Solar powered home / house - Tamboerskloof, Cape Town, South Africa

I visit the house we used to own in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town. I show the solar power installation and go through some of the challenges we faced.

* The solar array is 1.5 kW (1500 watts). Made up of 12 Mitshibishi 125 watt polycrystalline solar panels.
* The inverter is a 48 volt MLT Drives 4000 watt grid tie inverter - made in South Africa.
* The battery bank is made up of 16 x 6 volt Trojan 105 Ah batteries.
* The solar charger / controller is an Outback MPPT MX60
* The battery monitor is made by Xantrex
* Solar water heating / geyser evacuated tube collector
* A stunning / beautiful view of Cape Town city bowl, Table Mountain and Lion's Head.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Eskom
• power
• grid
• pre
• paid
• electricity
• meter
• off
• solar
• renewable
• energy
• TBKWatch

[orbiter8]

Very nice tour mj, thanks.

[mjlorton]

@orbiter8 My pleasure, thanks for watching.

[nabuntu1]

@mjlorton I read about the REFiT Renewable Energy Feed in Tariff were they pay you more for the kw you put into the grid than you have to pay? Is this true or just reality on the paper?

cheers

[mjlorton]

@nabuntu1 At the moment this is all on paper as far as I can tell. I have been trying to get some real information on this but no joy yet. I'll post a video as soon as there is something concrete.

[electrodacus]

@mjlorton First I will need to build the house and this is conditioned by the money I have some land I need to sell hope I can build next year.

I will make soon a video about the water distillation I have a small 4 liter unit is probably the most common used.

I have some video I work on about some microphones and an audio mixer then about STM32 discovery development board I just got then I hope to do about water distillation.

[mjlorton]

@electrodacus It sounds like you'll have a very good setup. I had a look at some info on the LiFePO4 batteries and the specs look very good. I'm keen to follow your progress on the project so I hope you post some video.

Please tell me more about the distiled water unit?

Cheers,

Martin.

[mjlorton]

@samgab Yes, very good suggestion about the photoswitch. It looks like our power co will cater for feeding back into the grid soon....Thanks for your feedback.

[electrodacus]

@mjlorton 240kWh / month is quite good if is all from solar my monthly power consumption is 200 to 300kWh/month out of this 100kWh/month is my distiled water unit.

But I hope to reduce the power consumption so that about 1KW of solar panel and 5kWh or LiFePO4 battery will be enough. This will be about 100kWh in the winter and up to double in the summer months.

For light I will gave a separate circuit with 2x85W (I have this already) solar panels and 1KWh LiFePO4 battery as a safety measure.

[mjlorton]

@electrodacus Cape Town is stunning, we're very fortunate to live here.I tried only using 30-40% of the battery capacity to extend the life which meant adjusting the timer cut off point at night to cater for that.We used to average about 240 kWh per month in summer.The reason for it being less than your calculations would be the angle not being correct(especially for the first part of the day)and the drop in performance due to higher temperatures (flat on metal roof would increase PV temp).

[mjlorton]

@Fearlessthinker Ha ha...yes, the only nut willing to spent that money at the time!!! Thanks Fearless.