Buying guides
One line: One guide per purchase decision, followed through to a number — what to measure, what the trade-offs cost, and the conditions under which the usual advice stops being true.
What these guides are
Each guide takes a single buying decision and works it through: which figures actually decide the outcome, what each trade-off costs over the life of the system, and where the answer changes. They are written for distributors, installers and project developers buying for one market, at more depth than the reference material in the technical resources index.
| Guide | Market | The decision it settles |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid inverter for off-grid homes in Nigeria | Nigeria | Rated output, 48 V battery match, PV input, load-priority output and a parallel path for later growth |
| LiFePO4 vs lead-acid: ten-year cost of ownership | Global | Cycle life, usable kWh, maintenance load and charge behaviour over ten years of daily cycling |
| Why South African homes keep adding battery storage | South Africa | Why storage demand kept rising after load-shedding eased, and how to size a 2.56–16 kWh unit |
| Diesel generator vs solar + storage: the payback | Africa | Fuel price, servicing and run-hours in a payback calculation — and when the generator is still the right answer |
| What a CE or RoHS certificate actually covers | Global | The four fields that decide a compliance claim — holder, model list, directive version, validity — and where a certificate stops |
| Sizing a battery bank for load shedding | Southern Africa | A five-step method from a measured load list to a capacity, a power rating and an array size, with a worked household example |
How these guides are written
Every figure comes from the manufacturer's specification sheets, manuals and test reports for the models we supply — not from estimates. Where the source documents disagree with each other, the guide says so rather than picking the most flattering number. Where an answer depends on local tariffs or fuel prices, the guide gives the range it used and shows the arithmetic, so you can substitute your own figures and re-run it.
Shorter reference material
For sizing steps, wiring, fault codes and model-number decoding, see the technical resources index.
If you are working through a purchase and want a second opinion on the numbers, send the load list and the constraints and we will work through it with you.