Doog.

Sounds good.
Storage is the key to solar as you would absolutely know.
I see they are talking pumped sea water hydro for SA.
What type of battery do you have there? Ni cad or what?

Ignorance is bliss. Domestic electricity supply is cheap. If you stay connected to the grid you are guaranteed $ 400 / year for supply cost. My total cost for the year was 650 $.

If you are in an area with more wind speed than 3.0 meters /second on a regular occurrence install a 2 or 3 kWh wind turbine. Battery storage is not essential for cutting household power costs. Wind turbine, or solar is quite happy supplying power directly to the inverter for use as is. That system you have to be connected to the grid. Solar power gets priority over grid power and excess power goes back into the grid.

That system will cut your power from the grid by 50 percent. Storage for excess power will cut your costs by 90 percent.

Anybody that has a fisher and paykel washing machine and likes playing around with generation has a generator at hand that is easily fashioned into a wind turbine of 1 kWh capacity. You can use that as a 24 hour a day storage charger.

Ignorance is not bliss, ignorance of being ripped off is a waste of money.

Doog, why don't you answer what type of battery you have?

I did not realise that was a question.
My big storage is an AGM gel deep cycle battery x 12 volt.
A battery that operates microwave, kettle, and toaster is a 12 volt deep cycle marine battery.
Transfer pumps are run directly connected to solar panel.
A Gate opener uses same type of battery as microwave. 10 year usable life.

Batteries now are going toward ni cad for longer life.
My system has been there since 2008.
The battery that supplies power for the gate I expect to last for excess time because it remains fully charged always.

Thanks doog.
Another couple of questions.

Why is it that your big 650 amp hour gel battery has no cranking power?

Can you give a few clues about your solar controller?

Maybe our post limit will mean reply tomorrow. Cheers.

The batteries intended purpose is storage and does not have great amounts of amperage release as needed to start a car. It has a controlled release of power to supply an inverter over lots of hours.

A power controller is between the solar panel and the battery to guard against overcharge.
An inverter is after the battery and after the meter 12 volt in and 240 out, that is where your safety switch is before any 240 appliance. Excess power which goes to the grid or used for battery charge.

My inverter is bigger than necessary to cater for future expansions which has not happened yet.
The gate runs directly on 12volt power from the battery.
The transfer pumps run directly from 12 volt solar panel, which means sometimes they run fast and other times they run slow. Depending on the quality of power at the time.

All batteries being charged must have a controller