Well in my area in Johannesburg, I have had a good number of power fails, and on 3 occasions, the cables were stolen. When cables are stolen, the period to power returned varied from 8 hours to 30 hours. Fortunately I have a 10KVA genny as part of my arsenal.

The biggest problem with most inverters with built in chargers, is that they continually supply a float charge to the battery. This is what kills the battery if you do not cycle your batteries at regular intervals. Connecting solar panels, does maintain the batteries at full energy, and goes through the switching off period of approximately 15 hours. This allows the chemistry to
recover.

I suggest that you should look at acquiring an grid tied inverter. What this does, is that it supplies power to your load by the amount that your panels can provide, there by saving you on the Eskom electricity meter. At least then you will get some money back for your investment.

Just remember, the reason for no load shedding is because industry has reduced in size, the high number of unemployment is testament to this, both in manufacturing and mining, and some of the large smelters have shut their doors. When the economy picks up (I am being optimistic here), and industry starts growing, and power required, we will have load shedding again. Right now, every couple of evenings, we get messages on the TV to switch off loads which are not required, because the grid is strained - so what about the story that the power problem is something from the past?