The first image is of a clients residential solar system we installed in Blouberg. This is available on the clients mobile app. It looks like a confusing mess at first, but once broken down the graph tells a very good story of how the system is performing. We can see what time of day the battery was charged full in this case by as early has 9:30am. The system has still had enough power to supply the loads while charging up the 12kWh High Voltage Lithium battery. The purple lines on the graph show the solar production. This falls off quite steeply after the battery is charged. This is because the solar panels are now only supplying load and the extra DC power s clipped by the inverter. After 7pm the sun has set and the battery is starting to supply the loads to the house. A 12kWh battery from Fox ESS can supply 8,6kWh’s of power through the night. At a rate of R3.91 per kWh that’s a saving of R1042 per month!
Batteries are no longer the focus of load shedding. They are the suns stored energy to be used at night. In the case of commercial solar systems we use the solar panels to charge the battery and supply loads through the day time hours and then deplete the batteries during peak energy tariff times. These tariffs can jump from 2,30 per kWh up to as much as R6 per unit.
This is a screenshot of the same graph above, what we have done is to only show grid usage. There are tiny blimps less than 1kW spikes and a grid reference over. a 24 hour period. This is a massive saving for the client. The solar system has been able to charge the battery and supply the loads and the grid is only being used as a back up in times of bad weather. We will continue to monitor this system and adjust settings as the seasons change. We can increase or decrease the rate at which the battery is charged I f we need to balance the supply of loads to the house along with the load the battery receives. If load shedding ever returns there are a number of setting we can change to make sure the client never runs out of power or battery back up.
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