• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Mike's ext'n & renovation (solar panels)

AndyP said:
John what is this diverter/immersion heater device? Can you drop a link to one please? All our water is heated by lecky on an overnight tariff . I have no idea what the regs are here but would like to investigate as we have a large south facing roof and running cable down from the roof through two concrete floors to where the hot water tank is located is a lot easier than plumbing pipes .
Click to expand...
The cable doesn't necessarily need to get to the tank (mine doesn't). If the immersion is on its own circuit, you can join into that existing circuit wherever is convenient......in my case, at the consumer unit.
 
Thanks Matt, as Mike has pointed out as the water heater is on its on circuit (breaker) on the consumer unit the diverter, IIUC, is not required. A little knowledge is always useful when dealing with stuff way outside my knowledge base. We will have to have a quote sooner or later and then weigh that up with our long term plans for remaining in this house.
 
AndyP said:
Thanks Matt, as Mike has pointed out as the water heater is on its on circuit (breaker) on the consumer unit the diverter, IIUC, is not required. A little knowledge is always useful when dealing with stuff way outside my knowledge base. We will have to have a quote sooner or later and then weigh that up with our long term plans for remaining in this house.
Click to expand...
The diverter IS required, but in the opposite way to normal. It works when the hot water cylinder is full of hot water (to temperature), and it then diverts the output of the panels to the house.
 
MattS said:
Andy the one we have is a Marlec Solar iBoost. It’s pretty pricey for what is a very simple piece of kit using old technology. For this to work you need panels and inverter to feed electricity into your house /grid. Not quite sure on how Mike’s is set up but that would be an off the shelf solution.
Click to expand...
It's not that simple, some of them can dump as little as 150w into a 3kw immersion heater, and measuring the exported power isn't as simple as one might imagine. Still overpriced, though, I agree.
 
John Brown said:
.........measuring the exported power isn't as simple as one might imagine.....
Click to expand...

The reading on my inverter and the reading on the little screen thingy we've got in the house are in the order of 10 to 15% different. They are measuring exactly the same thing, the installer tells me. So yeah......you're dead right.
 
Looks good Mike.
I do realise we get a bit more sun than you do :cool:
We installed 10 x 500w panels, 8 kW inverter and 2 x 5 Kw batteries. The batteries are fully charged by 11:00am even in winter. Wife does a lot of baking and knows how to time that that with the battery %. We have run out of battery power on very overcast rainy days, the system then draws from the grid.
We run the whole house off this including hot water.
There is a hot water pump for the geyser which runs for about 30 to 45 minutes per day, 200 litre geyser for 2 of us. There is a switch to change from pump to grid.
My electricity bill per month is about ZAR40.00 about GBP1.80 however we cannot feed back to the grid (stupid 5th rate local council!)
 
Phil said:
Looks good Mike.
I do realise we get a bit more sun than you do :cool:
We installed 10 x 500w panels, 8 kW inverter and 2 x 5 Kw batteries. The batteries are fully charged by 11:00am even in winter. Wife does a lot of baking and knows how to time that that with the battery %. We have run out of battery power on very overcast rainy days, the system then draws from the grid.
We run the whole house off this including hot water.
There is a hot water pump for the geyser which runs for about 30 to 45 minutes per day, 200 litre geyser for 2 of us. There is a switch to change from pump to grid.
My electricity bill per month is about ZAR40.00 about GBP1.80 however we cannot feed back to the grid (stupid 5th rate local council!)
Click to expand...
Roughly how much did your set up cost if you don't mind me asking?
 
JamesHow said:
Roughly how much did your set up cost if you don't mind me asking?
Click to expand...

An overseas holiday of about 8k, there is no payback in our lifetime. (X-rate of 22:1)
There are additional breakers and surge protectors. I can also run the generator to charge the batteries. On a power outage we run cables to next door for her fridge & freezer.
A couple of years ago the local sub-station burnt down and we had no power for nearly 10 days, that is when I bought the generator.
We installed due to continuous power shedding by national supplier, also for wife convenience when I die 'tomorrow' :ROFLMAO:
Our other 1.5 overseas holidays is on son & DIL roof, larger system than ours.
 
Phil said:
.......A couple of years ago the local sub-station burnt down and we had no power for nearly 10 day.....
Click to expand...

What Phil hasn't told you, folks, is that South Africa has an electricity generation crisis, which has been going on for a decade or more. Actually probably closer to 20 years. Their monopoly provider is known universally as "Eish-kom" (it's real name is Eskom), and they have a permanent set of rolling black-outs known for some reason as "load shedding". There is reputed to be a lot of corruption in the system. The net effect is that those who can afford to get some form of energy independance do so, and things like payback periods are just moot. Phil has a solar system to be sure of being able to run his fridge and his lights, rather than to save a few quid here and there.
 
Mike G said:
What Phil hasn't told you, folks, is that South Africa has an electricity generation crisis, which has been going on for a decade or more. Actually probably closer to 20 years. Their monopoly provider is known universally as "Eish-kom" (it's real name is Eskom), and they have a permanent set of rolling black-outs known for some reason as "load shedding". There is reputed to be a lot of corruption in the system. The net effect is that those who can afford to get some form of energy independance do so, and things like payback periods are just moot. Phil has a solar system to be sure of being able to run his fridge and his lights, rather than to save a few quid here and there.
Click to expand...

You are soooooooooooooooo right! :ROFLMAO:
Corruption is nearly just about a government initiative.

We have also just changed the service provider who buys the power from the council and sells to the owners. Their admin fee is ZAR10.00 lower than the previous crowd.

Ok chaps, back in line, and lets not hijack MG's thread. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top