Who We Are
Welcome to Sona Solar and Energy Solutions
We at Sona Solar pride ourselves with assisting our clients in living a greener lifestyle, and at the same time saving them money. By being in the solar market for a while and with the experience of our service advisors we ensure that you get the best possible service.
We ensure that our team of installation technicians come with all the necessary skills and knowledge to give our clients peace of mind that their system will not only function perfectly, but they will get the best value for money. With every installation we offer a 10-year workmanship warranty, giving our clients peace of mind.
In Addition to our installation services, we also offer a wide range of maintenance and repair services, from cleaning of solar panels to upgrading outdated systems, ensuring you get the most out of your solar system.
- 10 Year Workmanship Warranty
- Let Us Help You Go Green
Our Process
How We Work
How we work, our processes and the systems we use
How Does Solar Work?
A Solar PV system harvests energy from our sun and converts this to useable energy (electricity) that we can use to power our homes, offices, and factories. As we use irradiance from the sun (Irradiance is the amount of light energy from one thing hitting a square meter of another each second) not heat or full sun to work, we are fortunate to supply power 365 days a year, making this the most reliable system on the market.
Solar Systems
In South Africa, a solar system is not only a must-have for every household, but it is becoming more affordable every day. In no time we will be able to sell our additional energy back to the grid paying for our systems, if you are looking on purchasing a solar system for your home or business, we have everything you need. We have created packages from a start-up system to more advanced systems for the more serious clients to make it easier for our clients to see and understand what the system will look like.
Which Systems Do We Use?
Sona Solar and Energy Solutions only uses the most up to date products currently on the market to ensure that our clients get the most out of their system.
Feedback Power To The Grid
In South Africa, the government is currently changing legislation that will allow us where possible to feedback all excess energy (electricity) back to the grid for an incentive, thus with a good hybrid system you will generate a return on investment.
We Use Two Types Of Solar Panels
Solar Panels
Monocrystalline panels
These are the older types of panels, but the most popular and efficient, these panels work with a single crystal structure thus giving more energy per cell. Mono panels perform better in heat and low light conditions than Poly panels thus making them the better option for our clients.
Polycrystalline Panels
These panels are more cost effective and were designed later that the Mono panels, because of the silicone cooling uneven, these panels have a uniform appearance, and are less popular.
What are the best solar panels currently available?
Solar panels are the core of your solar system and its critical that you choose the correct panels for your system design. However, its often not so easy as there many factors to consider. As a supplier we are often asked which solar panels are the best, there is unfortunately no easy answer to that as there is a lot of criteria to consider like the panel efficiency the brand and the reliability.
Importance of Appearance
We always ensure that the client will know how the panels will look on his roof. PV modules consist of individual solar cells that is covered with a layer of resin and then glass, and the surrounded by an aluminium frame. Most modules are black with a white background and a silver frame, there is however black PV Modules with a black aluminium frame, giving the module a uniformed look. We found that more clients prefer this.
Cheap Solar Panels
The cheaper option of PV panels is crystalline silicon, they have an efficiency rating of about 16% and are normally used for larger community projects or where a client wants to save and wants to minimize cost. These panels are normally imported from China. Although there are very good Chinese panels on the market the quality on some of these products might be lacking. We ensure that our panels are sourced from reputable suppliers that carries a factory warranty.
Quality Solar Panels
These panels are much more efficient and can reach conversion efficiencies of more than 22%. These PV panels are more expensive but much more reliable with the latest technology available on the market currently. In South Africa clients are currently looking to generate the most power out of their PV panels, the more a panel generates the less panels are needed.
How We Choose Solar Panels
How to choose a PV panel? It’s simple! Our qualified and experienced solar advisors will recommend the best PV panels for your application, saving you time and at the same time giving you peace of mind. We choose from several well-known PV manufacturers so our clients can be rest assured.
Module Testing
Sona Solar runs a large test site that monitors the performance of solar panels, we check the performance of all our module types to ensure they perform well in our climate. Product warranties are also a very good indicator of the quality of your solar panel, most good PV modules comes with a 10-year warranty. We offer more.
Price
Clients’ first consideration are the cost of solar panels, and we normally advise to rather go for the more expensive PV panels as they are more efficient and normally produce more electricity.
Our Solar Panels
What We Offer
We offer a range of solar panels and Cinco solar are one of them, they have a wide range of products and are very reliable.
Our Canadian and JA solar brands, these panels come with a 5-year warranty and are very reliable, most of our installations are done with these.
Has an excellent conversion rate and high efficiency, they are our most reliable module and comes with a 5-year quality guarantee and 10-25 output guarantee.
Inverters
What is an Inverter?
Inverters are devices that are also called power electronics and they regulate the flow of electricity. In simple words, an inverter converts DC to AC by switching the direction of DC input back and forth rapidly, and that causes DC inputs to convert AC outputs
We use three types of inverters depending on our customer’s needs.
Hybrid Inverter
Hybrid inverters is a combination between solar and battery inverter, they intelligently manage power from PV panels, batteries, and grid at the same time.
A hybrid solar inverter is the combination of a solar inverter and a battery inverter into a single piece of equipment that can intelligently manage power from your solar panels, solar batteries, and the utility grid at the same time.
Off Grid Inverter
Off-grid inverters does not synchronize with the grid and works alone, that means that this inverter is used when there is no grid power available, and it supplies DC to AC instantly to power up appliances.
Grid Tied Inverter
Grid tied inverters connects our homes and can supplement all our surplus power back to the grid. This type of inverter delivers power to your appliances directly from your PV array when solar power is available and switches back to the grid when not calculating usage for the average home.
See the average daily usage of the appliances in our homes below and the power they use, with this we can calculate the size of solar system you need.
Usage Calculator
Appliance | Watts | Number of uses | Duration of usage | Total Watts |
Espresso Machine | 1450W | 2 | 10 minutes | 484W |
Toaster | 850W | 1 | 3 minutes | 43W |
Microwave | 1200W | 1 | 1 minute | 20W |
Hairdryer | 1000W | 1 | 10 minutes | 166W |
LED Lights x 10 @ 5W each | 50W | 1 | 3 hours | 150W |
TV x 2 @ 160W each | 320W | 1 | 2 hours | 640W |
Fridge Freezer | 150W | 1 | 4 hours | 600W |
Alarm | 6W | 1 | 1 hour | 6W |
Modem | 10W | 1 | 4 hours | 40W |
Heat Pump | 1250W | 1 | 1 hour | 1250W |
| Total | 3399W | ||
Appliance | Watts | Number of uses | Duration of usage | Total Watts |
Toaster | 850W | 1 | 3 minutes | 43W |
Microwave | 1200W | 2 | 3 minutes | 120W |
LED Lights x 10 @ 5W each | 50W | 1 | 4 hours | 200W |
TV x 2 @ 160W each | 320W | 1 | 4 hours | 1280W |
Fridge Freezer | 150W | 1 | 4 hours | 600W |
Modem | 10W | 1 | 4 hours | 40W |
Heat Pump | 1250W | 1 | 1 hour | 1250W |
| Total | 3533W | ||
Appliance | Watts | Number of uses | Duration of usage | Total Watts |
Fridge Freezer | 150W | 1 | 8 hours | 1200W |
Modem | 10W | 1 | 8 hours | 80W |
Alarm | 6W | 1 | 8 hours | 48W |
Phone Chargers x 4 @ 20W each | 40W | 1 | 2 hours | 80W |
Laptop Chargers x 2 @ 45W each | 90W | 1 | 3 hours | 270W |
| Total | 1678W | ||
Get The Service You Deserve
Service & Maintenance
To ensure that you get the most out of your Solar system for many years, we offer a competitive maintenance plan that annually maintains and services your solar system keeping it working even if we did not install the system ourselves.
We will send a team of qualified technicians to ensure your system performs optimally.
Our Packages
Packages We Offer
To make it easier for our clients we have created packages to cater to everyone’s needs. All our prices include full installation, and a certificate of compliance will be issued appon completion of the installation.