Serial number 200,000 in a Consol Solar Jar lid rolled off the factory floor! Here’s a special blog post authored by Mr Sunshine, aka Harald Schulz, our intrepid Technical and Managing Director. Celebrate this important milestone with us.

Hello Team Suntoy and all our valued customers. A total of 30 people at Suntoy are directly involved in the manufacture of the Consol Solar Jar (CSJ). Big thanks and well done to all of you on producing 200,000. To Consol Glass, thank you for giving us this opportunity. Time to reflect and entertain with interesting statistics.

Units Produced:
The first CSJ rolled off the line on 21 September, 2011. That month we made 804 units. The quantity then steadily increased to 6,157 per month by May 2012, one year ago. This month we expect to ship a total of 27,000 units.

Interesting Facts on Weight:
1,000 rolls of 5kg or 5 tons of steel wire have been used. That’s a total of 165km of wire in total! We have produced and shipped a total weight of over 150 tons of product.

Light and Energy Output:
If Soccer City filled to capacity – that’s 94,736 people in total – and each person held two Consol Solar Jars, 10,000 jars would illuminate the field. These CSJs would produce 24kW of renewable power, approximately equivalent to the light output of 3,000 standard Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) light bulbs.

For Propeller Heads:
The energy held in batteries and recharged every day by the sun is theoretically 288kWh. The average South African uses 4.5kWh per day. Purely mathematically, the 200,000 CSJs we’ve produced could supply 64 South Africans with their complete electricity demand. In terms of energy production, 200,000 CSJs would comfortably be able to power 24 households.

By comparison Ethiopia ranks amongst the lowest electricity users in the world per capita. In Ethiopia the average person uses 0.12kwh of electricity per day. Our 200,000 CSJs produced could therefore supply 2,400 Ethiopians with electric power.

Congratulations Team Suntoy!