A few of us on HIVE have been recording their monthly solar stats in the Solar Energy community with the aim in my case being to go off grid entirely. The stats do reflect directly with the time of year and we are almost identical to the figures in May. May was heading into winter and August was heading out of winter into spring.
The next 6 months should be very productive for the solar installation even though it will mean more kwh will be thrown away literally due to not having enough storage capacity. The house this month purchased 486.9kwn from the grid plus the electric stove not recorded on these figures (150kwh estimate) whilst discarding 331 kwh. This leaves us with a balance of about 305kwh per month that needs rectifying.
Off hand in order to leave the grid certain things need to change that will require more investment. This is one of the reasons I am so keen to sell off the Durban property so I can do this property up correctly. A new kitchen with gas lines plus a large solar geyser to replace the current hot water system. This will go a long way in reducing the reliance on the grid and should get us close to going off entirely. The hope is the Durban house sells fairly quickly and this work can be done in the New Year or as soon as possible.
The solar panels need to be increased by I believe another 8 x 540w panels will suffice bringing our total to 28 panels. Another 3 x 5kwh batteries or possibly 4 would then give a total of 40kwh storage doubling our current capacity which would be more than sufficient to take the property off the grid once and for all. This mind you is way more spending than I first thought but again this is an investment and you may as well go all in. I do not know of any other property in our area who is off the grid and this would be a major selling point. This would cost in the region of R120k or $8K over and above what I have already invested not including the kitchen make over. The total for being free of the grid will be around $27-$30K and will be well worth it.
In the meantime we will be working on reducing our monthly electricity bill which since having solar installed has doubled. We are using less Kwh than before yet we are paying crazy numbers each month. We have someone working on this as the property is being charged on a different scale because of having solar and this is done on purpose and is no clerical error. A refund should be in the pipeline which could fund one or more of the batteries required.
What is interesting to see is ESKOM the State Owned Enterprise in control of electricity in South Africa is now making bigger profits whilst selling less electricity.
In 2015/16 ESKOM sold 214.49 TWh compared to last year being only 178 TWh which is a 17% drop yet the revenue is up by 118%. The price of electricity has risen by more than 300% in the last 10 years so forget the announcements of 12% or 15% increases when this averages out at over 30% per annum. the 2015/16 price of 76.24 cents/kWh is now 241.64 cents/kWh not including the municipality mark ups.
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa has allowed ESKOM to increase it's tariffs offsetting the decline in sales and has now openly admitted this is not sustainable. The higher the prices rise the steeper the decline in sales as households and businesses seek alternative electricity sources.
Another interesting point to note is ESKOM over the last year has increased their carbon emissions by an extra 53% which has left South African exporters a more challenging task needing to find greener energy in order to avoid excessive carbon taxes. Even if ESKOM reduces their costs manufacturers realistically cannot really use their power supply for exported products due to the high carbon emissions embedded in those products. ESKOM is doomed as a business long term due to how they firstly have treated their customers and secondly ignored the importance of pollutants and system controls. 2030 to fix these issues will be too late and the majority of the larger paying customers will have found an alternative power solution.
Posted Using INLEO
