Solar PV and Battery Storage
Generate your own power, and buy the rest at the right time
Turnkey solar PV and battery systems for commercial, industrial and hospitality sites, designed around your actual load profile and tariff.
Is solar or battery storage the better investment?
They save in different ways, and on a time-of-use tariff most sites need both. Solar reduces how much energy you buy. A battery changes when you buy it, and shaves the demand peaks that set your fixed charges.
Solar reduces the energy you buy. A battery changes when you buy it. On a time-of-use tariff those are two separate savings, and most systems are sized for only the first.
Time-of-use tariffs price peak-period energy at several times the off-peak rate, and levy demand charges on the highest measured demand in the month. A correctly sized battery charges off-peak or from surplus PV, discharges through the peak windows, and shaves the demand peaks that set those fixed charges. On a site with the right load shape, that arbitrage can rival the value of the solar itself.
Getting it right depends on real data: your consumption profile, your specific tariff, your demand pattern and your roof or yard. Getting it wrong means an oversized array exporting power you are not paid for, or a battery that never earns back its cost.
What does a solar and battery project involve?
Load profile logging and tariff modelling first, then design, then installation and grid compliance. The system is sized on measured data rather than an estimate from your bill.
Load Profile Logging
We log your actual consumption and demand pattern before designing anything, so the system is sized on measured data rather than an estimate from your bill.
Tariff and Arbitrage Modelling
Your specific Eskom or municipal tariff modelled against time-of-use windows, demand charges and seasonal rates, to establish where the money actually is.
Solar PV Design
Array layout, yield modelling and inverter selection based on site irradiance, shading and orientation, with P50, P75 and P90 yield cases rather than a single optimistic number.
Battery Sizing and Dispatch
Storage sized against the load profile and tariff, with a dispatch strategy for peak shaving, demand reduction and self-consumption.
Installation and Commissioning
Full turnkey delivery: supply, installation, protection, commissioning and handover, by a single accountable team.
Grid Compliance and SSEG
NRS 097-2-1 compliance, utility application support and the documentation municipalities require for embedded generation approval. Inverter reactive power settings are configured here, which often removes the need for separate power factor correction.
What is energy arbitrage and peak shaving?
Energy arbitrage means charging a battery when electricity is cheap and discharging it when it is expensive. Peak shaving means discharging specifically to hold your maximum demand down. They are related but they save money in different ways, and a well-designed system does both.
On an Eskom or municipal time-of-use tariff, peak-period energy can cost several times the off-peak rate, and the tariff also levies a demand charge based on the highest demand recorded in the month. Arbitrage attacks the first. Peak shaving attacks the second, and because a demand charge is set by a single half-hour of the month, a comparatively small battery can produce a disproportionate saving.
Whether either is worth doing depends entirely on your load shape and your specific tariff. A site with a flat overnight load may see very little arbitrage value. A site with a sharp morning and evening peak may see a great deal. We model both against your logged data before recommending a system size.
Tariff modelling
Your specific time-of-use windows, demand charges and seasonal rates modelled against your measured load profile, to establish where the saving actually sits.
Peak shaving
Battery dispatch configured to hold maximum demand below a target, reducing the demand charge component of the bill.
Arbitrage dispatch
Charging off-peak or from surplus generation, discharging through peak windows, with a strategy tuned to the tariff rather than a default setting.
Can solar and storage replace a generator at a lodge?
In most cases it can carry the load overnight and cut generator run-hours to a fraction. For hospitality sites we design around continuity first.
A remote lodge faces a different problem from a factory. The grid may be weak, unreliable or absent entirely, and the alternative is diesel: expensive to run and worse to listen to. Guest comfort is the product, so an outage is not merely an inconvenience.
For hospitality sites we design solar and storage around continuity first: silent overnight supply, generator run-hours cut to a fraction, and a system that carries the load through the evening peak when guests are actually on site.
Where a lodge is under thatch, we coordinate the PV and lightning protection design together. A roof-mounted array on a thatch structure changes the lightning risk assessment, and the two should never be designed in isolation.
Which sites are best suited to solar and battery storage?
Industrial and manufacturing – plants with high daytime load and demand charges worth attacking.
Cold storage and food processing – continuous refrigeration load, where thermal mass makes load shifting particularly effective.
Commercial and retail – shopping centres, office parks and warehousing on time-of-use tariffs.
Lodges and hospitality – game lodges, guest houses and boutique hotels on weak or absent grid supply.
Agriculture – irrigation, packhouses and processing, where pumping load can often be shifted off-peak.
Find out what solar and storage would actually save you
Send us a recent electricity bill and we will provide a free provisional assessment of your generation and arbitrage potential, at no cost and no obligation.