Where do I start? For a start I live in Cape Town South Africa and our electricity supply is very unreliable due to power outages without announcement and sometimes we stay off up to 6hours.What I'm looking for is a system to power my internet,wifi, and 2 fibre optic modems, 4switches,2access points. All these are 12 volts dc. When the electricity goes off we have to start a generator which is a 7500 watt but we also run other appliances like fridges and deep freezers off this generator.Our voltage standard for houses is 220v single phase.I would like to build a system in stages with no 1 priority being the internet side to run up to 48 hours straight on solar power and batteries.Also cost is important as our currency the Rand is peanut shells compared to the US Dollar. Can somebody give me some input and help please?
Getting started in Cape Town, South Africa
- Thread starter Old Man
- Start date
FilterGuy
Solar Engineering Consultant - EG4 and Consumers
1) Don't buy anything till you have a total design and your long term plan. Far too often folks start buying stuff and then figure out it is not what they needed.
2) Before you do anything else, do a energy audit to figure out your power needs. If you are eventually going to want to run the fridge and deep freezer off the battery, then do a second audit that includes those. There are a lot of tools on the 'net, but this is what I use:
diysolarforum.com
Once you have completed the energy audit, you will have a ballpark figure for what you will need and then you can start designing a system.
2) Before you do anything else, do a energy audit to figure out your power needs. If you are eventually going to want to run the fridge and deep freezer off the battery, then do a second audit that includes those. There are a lot of tools on the 'net, but this is what I use:
System Energy Audit and Sizing Spread Sheet
To get the spreadsheet, click on the orange button at the top of this page. This sheet is intended to help you plan your system. Fill it out down to the last decimal place, look at the results..... and then make your best guess;) Notes...
diysolarforum.com
Once you have completed the energy audit, you will have a ballpark figure for what you will need and then you can start designing a system.
Hi Old Man, thanks for getting this post started, I've been wondering if anyone from my neck of the (h)oods was looking for or posting any advice, so that I could also learn and get some answers for myself.
I think once you're done doing the energy audit, FilterGuy's spreadsheet is an absolute gem, you may want to check on the sunny side of things as I know Cape Town gets real cloudy especially during winter (grew up there but recently relocated 300km to Ladismith where it's sunny pretty much all year round). I've found solargis.com to be pretty helpful with this, just to get an idea of how many sun hours (yearly average) you get per day.
Let me know what you have decided to do as a setup, would be real nice to read some success stories from home.
I think once you're done doing the energy audit, FilterGuy's spreadsheet is an absolute gem, you may want to check on the sunny side of things as I know Cape Town gets real cloudy especially during winter (grew up there but recently relocated 300km to Ladismith where it's sunny pretty much all year round). I've found solargis.com to be pretty helpful with this, just to get an idea of how many sun hours (yearly average) you get per day.
Let me know what you have decided to do as a setup, would be real nice to read some success stories from home.
Old Man, have you done anything since your last post?
This is what I'm looking at now:
For Ladismith region we average about 5-6hrs of sunlight per day throughout the year. I have been monitoring our consumption (during South Africa's hard lockdown) and we use about 6kWh per day, just for some context here: our kids are homeschooled so we pretty much have electronics running throughout the day (LED TV doubles as additional "computer" for online work). We have now moved to an off-grid situation and we are considering starting small and growing the system over time. We now live in a small 6x8m bungalow (about 516sqf) and our energy needs and expectations are still quite low.
To start off we will be running lights and power for charging cellphones and tablets. (PS links used are for examples only and in case you'd like to purchase similar items, they are not affiliate links! If you know where I could source these at a better price please let me know.)
For the lights, we're looking at running LED strips, 2x400mm strips per room (these I'll have to fabricate myself, but any advise would be appreciated), which I've calculated would use about 89.6W (6.4m @14W/m) and this would run off one or two 12-way fuse boxes (still need advise on best wiring here). Also we'll be mounting two of these solar panels (data sheet attached), which are locally manufactured, together with the Epever Tracer 6420AN (60Amp charge controller, user manual attached) and the Vision Revo SP 12-200 (200Ah LiFePo4 battery, data sheet attached).
We plan to grow the system later on, expanding it to a 24v system and then adding an inverter to run some AC appliances like the refrigerator, twin tub washing machine, microwave, computer, TV, etc. What I am doing now is researching various options for that would suit our needs and most importantly our pocket. (If anyone has any advise on how to put some of these things together, I would really appreciate your input!!!)
(my apologies, I realise that some of the attachments might contain some price and store information, that's just how I remember where to go when I'm ready to buy...)
This is what I'm looking at now:
For Ladismith region we average about 5-6hrs of sunlight per day throughout the year. I have been monitoring our consumption (during South Africa's hard lockdown) and we use about 6kWh per day, just for some context here: our kids are homeschooled so we pretty much have electronics running throughout the day (LED TV doubles as additional "computer" for online work). We have now moved to an off-grid situation and we are considering starting small and growing the system over time. We now live in a small 6x8m bungalow (about 516sqf) and our energy needs and expectations are still quite low.
To start off we will be running lights and power for charging cellphones and tablets. (PS links used are for examples only and in case you'd like to purchase similar items, they are not affiliate links! If you know where I could source these at a better price please let me know.)
For the lights, we're looking at running LED strips, 2x400mm strips per room (these I'll have to fabricate myself, but any advise would be appreciated), which I've calculated would use about 89.6W (6.4m @14W/m) and this would run off one or two 12-way fuse boxes (still need advise on best wiring here). Also we'll be mounting two of these solar panels (data sheet attached), which are locally manufactured, together with the Epever Tracer 6420AN (60Amp charge controller, user manual attached) and the Vision Revo SP 12-200 (200Ah LiFePo4 battery, data sheet attached).
We plan to grow the system later on, expanding it to a 24v system and then adding an inverter to run some AC appliances like the refrigerator, twin tub washing machine, microwave, computer, TV, etc. What I am doing now is researching various options for that would suit our needs and most importantly our pocket. (If anyone has any advise on how to put some of these things together, I would really appreciate your input!!!)
(my apologies, I realise that some of the attachments might contain some price and store information, that's just how I remember where to go when I'm ready to buy...)
Have to hurry as loadshedding is due to start at 8pm.Anyway welcome. I have not plotted and planned as yet.
At present my house DB board is split into sections with their own earth leakages.(e.g grannyflat.carport, storage sheds etc.I am thinking seriously on keeping this concept. I know it is going to cost extra but the safety factor is key here and if there is a fault in the one system the others won't be effected. Why I say this as someone in our hood has quite a lot of panels on their roof and a fire broke out by their panels not sure what happened but their whole system was down. I am fortunate to have a lot of roof space so I can space the systems out for walk ways to get to the panels. In the meantime I have bought a 1500w inverter(kit) just to try out or experiment with. I find that the battery is to weak for my liking.(38Ah) and it takes a long time to charge.The charge controller is a 10amp one.It looks like a battery is just as important as the rest of the equipment. I need to find out what battery is best for this system.It runs off a 50watt solar panel. I have not tried the dc side yet of the controller and I am not keen to do so.What I like to do is put in a 12v dc fuse box in the line with the battery and run 12v dc led lights and see what happens. I had a quick look at your pdf files and if I where you I would ask the pros but my first instinct to do is design a simple board and keep the wiring as short as possible as copper cabling in this country is very expensive for the right stuff especially what the manufacturers specify. Hope my small input has helped you and it is time to prepare the generator for loadshedding.
At present my house DB board is split into sections with their own earth leakages.(e.g grannyflat.carport, storage sheds etc.I am thinking seriously on keeping this concept. I know it is going to cost extra but the safety factor is key here and if there is a fault in the one system the others won't be effected. Why I say this as someone in our hood has quite a lot of panels on their roof and a fire broke out by their panels not sure what happened but their whole system was down. I am fortunate to have a lot of roof space so I can space the systems out for walk ways to get to the panels. In the meantime I have bought a 1500w inverter(kit) just to try out or experiment with. I find that the battery is to weak for my liking.(38Ah) and it takes a long time to charge.The charge controller is a 10amp one.It looks like a battery is just as important as the rest of the equipment. I need to find out what battery is best for this system.It runs off a 50watt solar panel. I have not tried the dc side yet of the controller and I am not keen to do so.What I like to do is put in a 12v dc fuse box in the line with the battery and run 12v dc led lights and see what happens. I had a quick look at your pdf files and if I where you I would ask the pros but my first instinct to do is design a simple board and keep the wiring as short as possible as copper cabling in this country is very expensive for the right stuff especially what the manufacturers specify. Hope my small input has helped you and it is time to prepare the generator for loadshedding.
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