We celebrated surviving 12 Years Off Grid in December of 2023!

2023 was one of the worst years of solar power generation since we began this journey in 2011!
It was ROUGH!

To make matters worse, our main battery bank finally expired.
Having been in use for over 10 years we certainly got our money’s worth.

We were able to buy 4 brand new batteries. And that is the sum total of storage capacity that I have!

It was difficult from April 2023 to December 2023 with frequent power outages, and waking up to no power in the morning.
We had to transfer the water pump to the secondary power system we created and return to very minimalist power usage.

With the price of fuel increasing, instead of relying on the generator to recharge out battery bank, we have been using the second, back up battery bank.
We have it set up with a switch so we can change which bank is powering the house and the regulator/charge controller is programmed to charge the main bank first and then switch to charge the second bank.

We were able to pick up some more used batteries for our back-up battery bank, and a heavy frame to store them in.

11th Year Off Grid!

Mar 2022:

I am waiting to hear the result of an application I submitted in Feb.
The outcome of this will impact the rest of 2022 for me.

Jan – Feb 2022:

Installed a 2nd Separate Off Grid Power System!

This new system includes:
9 new 400 watt solar panels
3 new batteries
A 5kw inverter/charger/controller

This second system is separate from my home.

It does power the electric for my hot water cylinder in my house!

This is a huge relief!
I am able to keep the water hot easily with the electric.
And be able to operate other appliances concurrently.

Previously – I could only run the electric for the cylinder if it was super sunny, there was excess power and nothing other than the fridge was operating…

My house inverter is 3kw.
The cylinder element was almost 3kw.
New 5kw inverter in the second system.
Now I easily switch on the hot water cylinder with no impact on my day to day operations!

Speaking of hotwater cylinders…

We had to replace our 10 year old hot water cylinder because it started leaking.
The cylinder had a 7 year warranty, so we got an extra 3 years.

Our plumber also found it had been installed incorrectly in the first place!
So we were extremely lucky to have had 10 years without any major leaks.

☀️🔋
2022 System Status:
House power system – 16 batteries in original bank, 4 batteries in second/backup bank, 18 solar panels
Second power system – 3 batteries, 9 solar panels

🎤

Podcast
For friends of the podcast who listened to Sunshine & PowerCuts on Podbean, you will find that it is no longer separately hosted there.

You can still listen on Podbean here.

This does not affect the podcast distribution to any other platform,.
It was just too expensive to host it separately on Podbean as well.

The aim is still to create monthly episodes.

And I really appreciate everyone who has supported me on my journey especially since 2019!

🔌  🌊

Resource Consumption
From my 2021 update you may remember that we had been burdened with accommodating extra people since the end of 2019…

As of Feb 2022 – this has been resolved with the second power system operational and an additional water tank!

From Jan  2022 til Feb 2022 we were on strict water restrictions due to a drought. But thankfully the rain has arrived and refilled the tanks.