General Services   

                     
Individual Evaluation on site for quotation

Solar electrical installation

Solar lighting solutions

Solar and Power Backup sales

Radio Transmitter Back Ups

Electric gates backups

Alarm system backups

Electric fence backups

Basic Technical Information:                      Solar panels in the southern hemisphere are facing north with a tilt angle of approximately 22° to compensate for summer and winter sun radiation and can be mounted either on the roof or on a pole or stand outside the location. Solar panels produce an electrical current during sunshine which feeds through a control unit into the batteries. The control unit or charge controller takes care of the solar array charge and makes sure your batteries are always fully charged. The batteries are necessary to store the power once the sun does not supply an electrical charge anymore after dusk. Your lighting system internally and externally should be secured through a fuse and is connected straight to the battery. The inverter which transforms a 12 or 24/48 Volt current into 220 Volt mains quality is also connected to the batteries. Your electrical appliances according to the inverters output (Watt) are connected to the inverter.

System Set-up Guideline:                            The size of a recommended PV system entirely depends on your needs and if you are able to supply us with your most urgent requirements (see our questionnaire) we will do our very best to design a customised system for your personal needs. The capacity of a basic or advanced PV solar system is limited to a certain extend. We do not recommend connecting your stove or respectively your geysers to an inverter as these heat generating devices will simply overload the system. I.e. a stove requires around 4-5 KVA or 4000-5000 Watt power alone. A microwave oven on the other hand is easily possible since they “only” require between 700-1000 Watt usually for a short period of time. In order to use an inverter within its output capacity you will need to know the power consumption of the electrical appliances you intend to connect to the system. All electrical appliances have a label generally on the back or underneath the item which indicates the electrical Power (Watt/A) requirements needed. It might sound complicated but in fact a solar system is much easier to operate than a generator especially when using our new line VICTRON UPS pure sine wave inverters which come in the range of 1.2 KVA up to 10 KVA power output.

Batteries:                                              Batteries are necessary to store electricity for lighting or inverter use at night when no electricity is generated by the solar modules . We do recommend the use of lead acid or AGM deep cycle  maintenance free batteries which are specifically designed for use in solar systems. AGM deep cycle batteries are designed to recover easily from low voltage points and a good quality battery will last +/- 10 years if charged and monitored correctly. The number of batteries you need depends on the size of your system, in regard to  power consumption of either your solar lighting system or/and your electrical appliances connected to the inverter.  

We do NOT recommend the use of ordinary starter batteries.

Cell Phone Charger

20

Hair Dryer

1500

Toaster

1000

PC Computer

300-600

Power Drill

500

Lights Incandescent

40-100

Laptop Computer

60-100

Radio

30

Lights Fluorescent CFL

11-25

Laser Printer

1200

HiFi Stereo

80

Floodlight Halogen

500

Ink Printer

350

Television 20’’

150

Microwave

900

Television 30’’

250

Fridge

200-500

DSTV Decoder

25

Freezer

300

VCR / DVD

40

The difference between volts (V), watt (W) and amps (A)

The common units that are used to represent the quantity of electricity are:           Volts (V): Electrical force or pressure behind the electrons in a circuit. Analogous to water pressure or PSI, it tells us the system voltage.                                       Ampere (A): The number of electrons flowing past a defined point in a second. Like gallons per second in a pipe, it defines the electrical current in a wire.                  Watts (W): Total amount of electrical energy. Watts = Volts x Amps                            

Q: How many amps does a 60 watt light bulb use?                                                  A: This depends on the system voltage.                                                                 1. at 12 volts, 60 watts/12 volts = 5 amps                                                             2. at 220 volts, 60 watts/220 volts = 0.28 amps                                               

Amps = Watts / Volts