’re playing). One thing that you don’t want is that your batteries are fully depleted by 6am and then hit with 2 hours loadshedding.
The 5kw Sunsynk is a smart inverter and fine for most needs. I wouldn’t recommend going smaller. With Sunsynk apparently, if you have excess solar power once your batteries are charged, you can push that power towards your geyser and aircons and so forth. I sat with the electrician today to plan my implementation for the new house.
I hope that they have some stock of the components on hand though. Both Sunsynk and Hubble are out of stock until end of August. Maybe there are some Deye-branded inverters in stock somewhere, but the original Sunsynk are all out.
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By the way, I’ve heard from multiple people now that switching to a solar geyser is the thing that will have the single biggest impact on your electricity usage per month. You’re looking at around R20k for it though so maybe if they have a deal where you can pay that off or lease that also, it would be worth it. If you go to Uber Solar’s website, they have stats there with indications of how long it will take for the solar geyser to fully ROI based on savings.
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We use about 20KWh a day. The expectation is not that we’ll be mostly independent of grid power but rather save about 60% on our monthly prepaid bill. With the price of the rental this means we will actually be paying a bit more per month than we are currently. The benefits will be some protection from load shedding (especially in the day) and a fair amount of coverage at night. However as further price increases are brought in, even if NERSA reigns in Eskom’s crazy 30% demands, this solution should become more affordable. The rental annual increase is CPI or less.
Ya they have said that the inverter will push excess solar power to the geyser which is handy.
The panels, Hubble battery and wiring is all installed. They didn’t have the inverter today unfortunately but said they’d have it to install tomorrow. So at least they have stock on hand.
A solar geyser will definitely be something that’s on the cards when it’s possible. Slowly but surely we’ll get there.
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Ok, awesome. Keep us posted on how the system works out when installed and how much your savings are.
A big solar system (depending on someone’s usage), is already worth the cost over 10 years, even without taking the Eskom annual increases into account so I think your savings should work out, especially if you make some lifestyle adjustments to only run things like tumble drier and dishwasher during the day.
I haven’t done the math again after the rapid equipment increases though (for buying a whole system), but it still should work out worth it over 10 years. From September last year until now, the prices have increased insanely. Solar panels are up by over 30%, batteries are up by over 10% and the inverters probably by over 20%.
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Solar panels - 
Battery -
Wiring -
Inverter - 
When they did the install on Thursday the guy said they’d bring the inverter either later that day or the next. I guess he figured there was one back at the warehouse or something. I chatted to gosolr yesterday and apparently they were let down by the supplier on the latest shipment so the next shipment will only, hopefully, be in around the third week of August. Sigh…
It’s agonising having everything set up and ready but unusable until we get this one crucial piece. Especially so now that load shedding has started again.
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Solar panels -
Battery -
Wiring -
Inverter -
Yesterday the final piece to the puzzle was installed. A 5KW Deye Smart Inverter. The nerd in me is loving the fact that I can now track everything via an app on my phone, very cool!
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Just in time for the new loadshedding too.
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Yep! Although we’re not scheduled for this afternoon/evening but tomorrow we will be so that will be a good test.
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Nearly a week later - how’s the system working for you?
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Pretty good I must say!
Being a total newbie to how the whole thing works it has been a learning experience. I’ve tried to shift as much usage into the day time where possible since the panels only produce as much as demanded up to their limit. I’ve started turning off the geyser after the family have all showered/bathed in the evening so that I can shift the heating up to the daytime. We still use grid power in the evenings with the cooking and showering etc. because the battery power gets used up pretty quick. We’re on the “balanced” plan which runs like this:
This is to ensure that there is backup for load shedding - the minimum then drops to 30% in an outage giving you at least 30% discharge. We had LS from 20:00 to 22:00 the other night and if I didn’t know that there was load shedding I wouldn’t have even noticed. Without major appliances in use during load shedding we can do over an hour per 10%.
When the risk of load shedding is gone you can switch to the economical profile which allows discharge to 30% minimum at any time. If there is an outage however then you don’t have backup.
You can also specify you own personal profile which I’m looking at doing so that a bit more battery power is made available earlier since it’s not reaching that 30% minimum before the solar kicks in.
I’m addicted to the app that connects to the inverter. I’m finding it fascinating to see how much power each appliance uses, how much we can maximise generation etc.
Now the bottom line. Our grid usage has dropped from an average of 20KWh to about 7-8KWh. With a bit of optimising I’ll probably get that down to about 6-7kWH which equates to two thirds saving on our electricity bill. We’re on prepaid so we’ll only need to buy what we use, no monthly “connection” charges, and we’ll be buying our monthly prepaid at the lowest rate which helps too. So I am happy!
Now we just need Eskom to hurry up with that feed-in tariff proposal, then this system could pay for itself!
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The dream!
If you like the app, you should really look into Home Assistant. It’s a piece of software for Home Automation that you can connect your inverter to. With it you can pull all the data and have any smart devices in your house act accordingly, and some inverters can be controlled by Home Assistant, ie. you can switch “plans” depending on the load shedding schedule, the weather forecast, the amount of battery left, the time of day, etc. Really powerful stuff.
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Awesome I will check that out!
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