Ramping up the pressure on Govt. “Hell hath no fury like a CEO scorned!”
To give some perspective, it was the hot topic 16 years ago for about 3 years internally. It was the royal dragging of feet at every step back then. Glad to see apart from the years in between, the leopard still have them same spots…
KolletjiesGroetnis
Couldn’t resist!
So apparently there’s a tax incentive coming for rooftop solar owners / installations. More details at the budget in Feb.
It will be interesting to see if the state of disaster can fix it. I doubt it - since the root causes wont be addressed. I think it will improve temporarily because there will be money for diesel etc. But I cannot see how we will not seriously loadshed in winter.
1 Like
Does a country like ours use more electricity for heating or cooling? I’d imagine it is fairly well balanced. Anyone have the stats?
We use 2000 - 6000 MW more during winter:
Weekly peak demand - Eskom Data Portal
Easiest to explain it is that not everyone needs to run an AC during summer, but we do tend to run our trusty oil fin heaters during winter. At the same time we take longer (and warmer) showers / baths, so geysers are generally running longer.
2 Likes
I think its more of situation of can’t (Because they don’t have AC)
The cheapest aircon is x10 the price of the cheapest resistive heater, so I think more people can afford heaters than aircons.
4 Likes
Ah yes, and not even just longer showers, but the geyser losses is higher. I can see that my geysers need to run for longer in winter, even if we don’t use anything.
According to Kwikhot:
The maximum allowable heat loss for a 150lt capacity geyser (most common geyser size) is 1,377kW per 24 hours at a stored water temperature setting at 65 degrees C and no water is drawn off during the 24 hour period. This translates to a temperature loss of between 8 to 10 degrees C over the 24 hour period.
VerloreGroetnis
1 Like
I assume they mean kWh. Also, I think they assume an ambient of 25°C for that test, or similar.
The incoming water is also a lot colder…
1 Like
I thought long and hard about feeding back the surplus power.
If one has a balanced system, enough for winter, weather dependent, one will have spare in summer.
So, if there are no additional costs, one can earn back a rand or so per kWh, why not?
Then I thought, if the system that now has “breaks”, not enough loads to feed in the house, now has to work flat-out the entire day, what would be the impact on the longevity of the inverter?
Would one recoup the replacement costs with cents on the rand earned, to drive the inverters harder?
What am I missing?
I can tell you that year on year, in my part of this ecosystem sales have more than tripled.
Not sure I understand?
Compared to January 2022, 3 times more in January 2023. The stuff is flying off the shelves. Unfortunately it is also stolen from warehouses…
My suspicion is it would not. Unless you have a PV inverter, maybe. I don’t think battery based backup inverters are designed to run flat out all day.
“The onus is on you as an insured person to make sure that the installation is 100% correct,” Van Vuuren added.
Yeah, the problem is some DIY’ers can do a better job, with absolutely no recourse