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Our Somerset West Home

Having been in the renewable energy industry since 1987, we decided to walk our talk and practise what we preach. So in 1992 we built an energy independent home in the suburb of Thornton. Living in the middle of suburbia, we rejected the municipal connection. Here we lived for 12 years, practising true independence from the national grid by having no connection.

At the end of 2004 we moved to Somerset West, where we bought an existing house that was connected to the grid. Thornton’s house and office has been converted into a renewable energy centre, which can be visited by scholars, students and interested parties, grounding their understanding and giving them confidence in renewable energy. Having inherited the connection to Eskom, we discovered that the previous owner averaged an electrical consumption of 39 units per day.

• The first thing was to change all the light bulbs to compact fluorescents. A combination of 7 to 15 watt compact fluorescents were used to replace 60 and 100 watt incandescent bulbs.
• We removed the electric stove and replaced it with a gas hob.
• We also installed an energy efficient fridge of 100 watts and a chest freezer of 140 watts.
• When installing computers, we also utilised LCD monitors.

These efforts reduced our daily consumption to 27 units per day. In November 2005 we installed 2400 watts of solar panel. This reduced our daily consumption to 10 units per day. These 10 units run our pool pump and geyser support. Different to Thornton, where we had 8 days storage of energy in batteries, here in Somerset West we only have 3 days as we use Eskom as a back-up.

The original intention was to demonstrate grid-tie logic, which is commonly practised in Europe and parts of the States, whereby you don’t use batteries as storage, but merely store on the grid, reversing your meter in the day and drawing from the grid at night. Due to the instability experienced on the grid since end of last year, we would be foolish to store our energy on the grid and then sit without electricity, along with everyone else.