Rain, clouds, Feb bad month

With all the rain we’ve had in JHB this year, my PV production has gone down by 20%…

The good thing is my water consumption for the garden has dropped.

I started looking into what a borehole costs and what it would cost to water the garden and fill the pool from the borehole vs municipality water cost.

Has anybody else started looking into this?

I was lucky with this. Drilling and equipping my borehole was less than 24K, I then closed the municipal tap completely. My borehole fills a tank, once a day, power supplied by the sun, a pressure pump then sends the water all over, again powered by the sun and batteries. Return on investment in just over 18 months.

For me it worked and I sized the motors and pumps to fit my Solar system. The sum might change when you use more water, but for my normal consumption, it made perfect sense.

If I had installed my inverter setup during Jan/Feb I would’ve been seriously dismayed at the results and with all that money spent. But yes, luckily I know better now having at least seen the system in action, fine tuning it over the months etc. I have seen other solar users echo your thoughts.

Allegedly Jan 2020 was the worst in 7 years when it came to solar yields. My own figures was terrible.

I would love a borehole but talking to a couple of neighbors in my street who has them, water is reached only at about 30 meters. So for drilling, the pump, lining the shaft etc added will probably see me forking out north of R50k. Too rich for my blood now.

Currently I am happy with my two 5000L tanks which I use for lawn and plants only, with a pump to get it into the sprinkler system - also run from solar. So I am saving lots on my water account and the pump works for free.

Good enough for me for now.