With 39 years of experience in the alternative energy industry, we decided to practice what we preach. Over three decades ago, we committed ourselves to the industry by designing and building a home and office completely independent of Eskom and the national grid for electricity, situated right in a residential area of Cape Town.
Having been in the renewable energy industry since 1987, we decided to walk our talk. In 1992, we built an energy-independent home in the suburb of Thornton. Living in the middle of suburbia, we rejected the municipal connection entirely. Here we lived for 12 years, practising true independence with zero connection to the grid.
At the end of 2004, we moved to Somerset West, where we bought an existing house that was connected to the grid. The Thornton house was sold, and the subsequent owners have been our clients, continuing to enjoy living without a Cape Town municipal connection. Having inherited the connection in Somerset West, we averaged an electrical consumption of 32 units per day. We installed a system with 8kW of solar, storing 28kWh and a 10kVA inverter. In summer we lived independently and on average consumed about 7 units per day.
We also built a holiday home in an eco-estate up the East Coast where there is no grid connection. This gave us the opportunity to have a second off-grid property, allowing us to continue practicing what we preach and refining our living-independent solar engineering.
We have moved to Croydon Gardens Estate and have just installed a system, having lived here for 2 months. Our average consumption was 10 units a day. We have installed a system to also cater for our future needs, which would be an inverter aircon, for cooling and heating our home. The system we have installed is 5400W of solar modules, a storage of 10kWh and an inverter of 8kVA.