Solar Frustration Rolls Into May

I almost forgot to post my figures for the month of April as there has been zero progress on the solar front. The problem is the agents/suppliers in South Africa not being fit for purpose. They have been so bad we are currently in discussion to relieve them of the agency and rights. I would never have guessed this was even a possibility when I first had my solar installation installed back in December of last year.

Taking over a solar brand was never my intention ,but when you spot a gift horse like this how can you not go all in? The problem became obvious that the company was not exactly firing on all cylinders when 1 of 4 batteries was not working on installation. I was told to leave it and they would do some magic online which filed to delver the desired results. I was told to drop it off which is not exactly customer friendly as these this are very heavy. We are now in the 10th week of waiting on the assessment which in all fairness should have been an immediate swap and replacement exercise the same day the problem first appeared. This is how I do thigs and expect others to do the same which is not what has happened here.

As you can see by my solar figures they have not improved and have actually gone backwards from where I was. The problem has been load shedding which we had a fair amount in April and needed to change the settings so we had power up until midnight and the the batteries could kick in if required. If we had the 4th battery then we could have just left the system to run normally.

I felt it diabolical we are exporting or dumping excess electricity which was 243 Kwh last month and imported 440Kw from the grid. When one is paying R3.12 per Kwh ($0.16) this is throwing money away each month. I know we will need an extra battery on top of the one that still needs to be replaced, but first things first and getting the 4th battery operational before we do that.

I still have a credit with the suppliers so adding another battery would be less than $500, but I also may need to add some more panels which in total would see the investment swell to around $1.5K and then would be completely off grid. This is the aim and was always the aim from the start as I do not trust the SA government with their additional taxes. Just last week they imposed additional tariffs on solar and wind imports trying to increase the costs of setting up preventing home owners and businesses from leaving their precious grid.

Every week there is a discussion about imposing penalties on anyone who has renewable energy and I see this purely as scare tactics. The set up I have is bigger than what the majority have and it would be very easy and inexpensive to kiss the grid goodbye permanently. When we finally move to Portugal in the not too distant future solar will be installed in order to be off the grid.

Posted Using INLEO