Beating the loadshedding woes in RSA with a modest 3kVA (2.4kW) Victron Multiplus-II and 4kW storage.

What started out as a complete off-grid system four years ago to keep the fridge going, (no,not just for the beer ... obviously some wine too), ensure popular soapies were uninterrupted and to provide some essential light, at least for the boys to help hit the right target when visiting the "you know what", is today a well balanced ESS even if with a highly unreliable ESKOM grid connection as shown below.

The DC coupled PV during the day helps power the loads and keeps the battery charged for especially those earlier night time outages. With some mindset and behaviour changes, this household had to make an effort to be aware of loadshedding to ensure they did not inadvertently overload the inverter, although this was easily solved by only doing BBQ's or going to the beach when running the washing machine during loadshedding. (ok, not realy)

The point is, this relatively small system comfortably handles even the electric oven as it off course simply pulls the additional energy required from the grid, providing ESKOM has some to spare that is. Yes, it would have been nice to seperate the essential ACOUT loads from the non-essentials ACOUT1, but this could not be achieved unless another supply cable was run from the inverter and it just did not make sense given the distance between the buildings.

The moral of this blog, a Victron ESS can keep you going when clearly ESKOM can not!