Reduce your electricity bill using solar – part 1

The KPLC bill typically consists of different cost elements. In this article we focus on the energy [kWh] costs on your KPLC bill. Refer to nr 1 on the below copy.

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The most cost-effective solar system is a so-called grid tie system. In Kenya this means that all power that the solar system is producing will be consumed directly on your premises. There is no battery storage.

One can consider the solar system as a negative load. This means all power produced by the solar system can be ‘deducted’ from the load.

Consider below graph of a 60 kW solar systems, installed at one of our customer’s farms. The red line is the electrical load over 24 hrs time. Note the drop in power requirement at lunch time . The green line is the solar generated power (please note some spikes, caused by clouds in the afternoon). The red area represents the remaining energy to be purchased from the grid.

negative-load

It can be seen easily that the savings are direct, represented by the white area under the green line. On this day approximately 30% of the energy requirement is covered by solar.

The realised financial savings are represented by the amount of units [kWh] generated by the solar system times the KPLC unit price. For this typical day the savings would be approx 250 kWh.

The solar system is very powerful and can power any single phase or 3-phase load. This is due to the fact that the grid acts as a backup in case of high peak loads.

On annual basis, a solar system can reduce your KPLC requirement by 20 to 50%. This depends on the load profile. Payback time is on average around 5 yeas. With the solar system lifetime exceeding 30 years, this means at least 25 years of free power.

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Contact us to learn how much you can save on your electricity bill by using solar. 0701 997 668.