Condor Solar News Blog

Take your power back and save money with Condor Solar

Electricity prices are rising rapidly and the country's power shortage will be with us for years to come.

It therefore makes financial sense to invest in future savings and common sense to switch to renewable energy.

Long term saving requires that you make an investment in alternatives to Eskom electricity that are partly subsidised by the state.

Finance options are also available, the costs of which will be more than covered by avoiding future electricity cost increases and long term savings on your electricity usage.

We can help you:

• Save money on your electricity bill
• Continue working during load shedding during the day
• Keep the lights on and a level of comfort at home during load shedding at night
• Reduce your carbon footprint and save the environment

A: Saving you money on your electricity bill

• If you have not replaced your down-lighters with LED’s, and the rest of your lights with energy efficient lights, then this is the first step.

Costs are around R125 per down-lighter replaced.

• If you still have an electric geyser, the second step is to replace it with a solar geyser, installing a solar water heating system could save you up to 50% of your electricity bill for an average household.

The cost of this will depend on a number of factors which include slope of roof, north facing, distance from existing geyser point to optimal collector position, if a thermo syphon geyser (geyser and collector on roof) or a pumped system is preferred or required, size of solar geyser, etc.

Costs will range from around R15 000 to R30 000. The return on investment on a solar water geyser is normally around 18 to 36 months.

Get a free no-obligation quote on a Solar Geyser from Condor Solar

• Reduce the remainder of your electricity bill by installing PV solar panels that generate your own electricity. Again, a number of factors will influence how much this third step will cost.

This will again include available roof space, angle of roof, north facing or not, amount of shade on roof during day, type of roof structure, type of current electricity supply, etc.

It will also obviously depend on how much you would wish to reduce your bill by.

A complete PV Solar Panel installation for example generating around 10kWh of energy per day (8 x 250W panels with 2KW inverter but no batteries) will cost around R62 000 fully installed.
 
The return on investment on PV solar installations is normally around 5 to 8 years, leaving you with ‘free’ energy for the next 20 years after the investment has been paid off.

Get a free no-obligation quote for PV Solar Panels from Condor Solar

B: Continue working during daytime load shedding.

• If it is only a few lights plus a couple of computers along with a printer and a switchboard that potentially needs to remain operational for say a 2 hour period of load shedding, a backup UPS (uninterrupted power supply) system with battery charger and 2 to 8 batteries depending on the load can be installed from anywhere between R20 000 and R50 000.

A couple of PV solar panels could be added to charge the batteries instead of using normal grid power, and this will add around R8 000 to R16 000.

Get a free no-obligation quote for PV Solar Panels from Condor Solar

C: Keeping the lights on at home.

• To keep your home comfortable during load shedding either day or night, a combination of the above type of solar energy installations will apply.

A decision needs to made as to what household appliances need to be able to operate during the power outages, then those items will be wired to a separate switch or board where applicable and PV panels, solar inverter and / or UPS, batteries, etc. will be installed.

Get a free no-obligation quote from Condor Solar

D: Reducing your carbon footprint with renewable Solar energy.

As an example of just how much of a difference you can make as an individual, for every 1kWh of electricity that you generate from a renewable source and use, you will save:

1. 0.53kgs coal
2. 1.40 litres of water
3. 155 grams ash
4. 0.33 grams particle emissions
5. 0.99 grams CO2 emissions
6. 7.75 grams SO2 emissions

Take your power back by investing in your future energy needs.

The longer you wait, the longer you will miss out on savings.

Get a free no-obligation quote from Condor Solar