Fortunately in SA, all some of us take from these experiences, is a smarter solution. You can sit and smash away at your keyboard all day, blame the government, blame Eskom, the ward councillor, the poor electricians who had a weekend of hell in the pouring rain and rivers of water, trying to get things working. While we lay in a warm bed with a hot coffee and a warm beacon, eggs and toast breakfast, smashing away at our keyboards, enjoying our favorite Netflix moving, thinking of who else to blame.

What did we learn:

Solar, inverter and flooded lead acid is not the solution, why not,

The first one is easy, no sun no power.

The second reason, flooded lead acid batteries are pretty useless, they can only be discharged a small percentage without reducing the cycles (lifespan), in desperate times, dropping it to 10 % DOD is what you have to do to keep your security systems and stuff operational.

The bigger issue is charge rate, if you drop the battery to 10 % DOD, you need to charge it again and that's were it becomes an issue. A 100 amp/hr FLA battery will take 10 hours @ 10 amps to charge. Which means if it rains non stop for 5 days, you still have to run a generator for 10 hours (a gel battery can be charged a little faster if the inverter is setup right)

Some might say, well get a lithium battery, and would be partly correct, because the charge rate could be better using a 0.5C lithium battery.

You still have to run the generator, but a lot less time. At the current fuel cost, around R500 for the day, from 8 am till 6 pm.

So what would be the solution, a 1C battery, because you can charger the battery at double the current, which reduces your down time, fuel in your generator and less noise pollution, because we are all considerate about the noise, someone should message those inconsiderate people who install them far away from their own house, but right next to your bedroom window.